THE PILGRIMS DIDN'T CUT & RUN

The English, mostly Puritan colonists who settled in Massachusetts were made of sterner stuff than many Massachusetts Democrats seem to be made of today.

In a convoluted op-ed in last weeks New Duranty Times, leading gender theorist Susan Faludi describes the cost of King Philip's War, when in 1675, Massasoit's younger son, Metacomet, attempted to exterminate the English in New England:

In one year, one of every 10 white men of military age in Massachusetts Bay was killed, and one of every 16 in the Northeastern colonies. Two-thirds of New England towns were attacked and more than half the settlements were left in ruins. Settlers were forced to retreat nearly to the coast, and the Colonial economy was devastated.

But the Puritans didn't cut & run. They were able to turn the tide, defeat the tribes that had gone to war against them, and secure New England.

Faludi describes King Philip's War as an outburst of domestic terrorism, and is chiefly interested in the fact that many women & children were captured by Metacomet's bands. Some of them were held for years. She thinks that this was humiliating to the English men, and that the supermasculine myth of the frontiersman was the result. Naturally she thinks a similar process is going on today in what she calls the myths of the war on terror.

Her article is generally laughable. Because all she is interested in is her own version of far-left gender analysis, that's all she can see wherever she looks. All she has is a hammer, so everything looks like a nail. She writes:

By the mid-1700s, a new frontier literature emerged, starring battle-hardened and wilderness-savvy frontiersmen who could take on the Indians, the French and, eventually, the British.

In reality, what is significant is not the emergence of a frontier literature, but the emergence of actual wilderness-savvy frontiersman who did in fact take on and defeat the French, the Indians, and the British (more or less in that order). Anyone who reads the history of the Revolutionary War in the Ohio Valley will be struck by the fierce and dogged competence of men such as Daniel Boone, Simon Kenton, and the like.

Faludi maintains:

Unfortunately, by replicating the Colonial war on terrorism, 9/11 invited us to re-enact the post-Colonial solution, to bury our awareness of our vulnerability under belligerent posturing and comforting fantasy.

If Faludi could consult the manes of Native American generals like Metacomet, Little Turtle, Bluejacket, and Tecumseh, she would learn that the determination and courage of the early Americans were neither a "belligerent posturing" nor a "comforting fantasy." It's certainly true that the early English settlers, during the XVIIth century, were unprepared for the genocidal warfare, replete with kidnappings and tortures, that their enemies brought to bear against them. But during the XVIIIth century, they learned to adapt to this new world, and they showed themselves capable of defeating their terroristic enemies - utterly.

It took time and effort. In 1790, General Arthur St. Clair, a former President of the (Congress of the) United States, took to the field against Little Turtle and due to incompetence lost almost 50% of the standing Army of the United States. But only a few years later, General Anthony Wayne's reconstituted Legion swept through what was then the northwest frontier, and with comparatively much less loss of actual life, psychologically crushed Little Turtle's horde. Not even massive British intervention during the War of 1812 could turn that tide.

Faludi seems to think that Americans today should just continually cower in fear and accept as inevitable the murderous attacks of savage thugs:

By returning us to the trauma that produced our national myth, the 9/11 attacks present the opportunity to look past the era of buckskin bravado and unlock the cabinet wherein lies America’s deepest formative fear, the fear of home-soil terrorism. One ultimate casualty of Metacom’s Rebellion was the Puritans’ determination to face that fear. By revisiting our ancient drama, 9/11 gives us a chance to regain that abandoned resolve, to see our frailties in a realistic light, instead of papering them over with dangerous delusions.

But her interpretation is completely wrong. The Puritans did face their fears, but did not accept perpetual frailty as their fate. The English colonists became stronger than their enemies, and utterly defeated them. A better argument might be that it was the Indians who did not accommodate themselves to reality, and who persisted in terroristic tactics long after they should have known that they had lost, and thereby ensured that their ultimate defeat would be much worse than it otherwise might have been.

The terrorists who confront us today are ultimately as weak as the terrorists who attempted to wipe out the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The jihadi terror brigades do not rest on the foundation of a productive, dynamic society. They are ultimately parasitic. Their most chilling exploit was the result of using the West's technology and culture against itself. One September 11, 2001, medieval assassins used the openness of American society, and the complex technology of American aircraft and American airline flight schedules against us. From their own world, they brought nothing but hatred, racism, and fanaticism.

The ultimate outcome of the present war is not really in doubt. But by taking advantage of defeatist, America-hating ideologues like Susan Faludi and the New Duranty Times, the terrorists will make victory much more costly than it really has to be.