The Politics of American Wars: Islamists have proved adept at winning liberal exemption from criticism

From Victor Davis Hanson on today's National Review Online:

For all the talk of imperial America, and our frequent "police actions," we are hardly militarists. Protected by two oceans, and founded on the principles of non-interference in Europe's bloody internecine wars, the United States has always been rightly circumspect about going to war abroad. The American people are highly individualistic, skeptical of war's utility, and traditionally distrustful of government — and wary of the need of their sacrifice for supposed global agendas.