Anna Quindlen asks an important question

In her latest column Anna Quindlen asks if America is asking itself "who are we really?"

"Who are we, we Americans? The answer is murkier at this moment than at any point in our history. Election Day is probably an ideal time to stop and think about that, although it seems we rarely think about it at all. ...Are we inspired only by personal vengeance, not humanitarian succor? Are we willing to make war in Iraq but not peace in Sudan? What moves us to action?"

One thread through the column is our lack of public concern or even interest in the genocide taking place in Sudan. Her position seems to be that we are not living up to our imagined role of moral leader for the world. That as we choose our leadership, we should a this moment to think about what sort of country we want to be.

"This is a moment when those questions must be asked again, now that the United States so towers over the other players on the world stage. Are we a country willing to match strength with strength of purpose? Are we a country prepared to model free speech for others, or one that will trade its birthright of dissent for national security? Are we a country that cares about the needy and the disenfranchised, or a country of individualists in which self-interest is the ruling ethos? Is our symbol the open hand or the closed fist? Who are we? What do we stand for?"

These are good questions that we need to think about more, but this may be a particularly bad time to do it. The nature of elections is competitive and partisan, no way around that really. Important issues like those raised by Quindlen inevitably become debate points causing opinion to polarize. The leading players have a difficult time speaking honestly about these matters in the best of times, but the charged atmosphere of a close election makes true openness impossible. In matters as important as our active role in the world this is not a healthy step.

And Quindlen's argument seems to imply that our failure to act in Sudan as we did in Iraq implies a lack of compassion in favor of more "vengeful" motivations. I believe she is mis-reading the American public. The suffering of the Iraqi people under Saddam has been widely reported and is much on the mind of Americans. Our desire to stay in Iraq and see the country rebuilt is clearly motivated as much by compassion and commitment to ideals, as it is to any sense of self-interest or vengeance for September 11. What has changed in the past year has been our confidence in the reward for compassionate work. Americans hesitate to take up the cause of the Sudanese because they fully expect that such a campaign, no matter how nobly motivated, will end badly. The situation there will turn out to be much more complex that we expected, the good-guys will turn out to have skeletons in the closet, (or piled in mass graves) and the bad-guys will find support groups here in the U.S., and the world community will be on the sidelines decrying every mis-step. Like the New York portrayed in the Spiderman stories, this is not always a friendly world for super-heroes and crime-fighters.