Memory: Churchill and the US lures of the quagmire
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Memory: Churchill and the US lures of the quagmire David Ryan1 Published online: 28 September 2020 © The Editor of the Journal 2020
Abstract ‘Churchill’ has been used as a powerful lure in US collective memory on questions of military intervention and defiance. While the history of Winston Churchill is extensive and complicated the image of him in US collective memory has been reduced to a narrower image and understanding of him set around resolution, defiance, individual heroism as an antidote to the discourses and memories of appeasement. US presidents have a proclivity to reach for a memorable phrase or quotation from Churchill when considering questions of defiance and intervention. While the common aphorism suggests that lessons from the past that are unlearned will be repeated, it does not engage the issue of memory. Collective memory, as opposed to history, provides a consciousness that can be used by speechwriters and presidents to galvanise, define and motivate public opinion under particular circumstances. Keywords Churchill · US foreign policy · Memory · Good war · Discourse · Iraq · War · Rhetoric · Bush · Blair Within weeks of becoming president Ronald Reagan quipped to his audience in the British Embassy Ballroom, Washington, D.C.: ‘… you know, Prime Minister, that we have a habit of quoting Winston Churchill. Tell me, is it possible to get through a public address today in Britain without making reference to him? [Laughter] It is increasingly difficult to do so here, not just because we Americans share some pride in his ancestry but because there’s so much to learn from him, his fearlessness’.1 Reagan’s words were intended to engender bonds early in his relationship with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher; he was rewarded by ‘[Laughter]’ (emphasis in the original). Yet his lightness of being obscured a heavier tradition. First, indeed reference to Churchill was and remains ubiquitous in US presidential rhetoric 1 Ronald Reagan, ‘Reagan, Toasts of the President and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of the United Kingdom at the Dinner Honoring the President’ (Public Papers of the President, 27 February 1981), Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/research/speeches/22781c.
* David Ryan [email protected] 1
University College Cork, Cork, Ireland Vol.:(0123456789)
478
Journal of Transatlantic Studies (2020) 18:477–497
through to the present; Churchill is largely non-partisan in Washington, if not London, excepting the infamous ‘invisible cigar’ deployed by Tony Blair in a House of Commons debate on Iraq in September 2002.2 When Churchill is referenced, Munich and Neville Chamberlain attend by contextual inference. Second, Reagan referenced learning. Churchill was a steadfast guide; there was much to learn to avoid the Santayana trap. The Spanish-born, American philosopher George Santayana, to recapitulate the obvious, observed, ‘those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it’. Leaders with foresight did well to adhere to such ‘lessons’.3 Yet there is
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