Victor Davis Hanson is good, very good. In this piece for NRO he compares our current situation in Iraq with the summer of 1864. Read it all, but this will give the flavor: "We are near the end of such a pivotal summer ourselves, the type that defines not just a presidency, but an entire nation for generations to come. After the spectacular victories in Afghanistan and Iraq, public ardor for the conflict is temporarily cooling. Because of the past recession, the effects of 9/11, the tax cuts, and the cost of the war, we are running up billions in projected annual budget deficits. Our own McClellans and contemporary Copperheads deride the president as a miserable failure cheek by jowl with major newspapers."
And then check out how nicely Michael Barone takes apart the establishment media’s war coverage. Richard Butler, the former UN weapons inspector, speaking in Atlantic City, said that it doesn’t matter whether or not WMD are found; Saddam had them, "I held some in my own hands." The overthrow of Saddam was justified, he says.
Victor Davis Hanson is good, very good. In this piece for NRO he compares our current situation in Iraq with the summer of 1864. Read it all, but this will give the flavor: "We are near the end of such a pivotal summer ourselves, the type that defines not just a presidency, but an entire nation for generations to come.
Ah, we baby boomers... history’s first victims of unadulterated luxury. That kind of luxury that causes military historians like Hanson to bask in the glow of great events of the past while attempting to draw wishful parallels to the present.
Don’t get me wrong, I would rather not bash boomers or Hanson, the latter of whom I respect far more than most in my generation. While I didn’t suffer the scars of Vietnam and "all that," niether was I born just yesterday. 1864 was dark, a hideous darkness beyond anyone alive today to fully comprehend. And the darkness was here not over there in some gawd-forsaken desert. String together about a dozen or so 9/11s complete with some WMDs thrown in, and one might be able to make the case Hanson does.
One of Hanson’s most popular admirers recntly told of the dirty little secret concerning this "pivotal summer." None other than Rush Limbaugh let the cat out of the bag. "Too many Americans have forgotten about 9/11," Limbaugh said. Who, in their right mind, in 1864 would have had the audacity to claim that too many Americans had forgotten Gettysburg?
My generation is now leading this nation. Our current aversion to risk shall provide enough future bloody battle fields to draw clear parallels to 1864. Until then, and I am quite content to allow them to come to us rather than comparing 2003s "situation in Iraq with the summer of 1864," I also wish folks like Hanson could tell us the truth rather than losing proportion to the winds of history.
"TRUTH! You can’t handle the truth!"