Victor Davis Hanson Ping !
Let me know if you want in or out
Posted on 11/02/2004 4:37:55 PM PST by quidnunc
In singular moments in our history, the security of the United States hinged on a single presidential election. Imagine George McClellan recognizing an undefeated Confederacy in March 1865. Consider an eight-year Jimmy Carter tenure. Or contemplate Walter Mondale taking over from a defeated President Reagan to implement unilaterally a nuclear freeze, Mike Dukakis asking Saddam to leave Kuwait, or Al Gore mobilizing America to invade Afghanistan. We are now faced with the same critical choice. Today’s vote determines how the United States finishes the present war against terrorists, and, indeed, whether we defeat Islamic fascism and those Middle East autocracies that fuel it.
John Kerry sees our struggle as a law enforcement problem, akin to gambling and prostitution. Thus the terrorist attacks of the 1990s were not deadly precursors to 9-11, but belong to a now nostalgic era of “nuisance.” In contrast, George Bush envisioned September 11 as real war — a global struggle against Dark-Age extremism, striving for a nuclear caliphate that could blackmail the industrialized world and destroy Western liberal values. So Mr. Bush took terrorist killers at their word, convinced that such “evil-doers,” like a Hitler or Stalin, had no legitimate complaint against America. Rather, they murder out of a deep frustration that Western liberality is on the march, signaling an end to Islamic fascism and those repressive regimes that hand-in-glove with them have deflected their own failures onto the United States.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at victorhanson.com ...
FYI
"Danegeld" is just too perfect. Hanson BTT.
VDH, one of the most astute and articulate voices and clear thinking men around. Would to God there were more like him in politics.
Bump
I've always enjoyed his commentary.
VDH is awesome.
Let me know if you want in or out
Thanks for the posts and the pings. Thank God we won't have a traitor for president!
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