Posted on 05/08/2006 10:11:36 PM PDT by kellynla
Listen to the present televised hysteria. Too few troops! No, too many still there! The CIA is out of control! No, it is weak and irrelevant! The Iraq mess only empowered Iran! No, its democratic experiment is the best way to undermine that neighboring theocracy.
Such frenzy of the 24-hour news cycle is now everywhere, as we are lectured that our victories over the Taliban and Saddam Hussein have caused as many problems as they solved.
But in war aren't choices usually between the bad and the far worse? So often victory leads not to utopia, but only something better.
Take our past ambiguous successes. Recall that the outcome of America's horrific, but successful, Civil War that ended slavery led not to racial harmony. Instead followed over a decade of failed Reconstruction and another century of Jim Crow apartheid in the South.
We saved a reeling Britain and France in World War I. But an isolationist United States did not occupy a defeated Germany. So we fought a resurgent Hitler little more than twenty years later, who talked of the 'stab in the back,' while he bragged that imperial Germany had withdrawn unbeaten from foreign soil.
The outcome of World War II (note the sudden need for the Roman numerals) was not perpetual peace or even the freedom of Eastern Europe, but rather its enslavement and a Cold War of a half-century.
The United States prevailed in saving South Korea. Yet it still bequeathed a lunatic nuclear communist state to our grandchildren.
Gulf War I was a smashing success. But it was followed by the slaughter of tens of thousands of Shiites and Kurds, twelve years of no-fly zones, and yet another war against Saddam.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...
please correct the typo on the author
thanks
ping
Victor Davis Hanson BTTT.
93,000 killed in action. 320,000 more wounded. Between the middle of April and the 7th of May.
Many young Americans when they sing our National Anthem at their school games mouth the words but know not what they mean. They should learn and understand the meaning of the four verses in that noble song, and especially the last.
O thus be it ever when free-men shall stand
Between their lov'd home and the war's desolation;
Blest with vict'ry and peace, may the heav'n-rescued land
Praise the Pow'r that hath made and preserv'd us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: In God is our trust!
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
As Captain 'Lucky Jack' Aubrey of the HMS Surprise would say..."In the Royal Navy,one must always choose the lesser of 2 weevils"
But why did a poorer, less educated, and more illiberal United States in far bloodier and more error-ridden wars of the past still have greater confidence in itself? Was it that our ancestors, who died younger and far more tragically, did not expect their homeland to be without flaws, only to be considerably better than the enemy's?Mortality is a human failing. And it is deeply embarasssing to secularists. As Mark Steyn pointed out recently:Perhaps we have forgotten such modesty because we have ignored the study of history that alone offers us guidance from our forbearers. It now competes as an orphan discipline with social science, -ologies and -isms that entice us into thinking that the more money and education of the present can at last perfect the human condition and thus consign our flawed past to irrelevance.
In The Cube and the Cathedral, George Weigel begins his lively dissection of "politics without God" with a bracing series of questions, including the following:People who have the effrontery to exhibit the human frailty of mortality (as will we all, pending the Second Coming) must be "unpersons" - their existence an embarassment to be swept under the rug."Why do certain parts of Europe exhibit a curious, even bizarre, approach to death? Why did so many of the French prefer to continue their summer vacations during the European heat wave of 2003, leaving their parents unburied and warehoused in refrigerated lockers (which were soon overflowing)? Why is death increasingly anonymous in Germany, with no death notice in the newspapers, no church funeral ceremony, no secular memorial service -- 'as though,' Richard John Neuhaus observed, 'the deceased did not exist'?"
Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice ? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.
Let me know if you want in or out.
Links: FR Index of his articles: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/keyword?k=victordavishanson
His website: http://victorhanson.com/ NRO archive: http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson-archive.asp
You might also point out to them that "two thousand KIA's" represents roughly the first half-hour of Omaha Beach.
well I wasn't at Omaha Beach but I was in Nam in 1969.
But why did a poorer, less educated, and more illiberal United States in far bloodier and more error-ridden wars of the past still have greater confidence in itself? Was it that our ancestors, who died younger and far more tragically, did not expect their homeland to be without flaws, only to be considerably better than the enemy's?"
This sums up what is lacking in liberals and the ideas they teach in America. This is the truth that David Horowitz finally found out which brought him out of communist lies and to conservatism.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.