[the_greatest_country_ever]

Victor Hanson never fails to be brilliant.

[JohnGalt]

Supporting wars on civilians is brilliant?

[Sabertooth]

((((((growl)))))

[Billthedrill]

I doubt seriously if finding either Saddam or bin Laden will help matters so much as sticking it through until the new Iraq can rise to its feet. That will not be a pivotal moment, but a slow, incremental victory that will only be appreciated in retrospect. In the meantime there will be endless carpers desperate to downplay progress in an attempt to validate their discredited pessimism. Let them talk. It's all they can do while real men and women are building a country.

[SAMWolf]

Good article. Thanks for the ping saber.

[skeeter]

Inspiring piece. That Hanson can write.

I pray he's correct as well.

[Paradox]

I think an American pilot who flew over the peaks of Afghanistan or a Marine colonel now patrolling in Iraq was far more likely to ensure that his aged mother back home lives under humane conditions than was a Frenchman this summer on his month-long vacation on the Mediterranean coast.

Zing!

[Carry_Okie]

But just as Sisyphus was forever doomed to start pushing his rock anew — once it cascaded back just as he reached the apex — so shall we too have to start all over again should we lose our nerve with the summit now within sight. And such large boulders roll faster and in deadlier fashion downhill than during the slow and arduous push up.

Up to this point, I think Hanson had it right. He has no substantive proof that we are anywhere near "the summit."

Pakistan continues her machinations, Iran approaches nuclear capability, North Korea is close to an intercontinental delivery system, FARC in Colombia is taking technical assistance from Castro (who has considerable bio-warfare capabilities) and financial help from Chavez, China is developing MIRV capabilities, Brazil is also cooperating with Cuba, and Messico is invading our southern region with impunity while Islam is the fastest growing religion there.

Meanwhile, we are fast going broke.

What summit?

[Cicero]

Hanson is brilliant. But he's a voice crying in the wilderness. The usual suspects in the media are immune to reason, because they don't care to listen to rational argument. They just want to bash Bush with any tool at hand, even if it undermines our country. Similarly, they wanted to praise clinton in anyway possible, even if it undermined our country.

They are spoiled, elite scum.

[Gritty]

BTTT

[GOPcapitalist]

Victor Hanson never fails to be brilliant.

It is brilliant sophistry. Hanson uses the tool of analogy to argue his case and does a decent job of appealing to the selectively stimulated recollective memories of his readers. Though it makes for a nice little story, it is also an argument without intellectual merit. So in that sense it is not a matter of brilliance but rather cheap trickery. Hanson's argument only works so long as we accept his presentation of the historical events, his own assignment of analogous roles to historical persons, and his own underlying assumption that Lincoln's reelection was a good thing. If any of these items contain flaws - and IMHO they do - his entire house of cards comes tumbling down.