Darn straight.
Bowdlerized of me, to be sure.
By Moe Lane Posted in National Security — Comments (12) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Because I'm not really not supposed to say "[Bleep!], Yeah" here. It's that last bit that resonates with me:
There it is then. Others can choose to condemn the Americans and head for the lifeboats, but not in my name. The offer of Mrs Beckett’s assistance is kind, Matthew, yet I do not seek the shelter of a liferaft. I will stay with the ship and take my chances. If the vessel does ultimately capsize, despite my expectations, I will throw a bottle over the side containing the message: “I still think that ‘we kicked the door in’ is a more noble sentiment than the Little Englander’s cry of ‘leave those foreigners to their misery’.”
Forty years from now I will be as unapologetic in my support of the liberation of Afghanistan and Iraq as I am today. I sincerely doubt that my opponents will be able to say the same: in fact, I expect most of them to start revising and extending their remarks on the subject as quickly after 12:00:01 PM, 01/20/2XXX* as can be plausibly arranged...
*Either 01/20/2009 or 01/20/2013.
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Darn straight. 12 Comments (0 topical, 12 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
Thanks for finding this little gem. The one thing I would quibble with is your choice of quotes from the piece. I would have chosen
The largest single mistake, in retrospect, rests elsewhere. The problem has not been the Bush Administration underestimating how much Iraqis might come to loathe the West for the “occupation” but a failure to grasp the extent to which, thanks to Saddam, Iraqis had come to fear and hate each other.
[Emphasis added JRS]
Frankly I think this is one of the most profound observations in recent history and certainly so in the sorry history of L'affaire d'Irak
John
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Democratic civilization is the first in history to blame itself because another power is trying to destroy it.
... Jean-François Revel
I had that quote copied and ready to paste when I saw you'd beat me to it.
In Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay, Self Reliance, he says, to paraphrase, that sometimes we are forced to look humbly on as others put into eloquent arguments what we could only mutter to ourselves.
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Evil men hide from the truth, but good men stand upon it.
and I do not see that as a failing isolated to the the administration or even to the US. I don't think anyone, anywhere truly grasped the hatred and divisiness created by Saddam.
John
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Democratic civilization is the first in history to blame itself because another power is trying to destroy it.
... Jean-François Revel
the writer's assessment of how we should proceed in Iraq?
What needs to be done now, as James Baker, a former US Secretary of State, appreciates, is to secure a decentralised settlement and convince the Shia majority to divide the oil revenues in a way that each camp will consider fair. In such a situation, as Kim Howells, the Foreign Office Minister, has outlined, US and British forces could be withdrawn steadily throughout 2007 without chaos.
get along over dividing up neighborhoods...they aren't likely to magically get along over the divvying up of the national treasure.
They need a reconciliation...they are working through the reckoning now-the former will proceed when they have finished the latter.
Proud to be: politically incorrect, straight, white, pro-life Christian, and of the opinion the spotted owl tastes just like chicken.
John
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Democratic civilization is the first in history to blame itself because another power is trying to destroy it.
... Jean-François Revel
at how a tyranny can bring out the worse in people.
And we have all heard the arguments how 'unrestrained' capitalism is so dangerous. I see the potential but, the experience does not bear out the srguments. I am very afraid of those who want to tell me how to live.
I sincerely doubt that my opponents will be able to say the same: in fact, I expect most of them to start revising and extending their remarks on the subject as quickly after 12:00:01 PM, 01/20/2XXX* as can be plausibly arranged...
And "revising and extending" shows your talent for understatement. Liberals will be saying they were for it all along, and it's just a divisive right-wing lie to deny that victory of Iraq was supported by all Americans.
When Reagan advocated moving beyond containment to actually winning the Cold War, and spoke of sweeping the evil empire into the ash heap of history, liberals expressed shock and outrage that he could be so unrealistic and dangerously provocative. "Everybody knew" there was no way to defeat the communist bloc, so we had to learn to get along and be less rigid about containment. The term "Cold Warrior" was a term of derision in their circles.
But within a few years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, suddenly "everybody knew" that the collapse of communism had been inevitable, and Reagan just happened to be there to reap the fruits of all that bipartisan support for the Cold War.
One could expect the Left to be doing some history revisionism here, though I'd think that forty years from now, it'd be done in a bunker somewhere in the Rocky Mountains in the midst of a rapidly-shrinking territory holding out against a wave of Islamic and Latino invasions, the Right having long since gone down fighting and with the end quite plainly in sight. Hopefully, the victors of that outcome will finally develop some pang of remorse akin to what happened when the Germanic hordes finally realized what became of Rome, but, honestly, I don't want my nieces, nephew and the whol phalanx of second cousins to grow up in that world.
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"Straight Talk Express"? My bum feet! -- Me, on Senator McCain and other "moderates"
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