« Flash: "Progressives" Decree That Multiplication Tables Have Value After All | Main | Ann Richards, R.I.P. »
September 13, 2006
VDH Makes A Sharp Point
At the risk of belaboring the obvious, Victor Davis Hanson is brilliant. As you might have read, he's now blogging over at Pajamas Media, and I like what I've seen so far: the logical style and clear reasoning is the same as found in his books and essays, but there might be a little more...spontaneity?...in his blog writing. Which is good--VDH on a rant should be fascinating.
He's got a great post up entitled "The Will of the President", in which he makes draws some historical comparisons that are very sharp indeed:
Total all the mistakes in Iraq—and they are legion— and they do not match a month’s folly in WWII (cf. the daylight B-17 missions of 1943, the early torpedo scandal of US submarines, the shortcomings of the Sherman Tank, the Kasserine Pass, the lit-up cities along the Eastern seaboard that facilitated U-boat carnage, the surprise at the Bulge, the intelligence failures about the hedgerows, and on and on) or Korea (the surprise at the Yalu, the lack of winter gear in the retreat, the surprise at the efficacy of the Mig-15, the Korean- prisoner fiasco, or the ossification at the 38th parallel when momentum was once again with us, etc.). Who made such blunders and more? Men like Arnold, Bradley, Eisenhower, Halsey, MacArthur, Marshall, and more in the pantheon of now deified generals.
Just before the 2004 presidential election, I got into an email debate with a dear liberal friend over the Iraq war. In attempting to make the point that the popularity of a course of action has nothing to do with its ethical or moral correctness, I cited Lincoln in the summer of 1864--the virulent criticism he received and lack of popular support did not dissuade him from the course he had determined. We now revere him for behaviour that what was then seen as pig-headed and desirous of tyranny. My friend saw the names Bush and Lincoln in the same sentence, blew a gasket and missed the point: the determination of history is not set in stone by current opinion polls.
At least GWB has a ways to go before he rivals Harry Truman's 25% approval rating.
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.thebernoullieffect.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/727
