VICTOR HANSON IS NO RENAISSANCE MAN
... AS puts up pictures, labeled "tragedy", which Victor Davis Hanson of the Hoover Institute would probably call "Victory Photos".
To him, it's all just a matter of bad and worse and, of course, the road not traveled, for him, is ... worse. Did you expect anything different?
And, when he really gets going, its not a matter of bad and worse, it's a question of whether you hate America or not. Ergo, Andrew probably hates America for showing these photos...
It's funny how, sometimes, when you are doing research on a topic, a line that perfectly encapsulates a sentiment comes along:
Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast
The little tyrant of his fields withstood;
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood.
-Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, Thomas Gray
The little tyrant of his fields withstood;
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood.
-Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, Thomas Gray
TO AMERICA, ALL THINGS ARE PURE
Doesn't that strike you as descriptive of the faux state of innocence that the minds of our current crop of militarists inhabit? With America, there is no such thing as 'moral catastrophe' or even moral failure - all is merely regrettable. This is true whether or not one feels that Hiroshima-Nagasaki were 'right for the time'.
To say otherwise - to even raise the possibility, is to be cast off as a moral relativist, stultified by anti-American 'moral equivalences' or 'radical egalitarianism'. (That's before the name-calling starts, including "commie" or its high-mileage updated version, "terrorist sympathizer", etc.).
IRAQ - THE MODEL, BUT NOT LIKE THAT
Check it out some time. There has been a lot of energy invested in this great Tower of Moral Self-assurance.
You can bet that calling everyone who wanted discussion ahead of the Iraqi invasion a bunch of America haters ("I Love Iraq, Bomb Texas") is one of the key reasons why some simply cannot let go of the Iraqi quagmire now. They still think there is something to win.
Of course, there is no cost-benefit currently that justifies that view, with costs now 20-30 times Iraqi GDP, even, and probably half that again to come. So, we're left with the only conclusion being that to abandon it now would mean that they were wrong to call everyone a bunch of unpatriotic weenies back then; and THAT they can not bear, even if it costs another trillion, a failed effort in Afghanistan, and thousands more lives ...
