Victor Davis Hanson remains the #1 reason to visit NRO:
The truth is that one can sound moral only through the advocacy of restraint, never preemption. Appeasement wins applause for its ethical posturing and non-belligerency; and even when the corpses later pile up it rarely earns the disgust it deserves for getting thousands killed. In contrast, preemption is always equated with blood lust; and even when it saves thousands, critics sigh that in retrospect there must have been a better way.Like communism and socialism, the rhetoric of appeasement focuses on the pretense of human kindness and brotherhood, never on the calculus of the dead to come.
My father sends me emails a few times a week, telling me that the President is venal and stupid, "bought and paid for," a "slave to oil" and is warmongering to save himself. There are the "funny" articles about how we're only going to war to "revenge Bush's daddy" or "help Dubya's poll numbers." Then there are the "thoughtful" screeds that tell us he's only doing it "to distract from the fact that he hasn't caught bin Laden," as if the President had ever promised any such thing--indeed, as if the President hadn't already said, a hundred times at least, that we might never catch him.
The armchair psychiatrists spouting stuff about oedipus are always a real treasure, too.
The fate of millions hangs in the balance, and people think that saying things like this makes them clever, or funny. I don't know whether to throw up or cry. I really don't.
If Bush is our Demosthenes, is Hanson our Cassandra? I imagine most people won't even understand his essay. That's the saddest part of all. As a species, we just never learn, do we? We never learn.
This essay from Victor Davis Hanson reminds me of Churchill’s sentiments regarding the unteachability of mankind. Churchill waxes eloquently that we wait too long to meet some challenges, and then apply resolutions that would have worked before, but not under present circumstances. Hanson also quite accurately mentions that people will never appreciate leaders who head off or prevent catastrophes; however, they will often inaccurately credit leaders for resolving crises for which they do not deserve credit. Historians crediting Franklin Delano Roosevelt with bringing the U.S.A. out a depression comes to mind.
I am certain Clintonistas consciously manipulate this same ignorance when incorrectly crediting Clinton with the robust economy he enjoyed while President. Clinton never, ever credits the previous administration with his strong economy even though his fecund eight years began in 1992 before Clinton took the oath of office. Clintonistas also ignore the role of the Federal Reserve in managing the economy. The Fed has more manifest power to regulate our economy through expansion or contraction of our money supply and through manipulation of interest rates than any President does using fiscal policy.
They continue this deception today blaming Bush for the current economy forgetting that we are at war. They also conveniently omit that the current, lackluster economy began the last quarter Clinton was President. How nice it must be to have the press on your side.