August 7, 2004
A DAY THAT WILL LIVE IN INFANTILITY (via Mike Daley):
A Return to Childhood: The new immaturity (Victor Davis Hanson, 8/06/04, National Review)
[I]magine a different America, in, say, January 1941.[E]nvision a Vice President Henry Wallace lecturing the American people on its failure to win the hearts and minds of European youth. He perhaps would say something like, "What have we Americans done wrong to lose millions of Spaniards, Italians, Germans, and Japanese, who turn their back on democracy
and prefer fascism?"Roosevelt then might expound further, "Look at the world! We don't have an
ally anywhere but Britain. What have we done to earn the animus of most of
Europe that has either joined Hitler or would prefer to be neutral? Why is
all of Eastern Europe against us? Whether Communist or fascist, Russian or
German, the common enemy is either the United States or England. All Stalin
and Hitler can agree on is shared dislike of America. Why? Even Mexico and
South America feel more affinity for Germany than for the U.S."Then a congressional board of inquiry could issue a finding that America had
failed to give proper aid to Europe during the depression. It could suggest further that we are isolationists and self-absorbed. More thoughtful senators, the intellectual precursors of a Patty Murray perhaps, could rail that whereas Hitler built autobahns, we lent out high-interest loans to those who were already struggling.All such browbeating would have an element of truth in it, but, of course, in its totality remain an outright lie: Hitler, like bin Laden and his epigones, was the problem, not us. The only difference is that our grandparents knew that and we don't.
The best evidence of the new childishness is its persistence in self-contradiction. Thus, Howard Dean hints that the recently elevated alerts might be politically motivated terrorist hype - even as John Kerry insists that we haven't done enough to stop the fascists from planning our destruction.
Similarly, the Iraq war was at times necessary, completely uncalled for, poorly planned, nevertheless worthy of staying the course in, and more still - depending on the particular level of support voiced for the war in the polls of the week. The New York Times in April decries brutal American force in Fallujah, only by summer to scoff that our forbearance there had created a terrorist heaven.
The modern Left was created on the premise that Vietnam was both a strategic
mistake and a moral catastrophe - and now has come full circle in praising
men like John Kerry, Max Cleland, and Wesley Clark for their combat service.
Are they heroes of a noble cause that to win deserved more support at home?
Are they tragic fighters whose bravery was not properly appreciated? Or are
they participants in what John Kerry once assured the American people was an
illegal war in which soldiers routinely committed war atrocities? All or
none?
At least our grandparents got to kill French and Germans--what's our consolation? Posted by Orrin Judd at August 7, 2004 7:38 PM
We killed French and Germans, (and Japanese), but we didn't obliterate their cultures. (Although that would have been a good thing in Japan, at least).
By the time we're through with the Arabs, they'll fall into four categories:
1) Westernized, with a few quaint costumes and ceremonial customs remaining.
2) Living in ghettoes like the Native Americans on their reservations, bypassed, defeated, and too well aware of it.
3) Consciously anachronistic, like the Amish, with the same determined cultural autism as the Amish, and contributing just as much to the world, i.e., very little. (Probably less, as the Arabs don't have a quilting tradition).
4) Living in areas too isolated and worthless for anyone else to care about, carrying on in splendid stasis and irrelevance, like the parrot-hunting tribes of South America, who haven't changed in thousands of years.
Their culture and uniqueness will be as vanished as that of the ancient Egyptians, or the fabled Babylonians of yore. Their defeat will be so total that killing their bodies would be redundant.
They will be assimilated.
OJ,
We killed a tiny handful of French, in less than a week's worth of fighting. Mostly the French fought on our side. Sometimes the cause is just even if the French benefit.
And you left out all the Japanese and Italians we killed.
Posted by: Brandon at August 7, 2004 8:56 PMMichael:
What's left of the cultures of pre-war France and Germany?
Posted by: oj at August 7, 2004 10:17 PMBrandon:
No, they didn't. They mostly collaborated. But one downside of war with France is you tend to beat them in a week.
Posted by: oj at August 7, 2004 10:18 PMoj:
You believe that the French of 2004 are as different from the French of 1939 as Americans are from the English ?
I disagree.
Posted by: Michael Herdegen at August 8, 2004 1:49 AMI don't have to imagine it. I have access to the speeches of the America Firsters like Lindbergh.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at August 8, 2004 2:33 PMLindbergh was right--he shouyld have stuck to his guns on the 7th.
Posted by: oj at August 8, 2004 2:49 PM"This is a favorite canard of New York Times and Washington Post columnists who resent the inconvenience of security measures in their digs, and the attention such vigilance diverts from Mr. Kerry's message."
What these people are saying is "I expect our government to proactively protect me from every possible danger while never inconveniencing me with the slightest delay or interrupton to my daily routine. Also, never let the vulgar lowifes of the military or security services who must be enlisted to secure my rights and priviledges to embarass me by their presence in decent society or make me uncomfortable with my European friends by their blundering incompetence in combat which reflects badly on ME!"
Posted by: Robert Duquette at August 8, 2004 3:14 PMYou cannot -- or should not expect to get away with -- arguing opposite positions within 5 minutes of each other.
If Lindy was right, then we weren't superior at Midway.
He was right, but that was because he wanted to surrender before being attacked.
Fortunately, most Americans had more grit and more sense.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at August 8, 2004 4:34 PMHarry:
Surrender? To who? No one could get here. It wasn't our war.
Posted by: oj at August 8, 2004 5:18 PM>At least our grandparents got to kill French
>and Germans--what's our consolation?
We get to screw in our hot tubs.
Posted by: Ken at August 11, 2004 2:25 PM