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shawa
CNO
Joined: 03 Sep 2004
Posts: 2004
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 Posted: Fri Dec 09, 2005 11:03 pm Post subject: The Panic Over Iraq |
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A BRILLIANT piece with great historical perspective.A great takedown of the Left!
Thank you, John Podheretz!!
This goes into my IT'S A KEEPER FILE.
It's a LONG essay, Here's an excerpt:
| Quote: | COMMENTARY
January 2006
The Panic Over Iraq
by John Podheretz
I have found my thoughts returning in the past year to something that Tom Paine, writing at an especially dark moment of the American Revolution, said about such times. They are, he memorably wrote, “the times that try men’s souls,” the times in which “the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot” become so disheartened that they “shrink from the service of [their] country.”
But Paine did not limit his anguished derision to former supporters of the American War of Independence whose courage was failing because things had not been going as well on the battlefield as they had expected or hoped. In a less famous passage, he also let loose on another group:
’Tis surprising to see how rapidly a panic will sometimes run through a country. . . . Yet panics, in some cases, have their uses . . . . [T]heir peculiar advantage is, that they are the touchstones of sincerity and hypocrisy, and bring things and men to light, which might otherwise have lain for ever undiscovered.
Thus, he explained, “Many a disguised Tory has lately shown his head,” emboldened by the circumstances of the moment to reveal an opposition to the break with Britain that it had previously seemed prudent to conceal.
The similarities to our situation today are uncanny.
~SNIP~
Mark Twain once famously said that reports of his death were greatly exaggerated. So it was, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, with the post-Vietnam syndrome. During those early weeks, a number of commentators were quick to proclaim the birth of an entirely new era in American history. What December 7, 1941 had done to the isolationism of old, they announced, September 11, 2001 had done to the Vietnam syndrome. Politically speaking, it was dead, and the fallout from the Vietnam war—namely, the hostility to America and especially to American military power—would follow it into the grave.
As is evident from the coverage of Iraq in the mainstream media, such pronouncements were more than a little premature: the Vietnam syndrome is still alive and well. But equally apparent is that the reporters and editors to whom it is a veritable religion understand very clearly that success in Iraq could deal the Vietnam syndrome a mortal blow. Little wonder, then, that they have so resolutely tried to ignore any and all signs of progress—or, when that becomes impossible, to dismiss them as so much “s**t.”
This, however, is at least a kind of tribute to our progress, if a perverse one. The same cannot be said of the opponents of the Bush Doctrine in the universities and think tanks, who are unwilling even to acknowledge that more and better things are happening in Iraq and the broader Middle East than are dreamed of in their philosophy.
Take, for example, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who left the academy to serve as Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser and is now a professor again. In a recently published piece entitled “American Debacle,” Brzezinski began by accusing George W. Bush of “suicidal statecraft,” went on to pronounce the intervention in Iraq (along with everything else this President has done) a total disaster, and ended by urging that we withdraw from that country “perhaps even as early as next year”—i.e., 2006. Unlike the late Senator Aiken of Vermont, who once proposed that we declare victory in Vietnam and then get out, Brzezinski wants to declare defeat in Iraq and then get out. This, he mysteriously assures us, will help restore “the legitimacy of America’s global role.”
Now I have to admit that I find it a little rich that George W. Bush should be accused of “suicidal statecraft” by, of all people, the man who in the late 1970’s helped shape a foreign policy that emboldened the Iranians to seize and hold American hostages while his boss in the Oval Office stood impotently by for over a year before finally authorizing a rescue operation so inept that it only compounded our national humiliation. And where was Brzezinski—famed at the time for his anti-Communism—when the President he served congratulated us on having overcome our “inordinate fear of Communism”? Where was Brzezinski—known far and wide for his hard-line determination to resist Soviet expansionism—when Cyrus Vance, the then Secretary of State, declared that the Soviet Union and the United States had “similar dreams and aspirations,” and when Carter himself complacently informed us that containment was no longer necessary? And how was it that, despite daily meetings with Brzezinski, Carter remained so blind to the nature of the Soviet regime that the invasion of Afghanistan, as he himself would admit, taught him more in a week about the nature of that regime than he had managed to learn in an entire lifetime? Had the cat gotten Brzezinski’s tongue in the three years leading up to that invasion—the same tongue he now wags with such confidence at George W. Bush?
~SNIP~ |
Read at: Commentary Magazine
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“I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. ‘Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.” (Thomas Paine, 1776) |
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GenrXr
Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy
Joined: 05 Aug 2004
Posts: 1720
Location: Houston
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| Posted: Sat Dec 10, 2005 5:03 am Post subject: |
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Great article Shawa and thanks for sharing it. I always keep an eye on the Neo-Cons because they are all former communists, yet John Podheretz is one of the few who has never written articles sympathetic to communism. He just happens to have the Neo-Con label because of past mentor/associations. Besides, seems these days anyone who cares about Israel's survival is labeled a Neo-Con by the communists within the Democratic party regardless of whether they had the delusional past and subsequent rejection. Just another stupid move made by the 'useful idiots' which will add to the destruction of the far left.
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"An activist is the person who cleans up the water, not the one claiming its dirty."
"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to stand by and do nothing." Edmund Burke (1729-1797), Founder of Conservative Philosophy |
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dusty
Admiral
Joined: 27 Aug 2004
Posts: 1264
Location: East Texas
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| Posted: Sat Dec 10, 2005 4:29 pm Post subject: |
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Yes....yes.....yes. Great article, well founded in fact and common sense that even 'Useful Idiots' should be able to understand. Except for their blindness caused by their irrational hatred for G.W.
Thanks from me too shawa for posting this one. It's going to make a lot of rounds on my e-mail list.
Dusty
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Doll
Commander
Joined: 04 Jul 2005
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Location: The Beltway
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Great article shawa! Thank you! 
