Pendragon_6
09-14-2006, 07:17 AM
By R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.
Published 9/14/2006
WASHINGTON -- Our liberal friends are in a fury of indignation once again! This cannot be good for their health. A couple weeks back the source of their anger was the Administration's repeated references to the 1930s, which is apparently a very sore spot with them. Now they are again indignados, owing to our suave president's mention of Iraq during a speech commemorating the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
Presumably, we could prevent these unseemly eruptions if the Republicans would clear their speeches with Dr. Howard Dean. Of course, if the volcanic doctor had to vet all of them he might suffer some sort of seizure, though how would anyone know? He seems to be in extremis much of the time.
The war in Iraq has obviously gotten to the Democrats. A few decades back the war in Vietnam got to them too, but in the war's early years it was a minority of Democrats who opposed the war. Only after the hellish Richard Nixon became president did defeatism spread more widely among what had once been called Cold War liberals. Yet at least in the Vietnam War the anti-war liberals could point to a plausible exit strategy, to wit, negotiations.
The North Vietnamese Communists had the sense to present themselves as ready to negotiate and with a dulcet offer to the Americans, "peace and freedom and democracy in a united Vietnam" -- ha, ha, ha. Today there is no one plausible to negotiate with in Iraq or in Afghanistan, and there is nothing even meretriciously attractive to negotiate about -- though Nancy Pelosi adorned in a burkha has its appeal, as does fat Senator Teddy Kennedy denied his firewater.
In Full
AMERICAN SPECTATOR (http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=10355)
Published 9/14/2006
WASHINGTON -- Our liberal friends are in a fury of indignation once again! This cannot be good for their health. A couple weeks back the source of their anger was the Administration's repeated references to the 1930s, which is apparently a very sore spot with them. Now they are again indignados, owing to our suave president's mention of Iraq during a speech commemorating the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
Presumably, we could prevent these unseemly eruptions if the Republicans would clear their speeches with Dr. Howard Dean. Of course, if the volcanic doctor had to vet all of them he might suffer some sort of seizure, though how would anyone know? He seems to be in extremis much of the time.
The war in Iraq has obviously gotten to the Democrats. A few decades back the war in Vietnam got to them too, but in the war's early years it was a minority of Democrats who opposed the war. Only after the hellish Richard Nixon became president did defeatism spread more widely among what had once been called Cold War liberals. Yet at least in the Vietnam War the anti-war liberals could point to a plausible exit strategy, to wit, negotiations.
The North Vietnamese Communists had the sense to present themselves as ready to negotiate and with a dulcet offer to the Americans, "peace and freedom and democracy in a united Vietnam" -- ha, ha, ha. Today there is no one plausible to negotiate with in Iraq or in Afghanistan, and there is nothing even meretriciously attractive to negotiate about -- though Nancy Pelosi adorned in a burkha has its appeal, as does fat Senator Teddy Kennedy denied his firewater.
In Full
AMERICAN SPECTATOR (http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=10355)