Lighten up Francis. It's just a plane, nothing to get sanctimonious about.
It is more than a plane; it would be like saying your mother is just another person. For one who is luck enough to fly the B-17, and experience history first hand, to see vets who flew it in WWII come on board and relive their experiences, to see their eyes glass over as they remember those who did not make it, it is more than an airplane. It is monument to personal sacrifice, over coming great odds and it needs to be remembered so those who put worth this tremendous effort are not forgotten.
A. I registered this name after he was "elected", not after his term was over.
From 2005, only history will judge Bush II
Victor Davis Hanson is a Senior Fellow at the Stanford University.
December 02, 2005
A Moral War
The project in Iraq can succeed, and leave its critics scrambling.
by Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online
Almost everything that is now written about Iraq rings not quite right: It was a “blunder”; there should have been far more troops there; the country must be trisected; we must abide by a timetable and leave regardless of events on the ground; Iraq will soon devolve into either an Islamic republic or another dictatorship; the U.S. military is enervated and nearly ruined; and so on.
In fact, precisely because we have killed thousands of terrorists, trained an army, and ensured a political process, it is possible to do what was intended from the very beginning: lessen the footprint of American troops in the heart of the ancient caliphate.
Save for a few courageous Democrats, like Senator Joe Lieberman, who look at things empirically rather than ideologically, and some stalwart Republicans, most politicians and public intellectuals have long bailed on the enterprise.
Europe is quiet now. Madrid, London, Paris, and Amsterdam have taught Europeans that it is not George Bush but Islamic fascism that threatens their very existence. Worse still, they rightly fear they have lost the good will of the United States that so generously subsidized their defense - an entitlement perhaps to be sneered at during the post-Cold War “end of history,” but not in a new global war against Islamic terrorists keen to acquire deadly weapons.
The Left now risks losing its self-proclaimed moral appeal. It had trashed the efforts in Iraq for months on end, demanded a withdrawal - only recently to learn from polls that an unhappy public may also be unhappy with it for advocating fleeing while American soldiers are in harm’s way. Another successful election, polls showing Iraqis overwhelmingly wishing us to stay on, visits by elected Iraqi officials asking continued help, and a decreasing American footprint will gradually erode the appeal of the antiwar protests - especially as triangulating public intellectuals and pundits begin to quiet down, fathoming that the United States may win after all.
George Bush may well go down in history as a less-effective leader than his father or Bill Clinton;
but unlike either, he may also have a real chance to be remembered in that select class of rare presidents whom history records as having saved this country at a time of national peril and in the face of unprecedented criticism. Bush’s domestic agenda hinges on Iraq: If he withdraws now, his proposals on taxes, social security, deficit reduction, education, and immigration are dead. If he sees the Iraq project through, these now-iffy initiatives will piggyback on the groundswell of popular thanks he will receive for reforming the Middle East.
Strangely, I doubt whether very many would agree with much of anything stated above - at least for now. But if the administration can emphasize the moral nature of this war, and the military can continue its underappreciated, but mostly successful efforts to defeat the enemy and give the Iraqis a few more months of breathing space, who knows what the current opportunists and pessimists will say by summer.Will they say that they in fact were always sorta, kinda, really for removing Saddam and even staying on to see democracy work in Iraq?
©2005 Victor Davis Hanson
