Tuesday, May 25, 2004
History's Mysteries--GOP style
Josh Marshall just posted a fine response to Mitch McConnell's silly (read desperate) historical analogy in which he mused about how well the Iraq adventure is going in light of our own nation's early development.
Marshall noted that:
"No analogies are perfect, certainly. But if there is anything from the late eighteenth century comparable to the current situation in Iraq it is not the American Revolution but the French Revolution, with legitimacy and the sinews of society in a losing battle with a widening gyre of violence."
Not to be outdone in bad references to history by his fellow GOP traveller, Chris Shays claimed that:
""President Bush is like Lincoln before Gettysburg," said Rep. Christopher Shays, R-4th District."
The article went on to fill out Shays analogy, noting:
"Lincoln was convinced that his cause was just, but seemed to be teetering. Gettysburg became a turning point in the Civil War, and 17 months after the historic battle, Lincoln - running against George B. McClellan, the general he had fired in 1863 - won re-election easily."
Let's recap: Lincoln had a war forced on him by a group of states that forcibly removed themselves from our own nation, and even then he didn't pursue a military option until months after the fact when Confederate troops blockaded and then attacked a Federal army installation in South Carolina. His failure would have effectively ended our nation's federal republican experiment less than one hundred years into it.
George Bush pursued a war of choice with a tin-horn dictator who was nothing more than a minor irritant to anyone in our country except for the handful of radicals who controlled Bush's foreign and military policy. He leaned heavily on what was known to be dubious intelligence to scare Americans, traumatized by the horrors of 9-11, that Saddam was involved in that heinous act (false) and that he had the means to imminently harm our allies and our own nation (also false). His closest, most senior advisors promised him, and us, that we would be greeted with flowers and candy as liberators.
Instead he's put many brave Americans into harms way and has mortally wounded our nation's once vaunted credibility with his arrogance, bad choices and worse policy execution.
Analogize that, Chris.
Josh Marshall just posted a fine response to Mitch McConnell's silly (read desperate) historical analogy in which he mused about how well the Iraq adventure is going in light of our own nation's early development.
Marshall noted that:
"No analogies are perfect, certainly. But if there is anything from the late eighteenth century comparable to the current situation in Iraq it is not the American Revolution but the French Revolution, with legitimacy and the sinews of society in a losing battle with a widening gyre of violence."
Not to be outdone in bad references to history by his fellow GOP traveller, Chris Shays claimed that:
""President Bush is like Lincoln before Gettysburg," said Rep. Christopher Shays, R-4th District."
The article went on to fill out Shays analogy, noting:
"Lincoln was convinced that his cause was just, but seemed to be teetering. Gettysburg became a turning point in the Civil War, and 17 months after the historic battle, Lincoln - running against George B. McClellan, the general he had fired in 1863 - won re-election easily."
Let's recap: Lincoln had a war forced on him by a group of states that forcibly removed themselves from our own nation, and even then he didn't pursue a military option until months after the fact when Confederate troops blockaded and then attacked a Federal army installation in South Carolina. His failure would have effectively ended our nation's federal republican experiment less than one hundred years into it.
George Bush pursued a war of choice with a tin-horn dictator who was nothing more than a minor irritant to anyone in our country except for the handful of radicals who controlled Bush's foreign and military policy. He leaned heavily on what was known to be dubious intelligence to scare Americans, traumatized by the horrors of 9-11, that Saddam was involved in that heinous act (false) and that he had the means to imminently harm our allies and our own nation (also false). His closest, most senior advisors promised him, and us, that we would be greeted with flowers and candy as liberators.
Instead he's put many brave Americans into harms way and has mortally wounded our nation's once vaunted credibility with his arrogance, bad choices and worse policy execution.
Analogize that, Chris.
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