On the "Charlie Rose Show" this month, former Army vice chief of staff Gen. Jack Keane, who supports the counterinsurgency plan being undertaken by Gen. David Petraeus, said in exasperation: "My God, this is the United States. We are the world's No. 1 superpower. This isn't about arrogance. This is about capability and applying ourselves to a problem that is at its essence a human problem."
It's much like what Tony Blankley said before Christmas that tickled me.
Official Washington, the media and much of the public have fallen under the unconscionable thrall of defeatism. Which is to say that they cannot conceive of a set of policies -- for a nation of 300 million with an annual GDP of more than $12 trillion dollars and all the skills and technologies known to man -- to subdue the city of Baghdad and environs. Do you think Gen. Patton or Abe Lincoln or Winston Churchill or Joseph Stalin would have thrown their hands up and say "I give up, there's nothing we can do?"Do the American people realize that the total size of the US Armed Forces is greater than the entire population of Iraq? This is not differences in strategy we are talking about here, it's lack of manliness --which is precisely the quality in Bush that so irks our politicos and pundits who agonize over his "mistakes." Here's what TR (I'm reading him today) said about mistakes:
We shall make mistakes; and if we let these mistakes frighten us from our work we shall show ourselves weaklings.
Not to mention (thinking about Abu Ghraib, Haditha, etc.):
as human instruments are imperfect, this means that at times there will be injustice; that at times merchant or soldier, or even missionary, may be wrong. Let us instantly condemn and rectify such wrong when it occurs, and if possible punish the wrong-doer. But shame, thrice shame on us, if we are so foolish as to make such occasional wrong-doing an excuse for failing to perform a great and righteous task.
Our good buddy Australia is worried about us, says Henninger:
Our slide to a national nervous breakdown because of Iraq is not going unnoticed. Australia's foreign minister, Alexander Downer, has been visiting across the U.S. this week. "I've been pretty worried about what I've heard," Mr. Downer said in an interview. Walking on Santa Monica beach Sunday before last, Mr. Downer said he encountered a display of crosses in the sand, representing the American dead in Iraq.
"What concerns me about this," he said, "is that it's sort of an isolationist sentiment, subconsciously, not consciously, and that would be an enormous problem for the world. I hope the American people understand the importance of not retreating and thinking the world's problems aren't theirs."
Which might be a polite way of telling the Congress to grow a pair as is said in rougher circles than the ones in which I travel (why, I don't even know what it means!). What I fear is that's exactly what we think. You know, because we're all so "stressed out" and "overwhelmed" by the bloody ordinary tasks of everyday life that generations of our forebears who worked infinitely harder and rougher than we do have managed to shoulder manfully and cheerfully for generations.
Such a people will not long be free.My, reading TR all day and seeing his constant concern for character, I guess I worked myself into the state of high dudgeon bloggers are alleged to be in permanently. I'm going to go to my weekly prayer meeting. A little time with Jesus in the Gospels will restore my sense of restraint, my hope for the future and my high opinion of the American people.
