-Caveat Lector-
Begin forwarded message:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: January 14, 2007 2:12:52 AM PST
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: A Long Time Coming and Probably Too Late
Saturday, January 13, 2007
Rod Dreher: "Hadn't the hippies tried to tell us this"?
http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2007/01/rod-dreher-hadnt-hippies-
tried-to-tell.html
Rod Dreher is as conservative as it gets -- a contributor to
National Review and the Corner, a current columnist for The Dallas
Morning News, a self-described "practicing Christian and political
conservative."
Today, Dreher has an extraordinary (oral) essay at NPR in which he
recounts how the conduct of President Bush (for whom he voted
twice) in the Iraq War (which he supported) is causing him to
question, really to abandon, the core political beliefs he has held
since childhood.
Dreher, 40, recounts that his "first real political memory" was the
1979 failed rescue effort of the U.S. hostages in Iran. He says he
"hated" Jimmy Carter for "shaming America before our enemies with
weakness and incompetence." When Reagan was elected, he believed
"America was saved." Reagan was "strong and confident." Democrats
were "weak and depressed."
In particular, Dreher recounts how much, during the 1980s, he
"disliked hippies - the blame America first liberals who were so
hung up on Vietnam, who surrendered to Communists back then just
like they want to do now." In short, Republicans were "winners."
Democrats were "defeatists."
On 9/11, Dreher's first thought was : "Thank God we have a
Republican in the White House." The rest of his essay:
As President Bush marched the country to war with Iraq, even some
voices on the Right warned that this was a fool's errand. I
dismissed them angrily. I thought them unpatriotic.
But almost four years later, I see that I was the fool.
In Iraq, this Republican President for whom I voted twice has
shamed our country with weakness and incompetence, and the
consequences of his failure will be far, far worse than anything
Carter did.
The fraud, the mendacity, the utter haplessness of our government's
conduct of the Iraq war have been shattering to me.
It wasn't supposed to turn out like this. Not under a Republican
President.
I turn 40 next month -- middle aged at last -- a time of
discovering limits, finitude. I expected that. But what I did not
expect was to see the limits of finitude of American power revealed
so painfully.
I did not expect Vietnam.
As I sat in my office last night watching President Bush deliver
his big speech, I seethed over the waste, the folly, the stupidity
of this war.
I had a heretical thought for a conservative - that I have got to
teach my kids that they must never, ever take Presidents and
Generals at their word - that their government will send them to
kill and die for noble-sounding rot - that they have to question
authority.
On the walk to the parking garage, it hit me. Hadn't the hippies
tried to tell my generation that? Why had we scorned them so blithely?
Will my children, too small now to understand Iraq, take me
seriously when I tell them one day what powerful men, whom their
father once believed in, did to this country? Heavy thoughts for
someone who is still a conservative despite it all. It was a long
drive home.
Dreher's essay is extreme and intense but also increasingly
commonplace and illustrative. The disaster of unparalleled
magnitude that President Bush and his integrity-free and
bloodthirsty administration and followers wrought on this country
will have a profound impact not only on American strength and
credibility for a long, long time to come, but also on the views of
Americans towards their political leaders and, almost certainly,
towards the Republican Party.
One of the very few potential benefits of the Iraq tragedy is that
it may raise the level of doubt and cynicism with which Americans
evaluate the claims of the Government when it tries -- as Dreher
put it -- "to send them to kill and die for noble-sounding rot."
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