Victor Davis Hanson may very well be the most articulate spokesman for American exceptionalism. His new piece (see above link) is brilliant… and not for the usual reasons one might expect. I think it is fair to say that Hanson’s genius is due to nothing more than his imagination.
In this dream, I heard our ex-presidents add to this chorus of war-time solidarity. Jimmy Carter reminded Americans that radical Islam had started in earnest on his watch, out of an endemic hatred of all things Western. I imagined him explaining that America began being called the ‘Great Satan’ during the presidential tenure of a liberal pacifist, not a Texan conservative.
George Bush Sr. would in turn lecture the media that it was once as furious at him for not removing Saddam as it is now furious at his son for doing so; that it was once as critical of him for sending too many troops to the Middle East as it is now critical of his son for sending too few; that it was once as hostile to the dictates of his excessively large coalition as it is now disparaging of his son’s intolerably small alliance; that it was once as dismissive of his old concern about Iranian influence in Iraq as it is now aghast at his son’s naivete about Tehran’s interest in absorbing southern Iraq; and that it was once as repulsed by his own cynical realism as it is now repulsed by his son’s blinkered idealism.
wow… this guy knows how to write!