Peace Democrats
We've been chasing around this Bush before, haven't we? In a review of Jennifer Weber's Copperheads, the rise and fall of Lincoln's opponents in the north, American Thinker finds some similarities and differences to today's Democrats.
"There is a long history of comfort provided to the enemy by the "peace" advocates in their very public undermining of the war effort. Copperheads consistently worked against what they saw as Lincoln's war. "Confederate confidence soared while Northern partisans bickered." (p. 45), Ms. Weber tells us. Robert E. Lee regarded the Copperheads as allies. He told Jefferson Davis that the best way to weaken the enemy is to give all support "to the rising peace party of the North." (p. 99). One can easily imagine similar encouragement today that is given to the Islamists by our Neo-Copperheads by calls for deadlines, the "peace" rallies, the constantly negative press, and the fatuous recommendations of the Iraq Study Group.
Because history does not repeat itself in the way that Santayana suggests, there are interesting differences as well. For instance no where does this book mention any Copperheads who tried explicitly to redefine "patriotism" as citizens undermining their own elected government's foreign policy. None in the North seemed to have had the nerve to call advocacy of Southern victory "patriotism." It would take the twentieth century triumph of the Orwellian manipulation of language, and the victory of postmodernists in today's trendy colleges and universities to bring about this sort of degradation of language and meaning."
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8 comments:
Advocating peace or non-involvement does not equal advocating victory for the enemy. I don't recall any prominent Democrats or anti-war people who want al-Qaeda to win anything.
What is advocating for victory over an enemy that wasn't our enemy (the Iraqis)? Psychosis? Bloodlust?
Chuck, I'm proud of you if you are advocating defeat for America for any reason other than you hate Bush, but I think you're in a very small crowd.
If a policeman shoots someone by mistake, should he then run over and finish him off, on the theory that he would now want to kill the officer?
Second, I don't want us to lose. We already lost. Lost a long time ago. I don't want another teenager to die in the sand in some hole in the desert so we, comfortable and safe on the homefront, don't have to feel bad about it.
Norma, how do you go from someone advocating an end to the occupation of Iraq, to someone advocating 'defeat for America'? Why would you call it a 'defeat' for the USA to remove itself from strategic position that is
1. Damaging the millitary
2. Putting the US in debt to foreign powers
3. Killing about 100 of our soldiers, and untold thousands of Iraqi civilians, every month
4. Not acheiving its stated goals
5. Creating hatred for the US internationally?
Why would you call the end of such a policy a 'defeat' instead of 'a good idea'?
Aaron: to repeat the ignoble, mean, cowardly pull out we did to the Vietnamese where we left millions to be slaughtered would be not only a defeat, but a huge victory for Islamofascists. Why would you think the insurgents will just fold their tents and go home instead of continue their killing? We are not killing the civilians, they are. And they won't stop just because we turn tail and run (on a time table of course, giving them notice).
And how does your argument not support the book under discussion with the war protests giving encouragement to the other side? Focus. Focus. There is a topic here.
Actually, Norma, our forces are killing Iraqi civilians constantly. That is the nature of a modern counterinsurgency.
Even without that goad, our forces are the primary mover of the violence in Iraq, and they would be even if they stopped trying to influence conditions there. The insurgency is composed of Iraqis trying to get our millitary out of their country (as well as Sunnis trying to kill Shiites, and Shiites trying to kill Sunnis.) If we removed our forces, we would expect the violence to decrease. (As happened in Vietnam after the US millitary left.)
Aaron, you're just wrong. The violence didn't decrease when we fled Vietnam--only for us, not for them. Your mind is stuck in the 70s protest marches. And you want us to return to that terrible disgrace for a do-over. Sunnis and Shiites will continue to kill each other with the help of their Moselm neighbors.
Norma, apparently we view the situation in Iraq very differently. There may be very few points of agreement between us, so let me just say that as far as I am concerned, the #1 problem that is causing violence in Iraq is the US occupation. As evidence for this, look at Iraq before US forces occupied it, and contrast it to Iraq after US forces occupied it. The study done by the Lancet estimated that, since the US occupation started, 650,000 Iraqis have died who would not have died if the US had not invaded and occupied the country.
I don't doubt that, if US forces were to completely pull out now, and if there were not some kind of international police force in the country, the violence would increase for a time. However, a situation where US forces were no longer in the country would make the Iraqis turn against the 'Al Queda in Iraq' group of foreign fighters (the Moslem Neighbors you mention), who would quickly find support for their violent acts evaporating.
The civil war between Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds that has been started by our occupation is another matter- there is not much to do but let it go until someone wins. Certainly the current US policy of backing the Shiite Militias over the Sunnis is not going to bring peace.
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