National Review's Michael Ledeen takes us on a trip in the Wayback Machine, but unlike the journeys of Peabody and his boy Sherman, Ledeen notices that we arrive back in the present:

Certainly there is lots of bad news, most of which confirms what we already knew: The Western world hates Israel; the taboo on anti-Semitism is off; the Western world has been P.C.’ed to the edge of death; there is no stomach for fighting the war against Islamic fascism.

Sounds like the Thirties to me. ...

Then, too, the mounting power of what became the Axis was ignored. As my father often reminded me, a few months before Pearl Harbor, at a time when Nazi armies were long since on the march, the draft passed by a single vote. Apologists for Hitler and Mussolini were legion, and some of our leading intellectuals were saying that American democratic capitalism was a failure, and we would do well to emulate the European totalitarians.

So I don’t see this moment as something unique, the result of some inner rot, or a moment on a greased skid leading to the abyss. It’s one of the many things we are. But we are many things, and we are not like the Europeans, many of whom are reviving their anti-Semitic fantasies in an effort to cope with their weakness and irrelevance.

We seem to have the same problem that afflicted Europe in the Thirties, as Ledeen notes. We don't have the will to conduct war when it can be won relatively cheaply, and so we will dither until it becomes obscenely expensive. One reason for re-opening the Gulf War in 2003 was to ensure that people understood that we would not sit idly by while a nation flaunted its violation of both a cease-fire agreement and sixteen UNSC resolutions. We dithered on Iraq for twelve years while ignoring an almost-continuous series of acts of war.

Unfortunately, that effort took what little tenacity the West had to offer. Now, when a universally acknowledged terrorist organization commits an obvious act of war, the West demands that the victim stop fighting back. Instead of uniting to face down the terrorist enablers in Teheran and Damascus, we have the spectacle of the French government calling Iran a "stabilizing force" for the region. They may be right -- but what kind of stabilization does France and the rest of Europe want? Apparently the same kind that Hitler provided and Vichy administered.

When we entered the war on terror, we knew where the loci of state support existed: Damascus, Teheran, Baghdad, and Kabul. We have managed to do something about the latter two, but we seem curiously unwilling to finish the job. We do not need to declare war on Syria and Iran to beat them, and in Iran's case at least, war would definitely be detrimental to the cause. However, we need to work fast and hard to topple the terrorist-sponsoring regimes, not coddle and reward them by having them dictate the peace in the Middle East. We know what their idea of peace means -- so why do we endorse it?

Let's try winning this war. As Ledeen always says .... faster, please.

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry is

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Unhappy Days Are Here Again:

» People who don't learn history, are bound to repeat it. Lessons from wars past could shed light on the current conflagration. from alfred101
[Read More]

Tracked on August 1, 2006 2:03 PM

» Time for a Rethink of the War Metaphor from ProfessorBainbridge.com
Hewitt: Democrats regain power in either House, they will oblige the country to retreat across a broad front in the war with Islamic jihadism.... He goes on to praise Bush for stating that: I know it's a war and I [Read More]

Tracked on August 1, 2006 7:04 PM

» Time for a Rethink of the War Metaphor from ProfessorBainbridge.com
Hewitt: Democrats regain power in either House, they will oblige the country to retreat across a broad front in the war with Islamic jihadism.... He goes on to praise Bush for stating that: I know it's a war and I [Read More]

Tracked on August 1, 2006 7:07 PM

» Has the world turned upside down? from Right Truth
Has the world lost it's mind? Has everything turned upside down? The innocent are now the guilty. The attacked are now called the aggressors. The peace-loving countries are called killers, while killers are called victims? The French praise the Iranians? [Read More]

Tracked on August 1, 2006 7:52 PM