[Dean's World] Dave Price: Commitment And Resolution

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Posted by Dave Price:
Commitment And Resolution
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1198297455.shtml


   [1]Frederick Kagan notes the historic moment we face in the progress
   of liberal democracy:

     This is an epochal moment: The U.S. has a chance to break away from
     failed policies of the past and throw itself behind two new
     constitutional democracies that occupy critical geostrategic
     positions in the most dangerous part of the world. Will we seize
     this moment or let it pass

   And [2]Victor Hanson destroys the notion of the "perfect war" that so
   many war critics seem to argue from, making the oft-forgotten point
   that success is generally earned by learning and adapting from
   mistakes rather than committing none, and that "victory" is often in
   the eye of the beholder.

     At the geostrategic level, American diplomats have had to make
     devil's bargains far more morally suspect than going into Iraq.
     General George Patton and others lamented that World War II had
     broken out over saving the free peoples of Eastern Europeâonly to
     end with the Yalta accords ensuring their enslavement by an
     erstwhile American ally whose military we had supplied lavishly.

   World War Two is generally portrayed, rather hagiographically, as an
   unqualified triumph, and my history books in school seemed to imply
   that tensions spontaneously arose out of thin air right after Germany
   fell; the cause is almost invariably assigned to "mistrust" or
   "suspicion," as though one side were not guilty of perpetrating
   horrors as awful in scope and cruelty as Auschwitz and Dachau. And the
   fact we failed to achieve the initial Allied war aim (the restoration
   of Polish sovereignty) and propped up an ally as bad as the Nazis
   seems... de-emphasized.

References

   1. http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110011020
   2. http://claremont.org/publications/crb/id.1500/article_detail.asp