Posted by
KsReaganite on Wednesday, January 10, 2007 10:06:43 PM
Nothing the President said tonight ,or for that matter the response of the liberal opposition, was a surprise given the fact that all the key elements of each sides' perspective has been leaked to the press at least a week ago. I hope, pray, and desire that the President's plan succeeds. It must if we are to save face in a world where impressions count at least as much as, if not more than, reality.
I am also afraid, however, that our society has largely lost the will to fight prolonged wars..whether in Iraq or anywhere else. From that angle, maybe it is better to fold and pull out to save American lives and assuage popular discontent with a war that is keeping tens of thousands away from their families. Perhaps the President would have been wiser to realize that he presides over a nation that, unlike the one presided over by the country's first Republican president, is made up of people many of whose length of commitment for any sturdy endeavor lasts until things become dicey. Technology can do only so much to overcome a commitment gap between us and the enemy.
It is anecdotal but certainly reflects the spirit of a different time to relate the story of Abraham Lincoln's Secretary of War Stanton who had sent a letter of condolence to a woman who had lost three boys in the ongoing Civil War. Her response, rather unlike that of CIndy Sheehan, went 'thank you for writing Mr. Secretary and sharing the grief that only a parent can know. But rest assured that had the Good Lord blessed me with two more boys, I would have gladly broken my heart and offered them too on the altar of thie Union ".