That night crossing, immortalized in paintings of Washington's standing in the boat as Marblehead Fishermen rowed him across the ice-strewn river, led to an amazing victory on Christmas Day. That victory led to a surge in American morale and a doubling in the size of the American forces under Washington within two weeks. And that gave Washington the strength to win a second surprise victory at Princeton.
In two weeks, Washington had gone from defeated, hopeless bungler to victorious American hero and personification of the American Cause.
Imagine there had been a Baker-Hamilton Commission -- the group charged with assessing our options in Iraq -- advising Washington that cold Christmas Eve. What "practical, realistic" advice would they have given him?
"Angels and Ministers of Grace, defend us!", as Hamlet would say. Newt Gingrich is a plague upon the living. The rest of his "article" is a pathetic exercise in strawman logic devoid of any real value other than to indicate Newt's intention to blame everyone but himself and his fellow travelers for the horrible mess in Iraq. It really is a primer in the Green Lantern theory of foreign policy. I particularly liked this little gem:
Winning is key. We are in a power struggle on a worldwide basis with dictators who want to defeat us (Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea) and with fanatic organizations that want to kill us (al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, etc). In a struggle like this, the goal has to be to win. Anything less than victory is very dangerous, because it allows our enemies to gather more capabilities and prepare for more dangerous campaigns. Time is not on our side. Time is on the side of those seeking nuclear and biological weapons to use against the civilized world.
Winning is good. Losing is bad. Diareha is storm raging inside you. Just Do it. Does even Newt know what the hell he is talking about? More dangerous campaigns? Ummm..Great idea Newt, a half trillion down the crapper is just the opening salvo in our war against the whatevers. Lets invade Hezbollahland and send Patton over to Hamasville to save Christmas. We'll send the Cuban exiles back over to finally have it out with the dying Castro. And we'll just dryhump Venezuela because we just don't like the cut of Chavez's jib.
See you in 2008 Newt. You know he is going to run, correct? He most certainly is, and probably on a platform of that will sound alot like the dreck he produced in this article. He and John McCain are going to duke it out for most dreadfully insane militarist freak.
I cannot wait!
No comments:
Post a Comment