Wednesday, September 5, 2007

Wars do not work like your i-Pod.

In his Private Papers, Victor Davis Hanson sets an "angry reader" (i.e., moonbat) straight on how things work in real wars in the real world:


Unfortunately you know nothing of history and so like most on the Left think that your age, your circumstances, your views are always unique and transcend some 231 years of our America past. Do you know anything about the winter of 1776? Or the summer of 1864, or Spring 1917? Or the Pacific in 1944, or the Bulge, or November 1950? There an "incompetent group of people" did not manage a war that lost 3,000, but almost 100,000 dead and wounded alone in 2 months in the Ardennes, or 50,000 casualties in 6 weeks on Okinawa.

We can imagine your sarcastic letters after the hedgerows, or the 1942 B-17 attacks, or Tarawa, or Choisun, but fortunately until this generation yours was always a minority view. Unfortunately wars do not work like your i-Pod.


Sadly, that comes as a cold shock to a large majority of Americans. This society has had it so easy for so long that we are seemingly unable to stomach even the least sacrifice.

Americans like music and video on demand. They can walk into a Starbucks and get a double cream somethin' somethin' in a snap. They like microwave popcorn, instant replay... And Democracies built in a day.

Americans are impatient with the operation in Iraq, because Americans have been conditioned that patience is something they do not need. The "I want it, and I want it now" mentality makes easy prey for the anti-war left, who exploit impatience with the constant drumbeat of defeatist, anti-American rhetoric.

If Americans could demonstrate the patience and fortitude it took to persevere through historical conflicts, we could certainly see this one through.