World War Two all over again
This Week with George Stephanopoulos interview with Dick Cheney.STEPHANOPOULOS: Paul Harvey this week said that Iraq had gone sour. And he made the observation that what he calls the mishandled war in Iraq has gone on almost as long as World War II right now.
Do you think if it hadn’t been mishandled, if there hadn’t been mistakes, more American troops would be home right now?
CHENEY: Well, George, I think the um … analogy to World War II is just not a valid analogy. It’s just a totally different set of circumstances.
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When does Dick Cheney and Bush Administration get to disown World War Two analogies and when does he get to embrace them? Just for the heck of it, I encountered one other piece of comedy. The Washington Times’s endorsement of Rick Santorum:
It is not every day that a politician chooses to use the closing days of a hotly contested, and exceedingly high-stakes, election to give voters bad news. Yet, in Pennsylvania, the incumbent senator, Rick Santorum, is courageously doing just that.
Specifically, Mr. Santorum is stumping across his state telling constituents about the most important issue with which the man they elect next week will have to contend: a world in which America’s people and vital interests are in grievous danger. With pages literally ripped from Winston Churchill’s memoir about the run-up to World War II, the senator, a Republican, is providing an unvarnished assessment of the “Gathering Storm” that threatens our generation — and those of our children and grandchildren — unless addressed in creative and effective ways.
I had a chance to witness first-hand the clarion call Rick Santorum is giving to the people of his state and the rest of this country as I introduced him to audiences in Pittsburgh, Johnstown and Erie last week. He spoke with passion and authority about the combination of enemies who are currently joining forces — despite differences of ideology no less dramatic than those of Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, Imperial Japan and Fascist Italy when they were allies during World War II — to advance a common goal of destroying America and other freedom-loving nations.
Notably, Mr. Santorum addressed squarely the danger posed by “Islamic fascists,” a term he does not shrink from using. He understands that it does not defame peaceable, tolerant Muslims. Rather, it distinguishes the latter from those who make up the virulent and violent totalitarian political movement that seeks to conquer and repress the Muslim and non-Muslim worlds alike.
[…] Â Like Churchill before him, Mr. Santorum is far more than a Cassandra warning of the dangers ahead. He is a man with a record of leadership and accomplishment who both recognizes such perils and works effectively to devise and adopt appropriate strategies for dealing with them.
For example, Rick Santorum has sought to apply the lessons of Ronald Reagan’s destruction of the Soviet Union to our current, global struggle with today’s totalitarians. In the Senate, he has led on energy self-reliance, military readiness, homeland security and political warfare. The senator has also been a prime mover behind legislation aimed at delegitimizing the odious Iranian and Syrian regimes and empowering domestic opposition aimed at bringing them down. Such an outcome represents the only realistic hope for preventing freedom’s defeat in Iraq and its imperiling elsewhere.
The commanding grasp shown by Mr. Santorum of the most important issues of our day stands in stark contrast to the haplessness of his opponent, Democratic State Treasurer Bob Casey, Jr., when it comes to the war. He has generally declined to debate the substance of the incumbent’s positions and judgments, offering — often incoherently — canned talking points and platitudes seemingly focus-group tested to obscure his lack of knowledge or gravitas.
In the past few days, Mr. Santorum has found a way of starkly demonstrating to Pennsylvania’s voters that Treasurer Casey is more than unprepared for the job he seeks in the U.S. Senate. He has also been missing-in-action when it comes to the role he could have been playing to support the war effort in his present job. […]
I will note that the link goes to a piece praising to the high heavens Curt Weldon — who is compared to Horatio. They change this link every week, I suppose, thus here’s the Rick Santorum piece. So we have Rick Santorum, the modern day Churchill, and Curt Weldon, the modern day Horatio, who work in tandem to… um… publish notes on starting a nuclear bomb in the ruse of having ametuer detectives search for weapons of mass destruction.