Our latest “hearts and minds” Napoleon

Diana West’s column this week, entitled “Forget winning ‘hearts and minds’—win the war” begins by quoting Gen. David Petraeus: “This fight depends on securing the population, which must understand that we—not our enemies—occupy the moral high ground.” To which West replies: “Oh, they must, must they?” I wrote to West:

I particularly liked this column because it sends up another PC notion that you didn’t mention: that Petraeus is finally the guy with the “right stuff.” For months, one pro-Bush columnist after another would tell us with great assurance, “The new commander in Iraq, Petraeus, is finally the guy with the right stuff, yeah, he’s the one, he’s serious, he knows what to do, blah blah.” Yet they never gave any back-up for this.

And as you show in your column Petraeus just continues the four year old tradition of our military leaders in Iraq feeding us some fantastical line of B.S., illogical in itself, and disconnected from external reality.

Among the many ruinous consequences of Bush’s policy is the destruction of honesty and honor in our military leaders as they become PR shills for this incoherent Iraq involvement.

Randall Parker writes:

Diana West really gets it. Why is her quality of thinking so rare on the Right?

The biggest thing now at stake in Iraq: the popular interpretation of why the Iraqis refuse to behave in ways scripted for them by Bush and the neocons. More generally: what is human nature?

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 19, 2007 01:03 PM | Send