The meme seems to be spreading. A few days ago it was Glenn Greenwald leading the charge, and today Hilzoy takes up the banner.
They are both right. It is as if we have forgotten our own history. We have survived far, far worse threats than this, keeping our civil rights and liberties in tact along the way. Although the threat before us today is of a new kind, it is not of a new magnitude. In fact when compared to the threat of mutually assured destruction, it pales in comparison. This is something many Americans seem to have forgotten, and in its remembrance there are very powerful lessons to be learned.
This entire discussion is, I think, reason for profound hope. In many ways I feel like it is the first stirrings of a nation that is coming back to its senses. It will not happen overnight, and in fact isn't likely to happen so long as the current occupant at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave has the keys to our House, but it will eventually happen. It is not a history written in our textbooks that we are remembering; it is a history that almost all of us lived through and shared.
Spread the meme. Reframe the debate. Remember the Cold War.
UPDATE: I just can't help republishing the excerpt of Bush's speech highlighted by Hilzoy. It's just astonishing in its ignorance
| Bush: "You know, a lot of us grew up thinking that oceans would protect us; that if there was a threat overseas, it really didn't concern us because we were safe. That's what history had basically told us -- yes, there was an attack on Pearl Harbor, obviously, but it was a kind of hit-and-run and then we pursued the enemy. A lot of folks -- at least, my age, when I was going to college, I never dreamed that the United States of America could be attacked. And in that we got attacked, I vowed then, like I'm vowing to you today, that I understand my most important priority. My most important job is to protect the security of the American people." |
For the record, I was born in 1971. I remember as a child looking up in the sky and wondering if one day missile from a far off land would come raining down on my head. Granted, I grew up in Washington DC in a family thoroughly soaked in the ways of Washington, but so too did Bush. To him, my soaking must have looked like nothing more than a drop of rain. So...
Did he really grow up with no knowledge whatsoever of the threat posed by the USSR? His father was an Ambassador to the UN, Director of the CIA, and eventually Vice President and then President of the United States. What's more, papa Bush quite literally presided over the end of the Cold War itself. Even that didn't cause Jr. to sit up and take notice?
And what about his choice of major - history - as an undergraduate at Yale? Not once in his academic career did he come across the idea of the Cold War? In not a single class did they discuss current events?
And if not at Yale, what of his time in the Texas Air National Guard? No mention of who he might be training to fight? No thoughts about why the state of Texas might need air defenses in the first place?
"A lot of folks -- at least, my age, when I was going to college, I never dreamed that the United States of America could be attacked."
This is quite literally not my America. It is not our America. It is time we take our country back.
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» NO NO, REALLY... ONE MORE THOUGHT from Good People Better Rise Up!
Another point I overlooked... A few days back I highlighted Bush's apparent lack of knowledge about the existence of the Cold War. What didn't hit me until just now is how doubly odd his words sound in light of this whole portgate fiasco. As a reminder... [Read More]
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Blogging 101: When you think of it, write it. Otherwise someone else will write it for you. While I was out at work today, Matthew Yglesias was apparently reading my mind. Or something. Ah, the "lessons of history." Reader C.B. reminds me that "One of ... [Read More]
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