#rsrh “The Great Madness of 2004-10.”

Alternative title: Victor Davis Hanson puts the boot in.

(H/T: Instapundit) There’s a plethora of schadenfreude-rich goodness in this piece about what VDH calls the Great Madness, but this particular piece referring to the curious amnesia of the antiwar Left over how its own ostensible champions had embraced the liberation of Afghanistan/Iraq is probably most the… symptomatic.

I remember remarking to a former CSU colleague in those dark hours that the Congress had approved Iraq, with stirring speeches in support by Kerry, Reid, Clinton, and other liberal giants, that the public voiced a 75% approval when the 3-week war ended, and that Andrew Sullivan, as a tiny example, had mentioned Bush as Nobel laureate material and the need to use nukes against Saddam if he were behind the anthrax scare. Funny days, those, when Fareed Zakaria and Francis Fukuyama were writing serious, sober, and judicious briefs for preventative regime change in Iraq. The professor said to me, “That’s a lie. They all always opposed his amoral war and the Bush criminality.”

This is stupidity on the professor’s part, to be sure; it is also willful stupidity.  But most of all it’s a starkly necessary stupidity, at least for the originator of it; because the alternative is to accept the terrible reality that when it comes to foreign policy President Obama is just like Bush… only without Bush’s competency*, and without a basic empathy for the plight of the innocent people caught in the crossfire from President Obama’s ongoing military escapades.  Nobody likes admitting to themselves that they aren’t as good as they could be; so imagine how hard it must be for the antiwar Left to even contemplate the notion that they’re vile.  Actually, you don’t have to.  The antiwar Left demonstrates that frantic blindness every single day… and will do so for the rest of their lives, probably.

I’d say “To Hell with them,” except that I suspect that it’d be largely unnecessary.

Moe Lane

[*An alert reader in comments noted the orphan footnote, but I’m blessed if I remember what point I wanted to highlight here: that was one Texas Toast roast beef sandwich and a glass of excellent Belgian White beer ago, I’m debating the virtues of a summer Sunday nap, and it must not have been very important anyway.]