"Defeat is always worse than any terrible policy that engenders it.
Defeat leads to even more terrible policies, and ever more defeatist
sentiment."
Pouncing on the exception that proves the rule, Simon writes:
Germany kills six million jews because of a racist dictatorship. Bad
policy
for sure but...etc.
_____
Consider the origin of Nazism in the defeat of Germany in WW1. That
defeat in WW1 led to the terrible policies of the Nazis, who were
hearkening back to an Aryan master race myth to assuage the despair
brought about by that defeat. Scapegoating Jews, gays, gypsies, communists
for the humiliation of that defeat decades after the fact.
Sure, victory in some insane fascist cause is not good, but that's not
what we have in the present case. We have a post-9/11 war started on
faulty intelligence and false bravado, which was then grossly mishandled,
creating humanitarian disaster, and encouraging al-Qaeda and other forces
to make that disaster worse, such as when they murdered the UN envoy in
Baghdad and drove the UN forces from the country.
Yet to argue as Mike does that defeat is really a victory ... is bull.
Defeat is defeat; there is nothing standing outside a culture, no Olympus
from where we can claim defeat is really a victory. Our defeat is our
defeat. To claim we are worse than the enemy is simply bad judgment grown
from a lifetime of alienation.
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