Anniversary

Today is the second anniversary of the beginning of the second Iraq war. I grieve anew for our losses, and give thanks for the liberation initiated or established "In my Name."

Today also marks two years of address-book culling. Not everyone with whom I disagreed became a former friend, but everyone lacking citations or syllogism did. Victor Davis Hanson's weekly NRO piece perfectly characterizes the latter sort:

The flood of the Hitler similes is also a sign of the extremism of the times. If there was an era when the extreme Right was more likely to slander a liberal as a communist than a leftist was to smear a conservative as a fascist, those days are long past. True, Bill Clinton brought the deductive haters out of the woodwork, but for all their cruel caricature, few compared him to a mass-murdering Mao or Stalin for his embrace of tax hikes and more government. “Slick Willie” was not quite “Adolf Hitler” or “Joseph Stalin.”

But something has gone terribly wrong with a mainstream Left that tolerates a climate where the next logical slur easily devolves into Hitlerian invective. The problem is not just the usual excesses of pundits and celebrities (e.g., Jonathan Chait’s embarrassing rant in the New Republic on why “I hate George W. Bush” or Garrison Keillor’s infantile slurs about Bush’s Republicans: “brown shirts in pinstripes”), but also supposedly responsible officials of the opposition such as former Sen. John Glenn, who said of the Bush agenda: “It’s the old Hitler business.”

Thus, if former Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore breezily castigates Bush’s Internet supporters as “digital brownshirts”; if current Democratic-party chairman Howard Dean says publicly, “I hate the Republicans and everything they stand for" — or, “This is a struggle of good and evil. And we're the good"; or if NAACP chairman Julian Bond screams of the Bush administration that “Their idea of equal rights is the American flag and the Confederate swastika flying side by side,” the bar of public dissent has so fallen that it is easy to descend a tad closer to the bottom to compare a horrific killer to an American president.

Is there a danger to all this? Plenty. The slander not only brings a president down to the level of an evil murderer, but — as worried Jewish leaders have pointed out — elevates the architect of genocide to the level of an American president. Do the ghosts of six million that were incinerated — or, for that matter, the tens of millions who were killed to promote or stop Hitler’s madness — count for so little that they can be so promiscuously induced when one wishes to object to stopping the filibuster of senatorial nominations or to ignore the objection of Europeans in removing the fascistic Saddam Hussein?

Doubtlessly some of my former friends are protesting today, endlessly braying as if a devotional -- a metaphor they would reject -- long-discredited tallies of civilian casualties. Group droning apparently blocks comprehension of the central distinction of our era--that our enemies deliberately target unarmed civilians while America spends billions and sacrifices soldiers to avoid such collateral casualties. Rather than repeating nonsense, the demonstrators should heed Glenn Reynolds' advice:

[A] proper way of marking the date would be with a mass apology to the Iraqi people, and to George W. Bush, for taking the wrong side at a crucial moment in history.

Sackcloth, ashes, and signs reading: WE WERE WRONG, SORRY WE TRIED TO BLOCK ARAB DEMOCRACY, and WRONG ABOUT AFGHANISTAN, WRONG ABOUT IRAQ -- DON'T LISTEN TO US NEXT TIME would be appropriate.

I'm not expecting that.

Nor am I expecting my address book to regain its former bulk.

I observed the occasion without sackcloth or sign, by watching "The Incredibles," just out on DVD. It's a great and entertaining film. But the movie's more profound than most cartoons. I suggest The Incredibles is a metaphor for the Bush Doctrine: The father-knows-best Mr. Incredible/Bob is a neo-con, ever convinced that America can do good in the world. His wife Helen/Elastigirl is a paleo-con: she craves the normalcy of isolationism. Yet--when her husband's in jeopardy--Helen becomes (reluctantly) convinced that offense is America's best defense. Once persuaded, Elastigirl warns her children that--unlike the cartoon evil on TV--these bad guys will give no quarter, even to the extent of killing children. The kids, thus, symbolize the (heretofore immature) American people forced by circumstances beyond their control to grow up, to recognize the threat of global terror and America's responsibility to be pro-active in the fight against evil. Even the movie bad guy fits in. He's a delusional, politically correct, United Nations; he wants everyone to be a "superpower" (the bomb or a UN veto) so that no one is. When the kids confront the bad guy, they're amazed at their "superpower" and thrilled, yet awed, by the "good" their efforts secure.

Historically, America has--not always; sometimes inconsistently--strived for the good. At present, our efforts seem to be working. I hope the left recognizes and repents, discerning our success in the GWOT and ending their infantile demonizing of President Bush. But, failing that, I hope they rent "The Incredibles."

More:

Which Incredibles character are you?

(via Clancy)