On the "bad news" argument, I was being necessarily cryptic. In a hurry. On the comparison with the Vietnam War, there are several differences between then and now.
1. The major one is the Vietnam War itself. A great deal of thinking on all sorts of sides is done in the shadow of what happened then. For instance, we already have an organized opposition; the language of protest carries more than a few echoes from then; the language of war ditto. We can only hope we don't repeat the Marx' dictum which I can't quite remember acurately about history repeating itself as farce when he was writing about the French civil wars of the 1850s.
2. Communication is almost instant now as compared to the Vietnam War period. It won't take anytime to go from some foulup in Iraq to on the street activity in this country; to TV stations being filled with it; etc.
Having said all that, I actually agree with some of what you said. If we get hit with another terrorist attack, it will most likely ratchet up Bush's support. There will be a bit of "I told you so" but, most likely, it will be drowned out by anger.
If, however, the invasion hits a few, which is highly likely, steps in which all does not go smoothly, it will cost them. Because a great deal of support in this country, it's my view, is predicated on a Grenada heavy version of an invasion, the one week and it's over crowd. That won't happen; or is at least extremely unlikely to happen.
Whoops, can't finish this post right now. Got a dentist appt and I'm going to be late. Will be back this afternoon. |
