Truth is i say few but what i come up with for iraq always appears to be in the area of wishful thinking.
Americans in general indulge in a lot of wishful thinking. At least in the 20th century. We are the heirs to a great deal of hard work, ingenuity and crimes aimed for the most part at wealth getting and/or a brand of ornery independence (e.g., Lincoln's father, who moved every time he could see the smoke from his neighbor's chimney). Yes, there was sometimes more to it than that and often enough it was the two of them together (e.g., Mark Twain was the "good" model here; there were plenty of vulgar ones). At any rate, we who are a couple of generations removed from a lot of that, and who benefited from the incredible wealth generated post WWII as we reaped the benefits of being the Last Country Standing that would rebuild the shattered world--is it any wonder that we are prone to wishful thinking and believe a solution can be found for every problem? I say No, it isn't, it would be a wonder if we weren't prone to wishful thinking.
Not that that helps much. I saw some years ago a video of Robert Frost as an old man. This was in the late 50s, early 60s sometime, when he was poet laureate I think. At any rate he was asked about the prospects for the US, and he answered something like, well, the young generation has no idea of what we went through in the late 19th and first part of the 20th centuries (he went through both the depression of the 1890s and the 1930s, not to mention two terrible wars), and you don't wish that on them. But they have a bit of a rosey view of life as a result. And while you want want your children to suffer, suffering is the great teacher of mankind, and we do want our children to be wise in the ways of the world. I don't know what you do about that. |
