Thank you to Scott Johnson at Power Line, Jonah Goldberg at The Corner, Anne Lieberman at Boker tov, Boulder! (here and here), Marc Shulman at American Future, Thomas Stern at T F Stern’s Rantings, and many others for linking to yesterday’s post on “Bush and Churchill’s Mid-War Speeches.”
Thanks also to (almost all of) those who commented on the post, and left comments at Jonah’s subsequent post at The Corner. In light of the stimulating comments, I wanted to clarify a few points:
First, the post was not intended as a comparison of World War II to the Iraq War (although many of the comments made interesting connections). But if we are in what Norman Podhoretz has called World War IV, decisive action was needed of the kind Churchill advocated during the thirties, rather than reliance on porous U.N. sanctions, multiple UN resolutions that were not going to be enforced, or inspections that would last only as long as U.S. troops were massed — particularly since World War II was caused (in Churchill’s words) by the “carelessness and good nature” of the West that “allowed the wicked to rearm.”
Second, the post was not intended as a comparison of Bush to Churchill. Let’s stipulate that no one compares to Churchill. Still, it is worth remembering that Churchill in 1942 was not yet the historical “Winston Churchill” we all now venerate. On the contrary, the real “Winston Churchill” was voted out of office in 1945.
Third, the post was not intended as a comparison of the rhetoric of Bush and Churchill. We can agree that Churchill, who received the Nobel Prize for Literature, was unique. Still, one day Bush’s war speeches — from the address to Congress immediately after 9/11, to the speech at the National Cathedral, to the address at the Air Force Academy, to the Second Inaugural, to Wednesday’s speech to the Naval Academy — are going to require a large addition to William Safire’s book of great speeches in history. (And it doesn’t matter who wrote them; a president is judged by the words he deems fit to utter, not by who wrote them).
The point of the post was actually more limited: to recall that, back when history was occurring in real time, Churchill faced the same issues that currently confront Bush — unanticipated military setbacks, the inevitable mistakes of war, significant domestic political opposition, and an openly hostile press — and that history takes a longer view.
We know history’s ultimate verdict on Churchill. We don’t know the verdict on Bush, since we are still in real time. But he is on the right track, having learned the right lessons from history, and is underappreciated in the same way Churchill was in 1942.