“The polls showed Aznar’s party ahead before the election, and the Socialists won. What changed? The Madrid bombings.”

The Socialists might have won anyway, though probably by a smaller margin. The Socialists were gaining prior to the bombings. A poll conducted the day before the bombings showed the Socialists two points ahead. In short, the election was too close to call.

“The government tried to pin the blame on the ETA because they were afraid the voters would vote socialist if the terrorists were islamic.”

Agreed, or at least, Aznar’s People’s Party has been convicted of this in the court of Spanish public opinion.

“The government was right about that.”

For all I know, the People’s Party might have won if it had simply tried to defend its policies, rather than engage in a coverup. I trust you aren’t trying to justify the coverup here; your posting is ambiguous on that point.

“It’s not very brave to vote the way your enemies want you to.”

No, it would have been cowardly if the voters had responded to the attacks by rallying around the government and voting for a party that tried to deceive the voters.

“Just because the Socialists pormised to pull out of Iraq doesn’t mean it wasn’t a coward’s promise.”

True. Johnson did not claim that the Socialists made a “coward’s promise,” so I did not refute that claim. My objective was to respond to what Johnson actually wrote, rather than to knock down straw men.

Reply to Oyster:

“Johnson…assumes too many of us know enough of our history to understand what he’s saying without having to spell out every word. I’d like to think I know enough to understand exactly what he’s saying because I agree with him. And I won’t write a lengthy essay explaining why.”

I understand what Johnson is saying. I just think that arguments should be based on evidence rather than on name calling.

“An odd argument – since a good many people in the world DO think that those more fortunate DO have an obligation to help others and they’ve not wasted any time telling us so. But it’s up to the individual person or individual nation to decide what they think is a worthy cause.”

In that case, wouldn’t you agree that Johnson shouldn’t be bashing Spain and Ukrain for failing to believe that Iraq is a worth cause?

And I really dislike taking particular aim at Spain and Ukraine. I don’t know what Spanish casualties in Iraq were, but Spain had 16 KIA per various places on the web, and presumably many more casualties than that (I believe that the US ratio of casualties to deaths is something like 9:1). Spain did help in Iraq, and her military paid a price. That should count for something. Aznar was very important early on, and, I think, is very much underapreciated by Americans in general.

Sure Zapatero’s backing out, and the electorate’s endorsement of it was a huge disappointment, and undoubtedly emboldened our enemies. But why single out a country that has helped over one that has been unabashedly obstructionist and provides much more aid and comfort to our enemies?

My mother’s side of the family had the rebel. My Dad’s side of the family had the soldier on the other side of the war, in the Kansas Cavalry.

I also have more Indian blood than Churchill, Cherokee. That was my mamma’s side of the family too. After all, the Cherokee were a southern too.

The Officials of the “First Damn Well Read the Post Closely League” have reviewed the tape and assessed me a five- hundred word penalty for carelessness in commission of a comment. My apologies, sir.

Terrye -

My only ancestors directly involved with the war were picking off settlers on the plains and trying to keep one or two days ahead of the cavalry of both sides. But your observation that the men of the South may have been fighting for reasons not entirely in their interests is key; they fought because their perception was that they had to fight. I may have more Sioux blood than say Ward Churchill – all the rest is Italian and Norwegian circa 1870′s and after.

I’ll take just a moment to say that it’s not simple cant to say that Southerners sometimes fight just for the hell of it. I grew up southern/western, and I’m here to tell you there’s always a bit of truth behind every stereotype.

And I agree with RogerA – only time has provided the perspective to judge whether it was worth it all. I agree that it was.

So Henry B is wrong of course. If things were as simple as he says there would have been no Civil War. Brilliant men had debated for decades, they had tried to avoid that war but the union and slavery were not compatable. Lincoln went to war to save the union, but he also freed the slaves.

And Wichita Boy is right. People today may think the southerners were an anachronism but they did not see it that way. Nor did the British blockade runners or for that matter the British threatening a possible invasion of the north.

Imagine, Alaska belonging to Russia, Spain owning a great deal of the southwest and the Europeans fighting their wars here just like they did on their own continent. The idea of manifest destiny was not just about stealing land from the Indians, it was about keeping Europe at bay.

If Lincoln had failed does anyone really think the Indians would be running with the buffaloe today? Or that a black woman would be the Secretary of State?

The “alternative history” I put forth was my speculation about what those who devalue Lincoln, rehabilitate McClellan, etc, seem to believe would have happened. I don’t subscribe to the theory for one second.

Sorry if I failed to make that clear.

I found Paul Johnson’s essay over at Betsy’s Page (and forgot to tell Roger!)

Sorry!

http://betsyspage.blogspot.com/

Arguments can be made on all sides, citations can be brought to bear, logic can be invoked; but in the final analysis nothing changes. The moving finger has writ. In the analysis at this point in time, to me, the only question that obtains: is the United States of American, and its entire population, better off because the union stood? I think that answer is an unqualified yes.

I respectfully, but profoundly, disagree with your conclusion regarding an alternate history, had there been no Lincoln:

“If Lincoln had not been elected president (or, conversely, had paid attention to the wisdom of McLellan) the Civil War would have been a minor conflict with little bloodshed. The sourthern/slave states would have split off, territories would have joined either the slave states or the free states as they saw fit or, alternatively, formed their own nations. The “US” would have been a collection of small, peaceful nations rather than a gigantic and, ultimately, powerful hegemon, slavery would have died “peacefully” and the world’s citizenry would be living today in post-modern bliss or, at the very least, we would have arrived at a situation where we would have been able to hide behind our oceans in splendid isolation.”

Look carefully at the congressional landscape of 1860, and of the objective pressures that were coming to bear on the nation.

Congress was full of machine politicians. Frankly most of the talent and fire was on the southern side. The concept of manifest destiny appealed to Northern farmers and industrialists mainly as an ocean – to – ocean vision; the South did indeed have designs extending to empire toward the South and into the Caribbean.

Men who didn’t blush at attacking the industrialized, populous North would have had no trouble at all directing the same energies elsewhere. Especially at targets who so clearly fit their ideology of “white on top” power. They’d buy their weapons from the foundries of Pennsylvania and Ohio, too. It would be good for business, and there has never been a more avaricious capitalist class than existed here in the latter half of the 19th century.

How long would a cosmopolitan, liberal, explosively growing North be able to live along a common border with a feudal aristocracy – one that counted on an honor code right out of Camelot to keep its huge underclasses looking outward for enemies – in competition for diminishing vistas for expansion? How long until “slave/free?” was asked of say, Nevada Territory, and neither side would give?

Does this situation begin to sound familiar? Just a little?

We fight fundamentalist Islam now because there are no longer any distances great enough to keep the despotism (ANY flavor) from bumping up against democracy. There are no more oceans broad enough to insulate the two from having direct impact on the lives of Johnny Man On The Street.

The fight is here, and the enemy is in front of us. Now.

In 1865 we resolved to be a nation of free men – all men. It cost tens of millions of broken lives (dead/wounded/survivors) but we did end up with a working solution. We face the same challenge today, just on a battlefield that encompasses the world.

We means the world, by the way. I second or third the motion that Spain’s decision to appease was cowardice. Did they vote their decision? Sure they did.

You can vote murder to be legal, too, but that won’t make it any less a crime. Freedom is never free – even if you opt out of the fight and let somebody else do the heavy lifting.

Canada. France. Germany. Spain. The Philippines.

Time fills, and we’ll probably live long enough to see what price those shirkers pay for appeasement. The nature of our enemy, and of our current posture, will drive attacks where they are easy to commit. Both Spain and the Philippiens are already discovering this.