Another excellent piece on the comparisons between the War on Terror and the American Civil War, with special consideration to the comparisons between Bush and Lincoln. (Mud-Covered Presidents, Orson Scott Card).
George W. Bush is no Abraham Lincoln. Which is good, because what we need right now is a living President, not an icon.
The Lincoln that buildings are named for and whose image is stamped on pennies and five-dollar bills never existed.
Instead there was a man that few people thought capable of dealing with the Presidency at the single worse moment in our history.
Only a few presidents have had to face such times. An attack on American soil; an enemy with enormous power to disrupt our lives, and whom we could only with great difficulty attack, and then not directly, not for years.
Also contains a discussion on how intellectuals want to bring the level of terrorism to acceptable levels:
The comparison was made between the number of deaths by terrorists and the number of deaths by auto accident each year. "We live with the auto deaths," the consensus seemed to be. "We can learn to live with a certain level of terrorism, too. After all, Europe already has." (Europe's acceptance of a certain level of terrorist acts may explain a lot about the recent behavior of our reputed allies.)
I listened to a speech a while back from an Islamic leader that was given shorty after 9/11 (sorry, I can't remember who it was). He claimed that terrorism was not as big a deal as people were making it out to be. He claimed that more Americans die each year from traffic accidents caused my not having the right tire pressure in their tires.
This is what is truely amazing (read sick) about Moral Relativity. When you have lost the ability to tell right from wrong you can twist or spin anything to mean what you need it to at that moment. But you can call a dog a cat all you want, the dog does not cease being a dog.
