Kos flaunts his moral vanity and ignorance

Markos Moulitas Zuniga, the Kos himself, has written an article on his blog that treats in a highly personal way what a civil war looks like.
 
Mr. Zuniga riffs off the "chickenhawk" meme.  He witnessed the guerilla conflict in El Salvador as a boy.  His experience and his article is compelling, even though rife with the mocking and cocksure tone of "I was there!" moral authority.

I don't gainsay his experience, nor his transference of that experience toward his view of the situation in Iraq.  However, at the end of the piece he strays out of his depth:

"Perhaps that's why I have such contempt for the cowards on the Right. They don't know what real sacrifice looks like, what real fear feels like, what it means to face a real and immediate threat and still persevere. The Lebanese did, the Salvadorans did, the Bosnians and Croats did, the Guatemalans did, and many, many more have done so as well. And viewed from that prism, the cowardice of the American Right and its government would be worthy of derision if they weren't advocating for more war and misery across the rest of the world.

Life goes on. Of course it does. It went on in WWII London as German long—range missiles rained down on the city causing vast devastation and sowing morale—sapping fear. It went on in Sarajevo in the early 90s as the Serbs rained death on the city. We humans are resilient creatures."

Mr. Zuniga is referring to the V—Bombs of the Spring 1945.  The people of London had already weathered a much more "morale—sapping" Nazi campaign during the "devastation" of the Blitz of 1940.

I don't believe this is a quibble of correct or apposite citation.  I think it's an excellent example of the ahistorical outlook of the left.  The English prevailed.  They prevailed because they had a much stronger sense of their national history and declined to transfer "the personal to the political."  As Shakespeare wrote, they were made of "sterner stuff."  Their nation had experienced bitter and deadly sectarian violence (Shakespeare was "there") which culminated in a brutal civil war (and ethnic cleansing: Drogheda).  The typical Londoner of 1940 knew this.

Even before the Blitz the English endured a "responsible redeployment" of their own — Dunkirk.  Churchill called it "a miracle."  Four years later they were on the beach in Normandy, and soon after captured Pas—de—Calais, the launching sites of the V—Bombs.

I think one could make a strong argument that a jetliner crashed into a skyscraper resembles a V—2.  

It would not surprise me in the least that Mr. Zuniga simply doesn't know this history, or much history at all beyond his own.

Stephen Shields   3 30, 2006

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