Oh my

Here's a commentor over at Ann's Blog. His name is Kirby. I'd link him, but I'm having trouble with links lately. (Grr.)

Anyway, over at Ann Althouse, they're debating, yet again, how to win the Iraqi war -- y'all remember? That one we have no business fighting & George never should have started? Which was first because of -- well, why WAS it started, first? Was it WMD? Or because of 9/11? Or to protect the Iraqi people? Or to draw the terrorists away from us, over to there (the flaypaper theory of war)? It's so hard to keep track...Orson Scott Card and Ann and the rest are NOW arguing, as near as I can follow, something like the Domino Theory: we CAN'T QUIT NOW! Cause if we do, everyone will KNOW we're wimps, and all the nations will tumble into the gap we leave like like like like like --

Oh, yeah. Like Dominos.

Damn. I think I heard this argument somewhere before.

Anyway, whose fault is it that we're losing Iraq, according to Kirby?

You got it! Feminists!
(I was thinking Clinton, too, but don't worry, he's next, I'm sure.):


Kirby sez:
"There's a neat book called The Vacant Chair by a historian named Reid Mitchell. He argues that the Civil War was won by the greater will of the mothers of the north to sacrifice their sons for the cause.

"A good woman nurtured, and her nurture was the means by which boys and men had good moral sense inculcated" (74-75) Oxford UP, 1993.

I think feminism vitiated women's sense

a. of the value of American culture

b. of the necessity of war

c. created women like Cindy Sheehan, who are now legion

Very few moms have the toughness of W.'s mother*. Very very few. And it's the women's will that matters. What men do is mostly to please mom.

If mom says grow your hair long and take drugs, that's what the men do.

If mom says, defend your country: the men and boys will. That's why at the top of the Civil War monuments it's always a woman holding the flame of liberty.

Reid Mitchell argues that the mothers of the north never caved, but that the women of the south did cave. They wanted their men home, and so they went. That's the story of a film like Cold Mountain. She wanted her man home. He went, and he went in the hundreds of thousands. And the war ended.

"Soldiering leaves the chair vacant; death while soldiering leaves the chair more vacant still" (xiv).

The vacant chairs of the north were not put away. There was always a place for the soldier. Something happened between then and now: Cindy Sheehan is a bigger part of the mystery than we currently believe. She's part of a new generation of women who were trained to believe that war can not be moral and that their job is to prevent it at any cost."


Althouse's blog is here.

http://althouse.blogspot.com/


Kirby's comment is under the post comparing the Iraqi War to the Civil War.

Card's essay is all over the web -- apparently Rush gave him a mention and the Wingers got all hot for him. Just go to Google Blog Search and put in Scott Card and "only issue" and "this election" and it will come up.




(*Of course, as a later commentor points out, one TINY problem with Kirby's theory is that George W. never actually WENT to any war, but never mind, never mind!)