1/24/2005 04:55:06 AM|||Toni|||Victor Davis Hanson

Here is the most telling of VDH's commentary:
Political prognoses in wartime are notoriously mercurial, hinging on the weekly eddies of the battlefield. But these are sometimes poor indicators of larger strategic currents. If one thing can be said with confidence about Iraq, it is that the story is not over, since so far the daily bombings have neither prompted American withdrawal nor derailed scheduled elections and reforms. In World War II, the bloodiest moment of the Pacific theater was at Okinawa, finally declared secure a mere nine weeks before the Japanese surrender, while in Europe the Battle of the Bulge, a slog that cost more American lives than the drive to the Rhine, was not finished until only about 100 days before Germany collapsed. What can be seen in hindsight, and only in hindsight, is that while Americans were being butchered in Belgium and on Sugar Loaf Hill, larger forces were insidiously working to doom Germany and Japan in short order. The last gasps of resistance are sometimes the bloodiest and most unexpected.

There's a blogger who went to the archives of the NYT's and scanned reports out of Germany in 1945. If you want to read about doom and gloom out of Germany go and check out his postings, they are quite telling. Guess the advantage then was the lack of a 24 hour news cycle.

Ghosts of Occupations Past
|||110656410805985293|||Has Iraq Weakened Us?