Oboe, it hasn't always been that way. The bitterness that divides us as a people and keeps our two major parties at each others' throats has been growing like a cancer for some time now.
It began to grow more bitter during the Clinton administration as a direct result of the impeachment proceedings. Whether or not one believes that the attempted removal of that controversial president was justified or not, one cannot deny that it opened a permanent rift between Republicans and Democrats.
That rift grew wider, and relations between the two parties more acrimonious, during the presidential election of 2000. It would have been better if one or the other of the two candidates involved in the vitriolic recount controversy in Florida had followed the example of Richard Nixon, who refused to drag the country through a divisive recount in the election of 1960, and simply stepped down. Gracefully. Al Gore will go down in history as the only presidential candidate in U.S. history to ever retract a concession.
His refusal to concede is emblematic of the widening rift mentioned above. NEITHER side was willing to yield, preferring to drag the country through a bloody legal battle instead....regardless of the implications. As a result, during the last 6 years we have seen the voting population of our country becoming increasingly Balkanized.
That Balkanization continues to grow, despite the relatively brief period of patriotism that blazed out after 9/11. The nation hasn't been this divided since 1969. The divisive "spirit of party" that Washington warned the nation of in his farewell address has come to full fruition.
We see evidence of it right here on these boards. Neither side feels it can concede a point. Members of the opposition are demonized and their every motive suspect.
We refuse to learn from our mistakes. If we are to succeed on the international stage we, as a people, need to be single-minded in purpose. We haven't BEEN that for some considerable time now. We would rather cut our own throats than those of the enemy.
The Iraqi "insurgents" know this. They've known it all along. It's no secret. They know the modern history of America and its military endeavors at least as well as we do.
They know us. Having read and studied our history THEY have learned from our mistakes. These muslim fanatics are smarter than we are. They've known from the very beginning that they didn't have to beat our military.
All they had to do to win was beat US...the civilian population. It was easy to do, because we were already sniping at each other even before Saddam's statue fell in Baghdad. By refusing to give up, by giving our media enough fodder to "shock" the American populace with how bad the war was going, they knew we would implode.
They were right. We have beaten ourselves.
