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| Robespierre's Head |
Hardly a reassuring way to lead, even from behind. m/r
From Robespierre to ISIS | The Weekly Standard
SEP 29, 2014, VOL. 20, NO. 03 • BY GERTRUDE HIMMELFARB
Edmund Burke’s war on terror—and ours.
The war on terror is over, the president assured us a year ago. Now, we are told, that war is very much with us and will be pursued with all due diligence. The president was obviously responding to the polls reflecting the disapproval of the public, but also to critics in his own party. Dianne Feinstein, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, sadly commented on his admission that he had “no strategy yet”: “I think I’ve learned one thing about this president, and that is: He’s very cautious—maybe in this instance too cautious.”
Two centuries ago, in the midst of another “war on terror”—or so he thought of it—Edmund Burke rebuked his prime minister for a similar failing. He had admired William Pitt for his leadership in the war with France, but now, out of excessive caution, Pitt was seeking peace with that “regicide” regime. “There is a courageous wisdom,” Burke wrote in his “Letters on a Regicide Peace,” but “there is also a false reptile prudence, the result not of caution but of fear. Under misfortunes it often happens that the nerves of the understanding are so relaxed, the pressing peril of the hour so completely confounds all the faculties, that no future danger can be properly provided for, can be justly estimated, can be so much as fully seen.”
That misplaced caution, or false prudence, was all the more serious in the case of a “great state” like England, which had to behave in a manner commensurate with its power. ...
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