The Soviets and the Iranians licked their chops as we licked our wounds, detaching ourselves from non-homefront concerns, slashing military spending, undermining intelligence capabilities. That whole range of responses to the American embrace of anti-Americanism prepared the way for -- among other fateful events -- the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Iranian hostage crisis.
We might have troubled to note since then that a nation fighting an internal war is going to have some trouble fighting an external one. You might suppose that, in order to focus on the matter at hand, we could save for the post-war period all the post-war quibbles and queries.
Evidently not. For reasons known best to himself and God, Dick Clarke
dumps a wheelbarrow load of sour, self-justifying accusations into the debate. He says, in effect, to an immense public that previously had little idea who he was: "Boy, did those guys mess up after I left."
Do you know what? -- some, much, perhaps even all, of what Clarke says may be worth hearing and sifting. In the right setting. Is a bitter election year that setting? Is it the period just after the Madrid bombings and not long before the American handover of civil authority to the Iraqis?
Whether it is or not, my friends, the market for 20/20 hindsight prescription spectacles can't have been this strong since Appomattox Courthouse.