|
 he
wrongheadedness of last Wednesday's editorial in the New York
Times condemning President Bush's "overly bellicose"
language has already been pointed out on NRO. The editorial writers
of the Times unfavorably compared the president's characterization
of Osama bin Laden's status in American eyes ("Wanted: Dead
or Alive") with the supposedly more restrained rhetoric of
Winston Churchill. On NRO on September 19th, Mark
R. Levin evinced several examples of Sir Winston's use of strong
language; I would add to these the following passage, which I came
across in Churchill's book, Their
Finest Hour:
I have often
wondered, however, what would have happened if two hundred thousand
German storm troops had actually established themselves ashore
[in Britain in the late summer of 1940]. The massacre would have
been on both sides grim and great. There would have been neither
mercy nor quarter. They would have used terror, and we were prepared
to go all lengths. I intended to use the slogan, "You can
always take one with you."
You can
always take one with you. What would the editorial writers of
the New York Times have said about that?
Churchill had
of course been wanted "dead or alive" himself — by
the South African Boers shortly after the outbreak of the Boer War.
In November 1899 the Boers derailed a British armored train on which
the 25-year-old Churchill, as a correspondent for the London Morning
Post, was travelling. Under artillery fire from the Boers Churchill
supervised the effort to clear the line; he saw the engine past
the obstruction before throwing off his revolver and field glasses
to attend to wounded British soldiers. Churchill then headed back
to the scene of the derailment, where he was captured by the Boers
and taken to Pretoria. He subsequently escaped, and a notice was
posted on Government House at Pretoria offering £25 "to
anyone who brings the escaped prisoner of war, Churchill, dead or
alive to this office." Sir Winston's granddaughter, Celia Sandys,
recently published a book about the episode, Churchill:
Wanted Dead or Alive.
Discussing the incident in his book, My
Early Life, Churchill observed that to "be a fugitive,
to be a hunted man, to be 'wanted,' is a mental experience by itself
. . . . The need for concealment and deception breeds an actual
sense of guilt very undermining to morale," one that gnaws
"the structure of self-confidence." We can only hope that
President Bush's words will have such an effect on the morale of
Osama bin Laden.
|
