I was re-reading some emails I'd exchanged with a friend about a year ago, and I remember the frustration...he'd talk about Bush's mistakes, and I argued that yes, he's made mistakes, but that the list of presidents who have made mistakes in war begins with Washington and Madison, runs through Polk and Lincoln and McKinley, up through Wilson and FDR and Truman (ach, Truman) and Kennedy and Johnson and Nixon, up to Reagan and Clinton and yes, Bush Jr. And pointed out that the fact that there have been mistakes in execution doesn't negate the wisdom of the policy - that what great leaders share is wise policy, doggedly pursued.

And he comes back with a list of predictions that seemed to have been false, and errors of judgement, and bad decisions...

What the fuck can you do? I love the guy, so I kept it polite and kept reminding him of the big picture, which he had failed utterly to comment on...but good Lord, John, you are so right...the first time, you chalk it up as an aberration...but after a while, after every argument becomes a litany of nit picks and bitching and snide comments backed up by NO coherent alternative policy, and every judgment betrays an utter ignorance of history - after a while, the conclusion seems inescapable...

Yes. Exactly.

And gradually, chewing on this since 9/11, the world has come to resemble to me some sort of SF story, with ordinary people being taken over by aliens while looking the same on the outside. Or not even aliens, but some oozing fluid of "anti-matter" that seeps into people and hollows them out, leaving the outward form....

And I feel like the guy in the story who runs around trying to warn people, and is considered crazy.

Plato knew about nailing jello
(from Theaetetus):

For, in accordance with their text-books, they are always in motion; but as for dwelling upon an argument or a question, and quietly asking and answering in turn, they can no more do so than they can fly; or rather, the determination of these fellows not to have a particle of rest in them is more than the utmost powers of negation can express. If you ask any of them a question, he will produce, as from a
quiver, sayings brief and dark, and shoot them at you; and if you inquire the reason of what he has said, you will be hit by some other new-fangled word, and will make no way with any of them, nor they with one another; their great care is, not to allow of any settled principle either in their arguments or in their minds, conceiving, as I imagine, that any such principle would be stationary; for they are at war with the stationary, and do what they can to drive it out everywhere.

Ooooh, that's good! Thanks.