THE REAL WAR?

Seeking a quote from history on the first day of Petraeus's testimony, Lucianne Goldberg, or whoever runs her site, comes up with this:



(Click for larger image.)

On one level, it's bizarre that a pro-war propagandist would announce that the true historical predecessor to Petraeus was a general who fought on the losing side (and that a right-winger would want to remind decent people that a large number of right-wingers, not all of them from the South, think the Confederates were the good guys in that war).

But on another level, the battle over the war is just one more skirmish in America's never-ending culture war, and, for a large chunk of the right, all these battles are the Civil War all over again, with cultural elitists from the financial centers of America trying to thwart the will of The People. (Kevin Phillips was getting at something like this in his last book.) So in that way Petraeus may be Robert E. Lee to the right -- if his cause fails, it will be because of the usual Yankee treachery.

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UPDATE: And as Mudge notes in comments, the quote hasn't even been authenticated.