Diana West: Deluded America

Paul over at Powerline says that parts of Diana West's piece, "Deluded America", comes about as close to being the purest distillation of the liberal soul as he has seen. It is good.

I do wonder what passage of Churchill's she is thinking about....

UPDATE: I emailed a quotation request to the Churchill Centre (since Ms. West never did respond) to see if they knew where Churchill might have said what West attributed to him. And this is their reply:

Dear Mr Schunk,

West's comment is too vague and offers too few key words for me to have any
hope of locating this in our digital archives, which are very complete but
need something to go by. Nor do I think he said it, because he accepted the
premise and did need to reiterate it. His daughter said recently that he
would have done anything to win the war, but the barbarous nature of what he
had to do "did not unman him."

Here is a quotation, 19 May 40, that goes to the point...

"In that supreme emergency we shall not hesitate to take every step, even the most drastic, to call forth from our people the last ounce and the last inch of effort of which they are capable. The interests of property, the hours of labour, are nothing compared with the struggle for life and honour, for right, and freedom, to which we have vowed ourselves."

And, recalling the South African war in 1930:

"I have always urged fighting wars and other contentions with might and main till overwhelming vitory, and then offering the hand of friendship to the vanquished. Thus, I have always been against the Pacifists during the quarrel, and against the Jingoes at its close."

He did admit the vileness of it all to his wife, 15 Sep 09:

"Much as war attracts me and fascinates my mind with its tremendous situations, I feel more deeply every year and can measure the feeling here in the midst of arms what vile and wicked folly and barbarism it all is."

Incidentally, Churchill himself did not even know that Dresden had been bombed until he reached Yalta in February 1945, where Stalin demanded why he had not been. The request to bomb Dresden came from the Soviets, and Churchill's deputy prime minister, Clement Attlee, had given the order while Churchill was en route to Yalta.

Best wishes