Our Victory

After hearing this story this morning I was reminded (not for the first time in the last 5 years) of the following passage:

"What is that gun firing for?" said Boxer.

"To celebrate our victory!" cried Squealer.

"What victory?" said Boxer. His knees were bleeding, he had lost a shoe and split his hoof, and a dozen pellets had lodged themselves in his hind leg.

"What victory, comrade? Have we not driven the enemy off our soil-the sacred soil of Animal Farm? "

"But they have destroyed the windmill. And we had worked on it for two years!"

"What matter? We will build another windmill. We will build six windmills if we feel like it. You do not appreciate, comrade, the mighty thing that we have done. The enemy was in occupation of this very ground that we stand upon. And now-thanks to the leadership of Comrade Napoleon-we have won every inch of it back again!"

"Then we have won back what we had before," said Boxer.

"That is our victory," said Squealer.

Context? People like this insist that, like everything, the problem is Clinton's fault, and Bush's tough talk in 2001 was exactly what was needed to fix it. Yet now a policy that, in the general, looks a heck of a lot like the old "appeasment" is in place, and all of this will no doubt be attributed to our own Dear Leader's wisdom and fortitude, or something.

Update: Yglesias smells similar rotting fish.