Posted on 12/05/2003 6:34:15 AM PST by Tolik
| Victor Davis Hanson moral clarity huge BUMP [please freepmail me if you want or don't want to be pinged to Victor Davis Hanson articles] If you want to bookmark his articles discussed at FR: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/k-victordavishanson/browse His NRO archive: http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson-archive.asp |
However, I believe the discussion here will overload our pluralistic circuits.
It's true. And people are either siding with Hitler, or they are siding with us. I can think of 9 Democrats who are siding with Hitler.
Bottom line, he kicked Stalins ass, and that makes him O.K in my book. Flame away.
Most of the recent dead were noncombatants. All were either attempting to feed or aid Muslims, or simply wished to be left alone in peace. Their killers operate through the money and sanctuary of Middle East rogue regimes, the implicit support of thousands in the Muslim street, and the tacit neglect of even "moderate" states in the region — as long as the tally of killing is in the half-dozens or so, and not noticeable enough to threaten foreign investment or American aid, or to earn European disapproval.
But when the carnage is simply too much (too many Muslims killed as collateral damage or too many minutes on CNN), then suspects are miraculously arrested in Turkey or Saudi Arabia, or in transit to Iran or Syria — but more often post facto and never with any exegesis about why killers who once could not be found now suddenly are. No wonder Pakistani intelligence officers, Palestinian security operatives, Syrian diplomats, and Iraqis working for the Coalition are all at times exposed as having abetted the terrorists.
Yet it hasn't been a good six months for the Islamists' public relations. Billions the world over are slowly coming to a consensus that the Islamists' killing has cast as a shadow over the Middle East — a deeply disturbed place, better left to stew in its own juices. Only its exports of oil, religious extremism, and terror — not its manufacturing, science, medicine, banking, tourism, humanitarianism, literature, research, or philanthropy — seem to earn global attention. This is all a great tragedy, but one that, after September 11, gives us no time for tears.
Remember the worry about "getting the message out"? ...... Sorry, the truth is just the opposite. The Arab street knows full well that we give billions to Jordan, Egypt, and the Palestinians — and are probably baffled that we don't cut it out. They also know we have just as frequently fought Christians on their behalf as Muslims; they know — if their voting feet tell them anything — that no place is more tolerant of their religion or more open to immigration than the United States. ........
.....No, the message, much less getting it out, is not the problem. It is rather the nature of America — our freewheeling, outspoken, prosperous, liberty-loving citizens extend equality to women, homosexuals, minorities, and almost anyone who comes to our shores, and thereby create desire and with it shame for that desire. Indeed, it is worse still than that: Precisely because we worry publicly that we are insensitive, our enemies scoff privately that we in fact are too sensitive — what we think is liberality and magnanimity they see as license and decadence. If we don't have confidence in who we are, why should they?
To arrest this dangerous trend requires a radical reappraisal of our entire relationship with the Middle East. A Radio Free Europe, though valuable, nevertheless did not free Eastern Europe; nor did Voice of America. Containment and deterrence did. As long as governments in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and many Gulf states encourage hatred of the United States, we must quietly consider them de facto little different from a Libya, Syria, or Iran. For all the glitter and imported Western graphics, al Jazeera and its epigones are not that much different from Radio Berlin of the 1930s.
We had also better reexamine entirely the way we use force in the Middle East. We did not drive on to Baghdad in 1991 out of concern for the "coalition" — and got 350,000 sorties in the no-fly zones in return. We chose to worry about rebuilding before the current war ended, and let thousands of Baathist killers fade away, and in the aftermath allowed mass looting and continual killing before our most recent get-tough policy.
In fact, anytime we have showed restraint — using battleship salvos and cruise missiles when our Marines were killed, our embassies blown up, and our diplomats murdered; allowing the killers on the Highway of Death to reach Basra in 1991; letting Saddam use his helicopters to gun down innocents — we have earned disdain, not admiration. In contrast, the hijackers chose not to take the top off the World Trade Center, but to incinerate the entire building — proof that they wished not to send us a message but to kill us all, and to kill us to the applause of millions, if the recent popularity of Osama bin Laden and his henchmen in the Arab street is any indication.
...... We should accept that dissidents would never have toppled Saddam on their own — and are not quite sure what to do even in his absence. Victory alone, not stalemate or a bellum interruptum, will free the Arab people and extend to them the same opportunities now found in Eastern Europe.
Well he left a few dimples in the wood, but yeah, he finally drove the nail in.
His biggest "miss" in this is that he focuses on the U.S. vs. the salamikazes, and thus misses out on some really important elements of this war.
For example, he unaccountably leaves out the actions of France, Germany, and (to a lesser extent) Russia. The actions of, say, Syria can't really be explained unless we factor in the fact of their waiting to see what France will do. So it's not simply a matter of our "sensitivity" (though that's assuredly part of the equation).
And, because Hanson does not mention France and Germany, he also fails to address how we should deal with them in this war. No amount of moral clarity or "getting tough" will have any great effect if France and Germany are standing by to quibble about our actions, and thus give ammunition to our enemies.
I'd give him about 80% on this....
Peace and harmony will come, but only when the Middle East, not us, changes-which, tragically, will be brought along more quickly by deterrence and defiance than appeasement and dialogue. President Bush was terribly criticized for his exasperated "bring them on," but that was one of his most honest, heartfelt — and needed — ex tempore remarks of this entire conflict.
We are not in a war with a crook in Haiti. This is no Grenada or Panama — or even a Kosovo or Bosnia. No, we are in a worldwide struggle the likes of which we have not seen since World War II. The quicker we understand that awful truth, and take measures to defeat rather than ignore or appease our enemies, the quicker we will win. In a war such as this, the alternative to victory is not a brokered peace, but abject Western suicide and all that it entails — a revelation of which we saw on September 11.
Victor Davis Hanson To Brits: If It Weren't For America, You Wouldn't Be Free To Protest
If you are relatively new to his writings, see his archives:
His NRO archive: http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson-archive.asp and discussions about his articles here http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/k-victordavishanson/browse
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