Victor Davis Hanson: Words that Don’t Matter, The new buzz vocabulary of anti-Americanism

"Preemption" is supposed to be the new slur. Its use now conjures up all sorts of Dr. Strangelove images to denigrate the present "trigger-happy" Bush administration. Partly the hysteria is due to the invasion of Iraq. Or perhaps the venom of the Left comes from recent disclosures that, in the post-9/11 era, the United States has publicly proclaimed it may strike terrorists and their sponsors — or indeed rogue nations who have the history, capability, and desire to obtain frightening weapons — before they strike us.

But instead of a rational discussion about the wisdom and feasibility of that logical policy, we have had two years now of national frenzy over a purported new "dangerous departure" in American foreign policy, one that "threatens" to "destabilize" the world order.

Rubbish. Preemption is a concept as old as the Greeks. It perhaps was first articulated in the fourth book of Thucydides's history. There the veteran Theban general Pagondas explained why his Boeotians should hit the Athenians at the border near Delium, even though they were already retreating and posed no immediate threat. The Boeotians did, and won — and were never attacked by the Athenians again. On a more immediate level, preemption was how many of us stayed alive in a rather tough grade school: Confront the bully first, openly, and in daylight — our Texan principal warned us — before he could jump you as planned in the dark on the way home.

Despite the current vogue of questionable and therapeutic ideas like "zero tolerance" and "moral equivalence" that punish all who use force — whether in kindergarten or in the Middle East — striking first is a morally neutral concept. It takes on its ethical character from the landscape in which it takes place — the Israelis bombing the Iraqi reactor to avoid being blackmailed by a soon-to-be nuclear Saddam Hussein, or the French going into the Ivory Coast last year, despite the fact that that chaotic country posed no immediate danger to Paris. The thing to keep in mind is that the real aggressor, by his past acts, has already invited war and will do so again — should he be allowed to choose his own time and place of assault.

Hitler was ruthless in starting a war against Poland. Yet he could have been stopped far earlier in 1936 or so — had the democracies preempted him. Indeed, a failure to preempt is often far worse than the act itself. Serbia posed no "imminent" threat to the United States in 1998; but President Clinton — with no U.N. sanction, no U.S. Congress resolution — finally decided to act and end that cancer before it spread beyond the Balkans.

Nor has the United States established "a dangerous precedent" in hitting Saddam Hussein before he could add any more corpses to his three-decade-long record of carnage. Turkey did not jump back into Cyprus. We did not move on to hit Havana. Pakistan and India are now talking — not in smoke amid cinders. Neither was emboldened by the three-week war — as shrill critics in the United States promised — to strike the other first. No front-line Arab state saw the March 2003 attacks as an invitation to bomb Israel, now convinced that the United States has sanctified first-strike strategy.

Nor is preemption always even a sign of strength. Italy regretted its 1940 surprise invasion of Greece. Argentina tried it in the Falklands and a paid a high price; so did Syria in 1973, and al Qaeda and the Taliban on September 11. Up until now, when democratic states took preemptory action against fascists and succeeded, the doctrine was largely ignored in silent satisfaction. Yet when autocracies have invaded other democratic states, or democratic states have failed in their anticipatory efforts, then it was roundly condemned as a flawed concept. The wisdom of preemption was determined relatively; having a good cause and achieving success, it seems, made it worthwhile. What is new is the absolutist, blanket condemnation of the strategy altogether.

In short, preemption is now a politicized, debased word. It is part of the anti-Bush lexicon and has lost any real meaning for the foreseeable future of its usage. The same may be true of "multilateralism" and "unilateralism."

Perhaps the greatest example of "multilateral" military action was the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. Think of the vast multilateral coalition! Germans, Austrians, Romanians, Czechs, Finns, Spaniards, Bulgarians, and Italians all united together to attack Communist Russia, which in turn had no other combatants on its front but unilaterally-minded Russians.

In 1939 Great Britain was a unilateral power, threatened by a broad multilateral axis and without any real ally. The 1956 Suez Crisis was a multilateral enterprise — an undertaking by France, Great Britain, and Israel. It was stopped unilaterally by the Eisenhower administration. Israel in 1973 reacted unilaterally to a preemptive strike from a multilateral coalition involving Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq. The only real constant was not preemption/multilateralism/unilateralism, but simply that a democratic state was fighting those who were not.

Allies themselves are not always wonderful assets: Dozens of coalition members helped Hitler butcher thousands of Ukrainians and enabled the Soviets to spread worldwide terror. Too many allies were largely the reason that we did not go to Baghdad in 1991 and take out Saddam Hussein when it would have been far easier — and would have spared the lives of thousands long since dead. The European Union had gads of countries in a truly multilateral coalition, only to watch a quarter-million Bosnians and Kosovars die until a unilateral United States intervened.

Of course, today multilateralism is deemed "good," while unilateralism is "bad" because, in the unipolar, post-Cold War era, the United States has a military monopoly unparalleled in civilization's history. For good or evil it alone can alter political situations rather rapidly through use of its military power, while friends and enemies alike flock publicly to the U.N. to object — or flock privately to us to ask for help.

The Left's problem is not our embrace of the concept of "unilateralism" per se — or it would have attacked Clinton's U.N.-be-damned use of force in Iraq, Kosovo, and Haiti. No, the rub is something altogether different. A Christian, southern-accented, conservative Republican president, coming off a disputed election, has chosen to preempt. And when you hit first in a therapeutic America, you are at least supposed to bite your lip and squeeze Hillary's hand on national television. You do not dare say, "Bring 'em on" and "Smoke 'em out" — much less fly a jet out to an aircraft carrier.

If the embrace of multilateralism is meant to imply the desirability of U.N. sanction, then it is just as dubious a moral concept. Ask the Cambodians, Rwandans, Bosnians, or Kosovars whether they were encouraged by "multilateral" U.N. resolutions of "concern." In the last 40 years almost half the U.N.'s resolutions have been aimed at Israel — in an era when that body watched silently as tens of millions were butchered around the globe. Only a unilateral United States organized vetoes against Yasser Arafat's array of "Zionism is racism" resolutions. Usually the singular action of one democracy is worth more than all the majority votes of dozens of autocracies.

So like preemption, in today's super-charged political climate, unilateralism and multilateralism no longer convey any meaning. Those words too have now become little more than coded nomenclature to denigrate the present American administration's efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq.

It is perhaps a rule of American politics that Democrats can preempt and intervene pretty much wherever they want and be called "sober" and "reluctant" — given their protestations of pacifism and lip-service to "multilateral frameworks." And to be fair, Republicans can raise deficits that would tar liberals as "tax-and-spend" and "big-government" naifs — and get away with it as purported advocates of "supply side" and "growth."

But whereas President Bush is receiving criticism from both left and right for his fiscal policies, he is not getting praise for his courageous attempt at ending the political and cultural climate that led to September 11. The present bastardization of our language proves it.

No, I don't think it's bad to have people like VDH in the Dem Party -- though I truly hope that party becomes extinct and has no one inside it within my lifetime.

I'm simply surprised. It's like finding a Rabbi inside the Nazi Party. Maybe he can do some good. Maybe he can persuade some Nazis not to be so anti-semitic. But the overall feeling is: "What's HE doing in THAT party?"

I used to consider myself a Libertarian, but I do not anymore. But here is what I'd like to see in America in terms of two parties:

1) The elimination of the Democrats
2) The Republican Party. Conservative on social issues, perhaps not-conservative-enough on financial issues.
3) The Libertarian Party. Too Liberal on social issues. Conservative on financial issues.

I'd vote Republican every time, but if the Libertarians won once in a while, it wouldn't be the end of the world. And there'd be no Marxism in that picture.

After learning about his ideas influence on this administration, they might, if only to try to guess a next move. I can't imagine they would admire him as we do.

I understand, yours was just a rhetorical question. It's paradoxical, but they claim our brainwashing when looks like we have more variety of the opinion sources, and they look more brainwashed to me. :))

I agree. Europeans (IMHO and British as well) always look down on American scholars who are experts in classical Greece and Rome. Of course given that they actually own the monuments of ancient Greco-Roman civilizations they think they certinaly know better than Americans on these areas.

But of course the reality is very different. I think they seem to resonate more with the post-Westphalian European Great Powers politics (European history from 1648 to 1945 - it seems like a continuous struggle between various balances of powers) than classical Greco-Roman philosophies. Therefore we can safely bet that any European educated in history will probably know more about a Bismarck or a Metternich than a Cicero or a Thucydides. Talking to them about lessons from classical history will probably draw blank stares from them, if not reactions like "Sir, you should think more about European balance of power history than ancient Greece or Rome. It has more relevance to our world!" (BTW this trend transcends the Left-Right divide in Europe.)

And it is interesting that, as you have posted many VDH articles and given that they touch collective psyches of many modern individual European countries, we haven't seen any European freepers replying to these messages. It is because they don't even know about classics in modern Europe (as I outlined above)? I will leave this to them.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.