Did Iraq Really Ruin the U.S.? by Victor Davis Hanson

VDH Private Papers ^ | January 21, 2007 | Victor Davis Hanson

[Nicholas Conradin]

Writing of the decline of the West — and the United States in particular — has been a parlor game from the time of doomsayers Oswald Spengler and Arnold Toynbee to Paul Kennedy’s pessimism of the 1980s. Now the most recent serial epitaphs center on the Anglo-American experience in Iraq that will soon end, it is foretold, in defeat and a global loss of American prestige to the detriment of the West at large.

The extremists in the Middle East — Hamas, Hezbollah, and their Iranian and Syrian sponsors — are supposedly empowered as nearby Iraqi Islamists tie down the American Gulliver. Democracy, we are also lectured by leftists, realists, and isolationists alike, won’t work in the Muslim world. Instead elections only provide a veneer of legitimacy to ‘one-vote/one time’ terrorists and jihadists like Iraqi Shiites and Hamas.

[Nicholas Conradin]

A shorter version of this essay recently appeared in the Australian Financial Review

[Nicholas Conradin]

ping

[WashingtonSource]

Interesting insight. However, I'm not sure Americans are losing their support for the war because they don't want American blood to be shed in an internal squabble -- or because the media have grossly misrepresented what is going on in Iraq. I suspect the latter.

[maica]

I hope that VDH and GWB speak to each other regularly.

[ImpBill]

"So there is real danger from the fallout from Iraq. But it is not that the United States must pack up, in an admission of its new limitations. Rather the daily mayhem and its attendant criticism have tired Americans to the point that the notion of pulling in our horns and letting the world be seems attractive and guilt-free as never before."

One thing the left and the libertines have much in common.

You tell it like it is VDH!

[Nicholas Conradin]

Oops, already posted. Sorry about the dup.

[HawaiianGecko]

_HG

-- or because the media have grossly misrepresented what is going on in Iraq. I suspect the latter.

I tend to believe not so much in the grossly misrepresented goings on in Iraq by the media as I do Democrats for playing politics with a war.  If both parties were on board with the President and the outcome his administration is striving for, the media wouldn't have any blood in the water to stir up this feeding frenzy.

Things that shouldn't matter such as a few bad apples screwing up at Abu Graib prison wouldn't surface and get more press than the Academy Awards.  Four years into this war, I still have no clue 'why' Baghdad is still without electricity, sewage and other civil utilities. The press isn't reporting on this other than to complain that it isn't happening, and therefore, Haliburton must be reaping great awards from these people living in squalor.

Any rational person would know intuitively that the President is doing everything possible to bring about a conclusion to this mess that is good for America. But the Democrats continue to hate this man so much they are willing to throw the baby out with the bath water.  The rest of the world doesn't listen and read what these Democrats say and think that the Republican Party is out to get them and pray for a Democratically controlled congress.  They hear that America is evil.  The distinction of "liberal good", "conservative bad" that the Democrats continually espouse simply isn't what the rest of the world is gleaning from their speeches.

We should stop whining about the media.  All it does is give them further reason to dislike conservatives more. Instead we should simply stand up for our principles.  If they are as good and righteous as we believe, how can we fail in the long run?

[sodpoodle]

Excellent summary.

Contemporary writers all use the lazy and self-fulfilling comparison that America will suffer the same fate as the Roman Empire.

The Romans' conquests of other nations were intended to subjugate native societies by brutal, genocidal methods and impose Roman power. The USA has never attempted to conquer other nations, but to liberate and leave.

Ignorant itellectuals!

[Austin Willard Wright]

Hanson is about as an accurate prophet as Dick Morris(at least on the Iraq war).

[sodpoodle]

We need patriots, not prophets.

[Austin Willard Wright]

We need patriots, not prophets.

Nice slogan.....but a patriot is who is blind to reality (but pretends to be a prophet) is useless. Besides, Hanson is more of a patriot to Wilsonianism than he is to American self-interest.

[WashingtonSource]

The DBM was spreading extreme disinformation and lies about Iraq from DAY ONE. I blame the media FIRST and FOREMOST. The Dhimmi politicians only belatedly joined in after the media softened the masses.

[LS]

"China will soon have a rough rendezvous with environmentalism, unionism, suburban malaise, and most of the other dislocations that the West has long ago weathered from the onset of industrialization in the nineteenth century."

Was recently at a conference where Charles Wolf, a China specialist for the RAND corporation, presented a paper on challenges for China. He had economic impacts, and so on, but the bottom line is that he pretty much agreed with Hanson's conclusion: not only is China almost certain to hit SOME of these roadblocks to growth, but in all likelihood will hit ALL of them and even more, including (believe it or not) a massive AIDs outbreak that has not been contained and, of course, political upheaval.

Whatever growth rates people have penciled in for China might want to revise them downward significantly for the next 20 years.

[thinking]

It never ceases to amaze me; that a group of sand fleas, living in desert, still using donkeys, and camels, can past judgement on anyone, or any country....PERIOD

[thinking]

past=pass

[jmcenanly]

Excellent summary. Contemporary writers all use the lazy and self-fulfilling comparison that America will suffer the same fate as the Roman Empire.

The Romans' conquests of other nations were intended to subjugate native societies by brutal, genocidal methods and impose Roman power. The USA has never attempted to conquer other nations, but to liberate and leave.

Ignorant itellectuals!

Toward the end, the Romans also outsourced their military to such peoples as the Vandals,Huns, Goths and Visigoths. Our security is our problem

[Freee-dame]

I still have no clue 'why' Baghdad is still without electricity, sewage and other civil utilities.

One reason for shortages is that Iraqis have far more appliances, cars, air conditioners, etc. than they had before the war. The DBM doesn't want people to know; probably mentioned it once at 2 a.m and then forever says that they covered it.

I hold anti-war Dem leadership most responsible morally and the DBM the most powerful in spreading a false picture.

[Tolik]

Thank you

pinged here: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1771200/posts?page=1