[Tolik]

    Victor Davis Hanson Ping ! 

       Let me know if you want in or out.

Links:    FR Index of his articles:  http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/keyword?k=victordavishanson
                His website: http://victorhanson.com/
                NRO archive: http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson-archive.asp
                Pajamasmedia:   http://victordavishanson.pajamasmedia.com/

[sono]

Vietnam ... won on the battlefield, lost on the homefront. How quickly some forget.

[Matchett-PI]

bttt

[maica]

We worry rightly about anti-Americanism and winning over the people of Iraq. But the greater problem, at least as we now witness it in the Senate and House, is winning back those here at home.

Seeing more of the purple finger, and less of the shaking fist, is the key to regaining the hearts and minds of Americans — who in the end alone can win or lose this war.

&&&&&&

What a great summary!
If our country’s politicians had been united in this effort, the general public would have been exposed to a very different theme from mass media.

Even though VDH enumerates the negative images that American viewers are shown repeatedly, he does not have mass protests on his list - because mass media does not have video of mass protests - because they are NOT occurring in the Muslim world!

[Loyal Buckeye]

What we need most: Demonstrated success that the surge is working. The next reporting date by Petreus is Sept.

[bcsco]

Thanks for the VDH ping. It’s always a great read.

[jveritas]

The problem is that a majority of Americans think we are in Iraq for the Iraqis. We are in Iraq first and foremost to defend our freedom and our way of life. The terrorists Al Qaeda, Iran and Syria, chose Iraq to be the center front to have their war against us and it is in Iraq where the ultimate war on terror is waged. It is time to get beyond the point of having a popular war since the vast majority of wars that Americans fought were unpopular, including the independence war and the civil war. A minority of Patriots supports, fought and won the independence and civil war, and it came to that in this war.

We should not spend our energy making the war popular, but rather we need to spend our time fighting the traitors in Congress to defeat them and fighting the terrorists in Iraq to annihilate them

[Gritty]

Excellent analysis.

[AIM-54]

It’s Europe that isn’t worth it.

[Obadiah]

VDH is dead on. His analysis simply could not be more accurate. Let us hope the right people read this.

[PGalt]

I think they do, and that the record of brave Iraqi reformers is worth the effort — both for the sake of our future security and so as to adopt a new moral posture that respects Arab self-determination.

OK

Voters may not like particularly a Harry Reid, but in frustration at the violence, they sense now that, just like them, he also doesn’t like a vague somebody over there.

That's not what the bundle of contradictions called Harry POS Reid is about, is it VDH?

Garbage

Enabler

Resign Harry POS Reid

[Sicon]

The Council on American-Islamic Relations claims that one American in four surveyed said Islam was a religion of hatred and violence and held extreme anti-Muslim views.

Hmmm, that figure seems awfully low. I would have thought it was closer to 75%.

[Liberty Wins]

"Turn on the television and the reporting is all hate."

We need far more articles like this to counteract the totally false picture created by the MSM.

[Carry_Okie]

We are embarking on this new course in the hopes that the American lives sacrificed and our treasure spent are for a friendly people that appreciates our efforts. I think they do, and that the record of brave Iraqi reformers is worth the effort — both for the sake of our future security and so as to adopt a new moral posture that respects Arab self-determination.

At least Hanson has touched a critical fulcrum.

When Iraqi liberation is considered by itself, I am certain that most of them appreciate it all right, but that doesn't mean they'd line up with us to defend Israel against Iran or even stay quiet. Were we to enter serious conflict with Tehran, there's no telling what the Iraqis would do. Historic precedents suggest that such accounts of good will are usually ephemeral.

[Billthedrill]

The net result is the American voter is tired and saturated with negative imagery.

That is a consequence of media and political figures who have very successfully turned a distant war to their own domestic ends by casting it in the most negative light possible. There are several further consequences - first, that American participation in international collective security that is so dear to the progressive heart has been damaged badly, second, that the media constitute an echo chamber and the hatred that they magnify disproportionately does not simply resonate through the country, but through the world, third, that the moral equivalency necessary to pull off this ideological flimflam leaves its promoters no real way to differentiate aggression from self-defense, and fourth, that it offers up a twisted, skewed view of the world that serves only the haters.

That is the price of power, of influence. Those who claim that Bush has blood on his hands would do well to examine their own.

[SuziQ]

Voters may not like particularly a Harry Reid, but in frustration at the violence, they sense now that, just like them, he also doesn’t like a vague somebody over there.

Harry Reid doesn't care one way or the other about the Iraqis. His only interest is gaining power for the Democrats, and he'll do that any way he can.

[edsheppa]

This is a weak analysis. The Administration has only itself to blame for the unpopularity of the Iraq war. For example, propaganda is an essential part of war but the President has totally neglected it.

[CatoRenasci]

I"m a supporter of the War, but there is much to be said for the notion that the entire Middle East (save for the oil) is not worth the bones of either a Pomeranian Grenadier or a United States Marine.

Perhaps the way to deal with the Middle East is to go to the countries there that are at least nominally on our side and give them the option: cut the crap, stifle the 'death to Israel' and 'death to America' crap, and support us openly or we will leave, but we'll leave parts of the Middle East as a glass parking lot on the way out - any place we think may be trouble is gonna cease to be trouble in an instant.

Nah. won't happen.

[x]

The fostering of democracy by a Republican president only alienated his dour realist base. Yet his idealism did not even win as recompense faint sympathy from supposedly Wilsonian Democratic opponents. Indeed, they now sound like Bob Taft isolationists.

Huh? VD's categories don't seem to apply to what's going on now. The Democrats sound more like McGovernites. You might find "Bob Taft" sentiments among a few Republicans, though. "Wilsonianism" looks dormant or dead.

The fiercest critics of the brave struggling Iraqi elected government remain liberal Senate Democrats, not Republicans.

I don't think they're talking about the Iraq government much. They don't like Bush and just want out.