Just a partial list. More at the link: http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/victordavishanson/index
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/
That speech yesterday was dangerous - we are going to pay for such foolishness down the road.
Moral equivalence is neither moral nor equivalent.
"“On the one hand, on the other hand” — what Greek rhetoricians knew as men/de — when delivered in mellifluous tones, can suggest a path to reconciliation. But denial of fundamental differences leads nowhere."
For someone like Obama schooled in the Marxist or Hegelian world view, the effort is not just a feeble attempt at reconciliation, it is based in a belief that the antithetical views of differing ideologies will inevitably combine to synthesize a new system. But that synthesis is just a pipe dream. One or the other system will fall. If it is the West it will be brutally overtaken with hell to pay for those in the West who refuse to bow to Allah. If the West wins, it will result in bringing the Islamic world out of the Middle Ages.
"Over the short term, such revisionism worked; over the longer term, it ensured a highly destructive war."
Sadly, this will happen again. Likely though it will occur after Obama has left office and his Republican successor will be blamed for it.
btt
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Conflating Western misdemeanors with Middle Eastern felonies is classical conflict-resolution theory, and laudably magnanimous. But privately the world knows that Muslims are treated better in the West than Christians are in Muslim countries.
This mea culpa will not help. This will only serve to have Islamist demand more by saying, "see, even you said how wrong you were." We have done a ton to help Muslims (Bosnia, Somalia, etc.) while they have done nothing for us.
In short, few Arab leaders wish to give a “speech to the West.” They would have to take responsibility, directly or indirectly, for either fostering or appeasing radical Islam, while denying their culpability for its decades of mass murdering.
The first line is untrue. Ahmadinejad is more than will to stand up at the UN and rip our country to shreds on our own soil. As for the second part, of course not. They do not believe they are wrong! The Islamists wish to destroy our country and turn it into an Islamic state. Therefore there is nothing to "take responsibility" for. They are in favor of it.
He should be congratulated for expressing a desire for peace and for gently reminding the Muslim world of the way to reform, even if he did so while inflating Western sins. But the problem with such moral equivalence is that it equates things that are, well, not equal -- and therefore ends up not being moral at all. To pull it off, one must distort both the past and the present for the presumed higher good of getting along.