Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Winning After All
National Review ^ | June 20, 2003 | Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on 06/20/2003 7:00:18 AM PDT by Ragtime Cowgirl

June 20, 2003, 9:00 a.m.
Winning After All
Despair is not an option amid the present chaos.

or about ten weeks now, the headlines of our major newspapers blare out something like the following: "Iraq Attacks Hamper U.S. Reconstruction" or "Increasing Resistance to U.S. Efforts in Iraq." Often the ominous headers add qualifying comparatives — "more" or "greater" — or apocalyptic adjectives and nouns such as "bleak," "crisis," and "chaos" — suggesting that the disorder is increasing geometrically, rather than incrementally.

Since we were told things in Iraq were getting "worse" after week two, one wonders what the daily reappearance of "worse" means by week ten — and when we will, in fact, arrive at the promised Armageddon. In the blink of an eye, we went from reading about the "massive" Shiite demonstrations, to the "irrecoverable" losses of the Baghdad museum, to the "reconstitution" of the Baathists, and now onto the sinister conspiracy concerning the temporary absence of Weapons of Mass Destruction.

As we glance down the page, the Iraqi news is now often framed by a suicide bombing in Israel — more recently with new combined attacks that unite the various terrorists groups into something like Murder, Inc. And then there is always the Afghan story of the assassination or suicide bombing of aid workers, peacekeepers, or soldiers who at great risk and cost to themselves are trying their best to help Afghans faster than other Afghans can hurt them. Often, a pundit — stung by past refutation of his hysterical predictions of defeat by the Taliban or thousands of dead in Iraq with millions of refugees — will seek to reclaim credibility by gleefully noting that things are no better than before our actions.

In reaction to this depressing daily fare, I often receive dozens of e-mails, phone calls, and questions during interviews that I could sum up as something like: 'Why don't we just leave them to themselves and go home?' The more systematic thinkers, sensing that such a solution is at best knee-jerk and incomplete, will add, "And then if they still attack us again, we can always hit back, bomb them, and leave."

I could summarize the anguish as something like a preference for a perpetual, but passive, Middle East no-fly zone, where American military forces contain rogue regimes and terrorists, without setting foot into the quagmire itself, thereby avoiding costs and deaths, and the inevitable charges of "occupation," "interference," or "imperialism."

Americans cannot be blamed for their exasperation. In Afghanistan #1 we once kept our distance, armed the locals to fight Russian expansionist Communism on their own, left when the common enemy was defeated, accepted noninterference in Afghan affairs — and were blamed as cynical Cold War realists when the inevitable chaos followed. In Afghanistan #2, we defeated an equally odious force, stayed on to promote consensual government, attempted to provide aid — and are now being blamed as either cynical imperialists who lust after some mythical pipeline or naïve Pollyannas who are squandering blood and treasure to change people who cannot be changed.

In Iraq #1 we stayed within U.N. mandates, limited our response, went home after Kuwait was freed — and were censured for allowing Shiites and Kurds to be butchered and not going to Baghdad when the road was open and the dictator tottering. In Iraq #2 we removed the tyrant at less cost than the liberation of Kuwait during the earlier war, stayed on to ensure freedom and fair representation for various groups — and are being castigated for either using too little force to ensure needed order or too much power that stifles indigenous aspirations and turns popular opinion against us.

The answer to this dilemma is to accept that whatever we do, we shall be blamed for either too little or too much attention. Such are the inevitable wages of envy and resentment that the successful always earn from the weak and failed. That being said, there are also a number of other reasons why at the present juncture we must press ahead, contain our anger, and try to finish the nearly impossible — and absolutely thankless — task of defeating terrorists, and in Afghanistan and Iraq restoring humane government to tyrannized people.

First, the events of September 11 demonstrate that Clintonian lip biting and a few cruise missiles amid Middle East aggression earns disdain, not thanks, for magnanimity. Leave a Taliban Afghanistan alone or let Saddam's Iraq be, and in a decade you win 20,000 al Qaeda operatives training with impunity and the sons of Saddam re-armed with nuclear weapons, unless one prefers another twelve years of 350,000 sorties and $20 billion in no-fly-zones — three or four times over. The Middle East is not static and will not cease its anti-Americanism if left to its own good graces — inasmuch as the conditions that promote terror do not derive from American provocation, but arise out of indigenous pathologies.

Second, neither is the Islamic world isolationist. Arabs and Near Eastern Muslims in the millions are desperate to emigrate to the United States and Europe. Fundamentalist clerics, mullahs, and theocrats are free to live within the confines of the Koran and in medieval bliss without their cell phones, antibiotics, glasses, televisions — and sophisticated weapons — that are either imported or indigenously produced on borrowed Western designs. But they do not — and will not.

So the problem is with their hypocritical and vocal leadership, not us — specifically their ambiguous relationship with the West and their creepy desire for Western material comforts, but not the underlying foundations of secularism, gender equity, consensual government, freedom, capitalism, and transparency that alone produce such prosperity. The best way to get America and the West out of millions of Islamic lives is not to burn effigies of George Bush in the Arab Street, but would be for Arab governments to prohibit immigration to the West, to stop importing Western material goods, and to bar decadent Westerners from entering Arab countries.

Any takers? The bitter truth is that the Middle East wants the West far more than the West the Middle East.

Third, we must not necessarily confuse the activities of the Taliban, the Baathists, Hezbollah, and other Dark-Age cadres with the majority wishes of the Arab people. Privately, most folks of the region desperately want Western freedom, medicine, entertainment, education, transportation, and consumer goods. If given ample respect and consideration, they will confess that their own theocracies and autocracies, not Western colonialists, are culpable for failing to provide the security and prosperity necessary to accommodate their exploding populations.

But poverty, corruption, ignorance, and disease, as well as good old zealotry, pride, and hysteria, can all combine to lead the throng to welcome demagogues and pseudo-reformists — consider the West's own nightmare with Mussolini or Hitler. The angry and ignorant will always be misled by mad clerics and uniformed thugs if they offer easy solutions without costs, specifically that the easily blamed Jews and Americans, and not their own incompetence and venality, are the real sources of their catastrophe.

The Middle Eastern Street should accept that ultimately if the chilling rhetoric of an Iranian mullah, Saddam Hussein, or Hamas is followed by commensurate bellicose actions, then the response will be a super-Hornet with a pod of GPS bombs — and utter military defeat. The key is to allow the Middle East choices — isolation from the West, or peaceful coalition and interaction under their own auspices, or military defeat and subsequent regime change should their terrorists and leaders seek to threaten, attack, or kill Americans.

Fourth, for all the doom and gloom we are making amazing progress. If on the evening of September 11th, an outside observer had predicted that the following would transpire in two years, he would have been considered unhinged: Saddam Hussein gone with the wind; democratic birth pangs in Iraq; the Taliban finished and Mr. Karzai attempting to create constitutional government; Yasser Arafat ostracized by the American government and lord of a dilapidated compound; bin Laden either dead or leading a troglodyte existence; all troops slated to leave Saudi Arabia — and by our own volition, not theirs; Iran and Syria apprehensive rather than boastful about their own promotion of terror; and the Middle East worried that the United States is both unpredictable in its righteous anger and masterful in its use of arms, rather than customarily irresolute and reactive.

Finally, do not expect to read headlines like "85% of Baghdad's Power Restored," "Afghan Women Enroll in Schools by the Millions," or "Americans Put an End to Secret Police and Arbitrary Executions in Iraq." It is not the nature of the present generation of our elites — so unlike our own forefathers in postwar Japan or Germany — to express confidence in our culture, much less in the moral nature of our struggle to end the conditions that caused this war.

Between 1946 and today there are, after all, too many books, academic departments, careers, reporters, and anchormen who have institutionalized notions of moral equivalence, multiculturalism, and Western pathology from a safe and comfortable distance. But all that pessimism and self-doubt does not mean that we are failing, or that we should cease our present efforts. In fine, we are now engaged in one of the most ambitious, perilous, and radical undertakings in our history — and we are ever so slowly winning.



TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Editorial; Foreign Affairs; Front Page News; Government; News/Current Events; Philosophy; Politics/Elections; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: mediabias; postwariraq; victordavishanson
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-4041-47 next last

1 posted on 06/20/2003 7:00:21 AM PDT by Ragtime Cowgirl
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: Ragtime Cowgirl
The key is to simply not care about "world opinion." The world wants us to do nothing and accept being attacked. Anything else, and we are "hated" and receive high "negative" ratings because we "interfere" or are "imperialists." The rest of the world does not like anyone that can impose its will on others in any way. This is something the liberals do not seem to understand - they think we can be strong and loved globally at the same time. That is an impossibility.

To be strong and secure, it is necessary to disregard world opinion. I'm sure the Romans were far from loved when they instituted the Pax Romana and would have suffered from high global "disapproval" ratings if such were available then, but Rome sure benefited from its strength.

2 posted on 06/20/2003 7:08:33 AM PDT by KellyAdmirer
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Miss Marple; Howlin; mystery-ak; annyokie; Radix; McGavin999; ALOHA RONNIE; Grampa Dave; ...
Victor Davis Hanson ping!

Maj. Gen. Odierno Videoteleconference from Baghdad [4th ID ~ Our troops rock!] (What's really going on in Iraq today.)
3 posted on 06/20/2003 7:09:25 AM PDT by Ragtime Cowgirl ( "The overwhelming majority of the Iraqi people are happy to see us there." Jay Garner, June 18.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Ragtime Cowgirl
The answer to this dilemma is to accept that whatever we do, we shall be blamed for either too little or too much attention. Such are the inevitable wages of envy and resentment that the successful always earn from the weak and failed. That being said, there are also a number of other reasons why at the present juncture we must press ahead, contain our anger, and try to finish the nearly impossible — and absolutely thankless — task of defeating terrorists, and in Afghanistan and Iraq restoring humane government to tyrannized people.

Of course, a more obvious answer - and one more in keeping with the principles and Constitution of the US - is keep out of places we have no business being.

4 posted on 06/20/2003 7:12:21 AM PDT by Cacophonous
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Ragtime Cowgirl
Thanks for posting this.

Victor Davis Hanson has emerged as a man of truth, and a man who explains reality versus the bs spins of the left wing mediots.

5 posted on 06/20/2003 7:13:32 AM PDT by Grampa Dave (Support The Brave Iranians as they bring about a needed regime change!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: KellyAdmirer
You are so right about world opinion. We have a major US party (and the press) siding with the "world" over the US Constitution. Much is being asked of our few pro-American media outlets. (Thank goodness for Al's invention).

Hillary Clinton Attacks Bush, U.S. Intelligence Services in Overseas Interview

6 posted on 06/20/2003 7:15:28 AM PDT by Ragtime Cowgirl ( "The overwhelming majority of the Iraqi people are happy to see us there." Jay Garner, June 18.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: KellyAdmirer
I'm sure the Romans were far from loved when they instituted the Pax Romana and would have suffered from high global "disapproval" ratings if such were available then, but Rome sure benefited from its strength.

So are you advocating empire? If so, it would validate the Bush critics' claims that the war was just about oil, or water rights, or protection of the dollar. Are the President's critics wrong, then?

If we are to be an empire, let's do it right. No empire, ever, ever, ever conquered for altruistic reasons; it was strictly for glory, land and riches.

If President Bush is going to become an emperor, for God's sake, he should go out and declare himself so, as Caesar did in Rome.

7 posted on 06/20/2003 7:16:22 AM PDT by Cacophonous
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: Ragtime Cowgirl
Great article...now, on to read your link.
8 posted on 06/20/2003 7:16:46 AM PDT by mystery-ak (The War is not over for me until my hubby's boots hit U.S. soil.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: KellyAdmirer
I'm sure the Romans were far from loved when they instituted the Pax Romana and would have suffered from high global "disapproval" ratings if such were available then, but Rome sure benefited from its strength.

So are you advocating empire? If so, it would validate the Bush critics' claims that the war was just about oil, or water rights, or protection of the dollar. Are the President's critics wrong, then?

If we are to be an empire, let's do it right. No empire, ever, ever, ever conquered for altruistic reasons; it was strictly for glory, land and riches.

If President Bush is going to become an emperor, for God's sake, he should go out and declare himself so, as Caesar did in Rome.

9 posted on 06/20/2003 7:19:58 AM PDT by Cacophonous
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: Ragtime Cowgirl
Did some substituting this past school year in Elementary 4th and 5th Grade. My forte is Math, Science and Social Studies. I found the children interested in their studies but not motivated. My "hook" was to use stories to connect the moral lesson with the item to be taught. The Iraq war was of interest but to often they didn't understand the nuances of why we were there. Quite simply, they seemed to be effected by the liberal bias!

I was able to communicate the WHY by reminding them what Spiderman's uncle said about responsibility.

"With Great Power comes Great Responsibility"!

I pointed out that the US is the strongest most moral country the world has ever seen. Therefore, they must pursue their studies since they will have a great responsibility when they grow up and are give the reins of leadership, (okay so that was a commercial announcement but I stated as much!)

10 posted on 06/20/2003 7:20:49 AM PDT by Young Werther
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Cacophonous
Clinton ignored the threat from really bad guys intent on destroying our nation and/or our allies. So did Neville Chamberlain. They chose unwisely.
11 posted on 06/20/2003 7:22:07 AM PDT by Ragtime Cowgirl ( "The overwhelming majority of the Iraqi people are happy to see us there." Jay Garner, June 18.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: KellyAdmirer
I'm sure the Romans were far from loved when they instituted the Pax Romana and would have suffered from high global "disapproval" ratings if such were available then, but Rome sure benefited from its strength.

Pax Romana was not a policy "instituted" by the Romans, except that it was a direct result of their having kicked the shit out of everyone around them. It faded when the Empire faded. As all empires do.

12 posted on 06/20/2003 7:22:20 AM PDT by Cacophonous
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: Ragtime Cowgirl
Thanks for this Hanson column.He is a treasure.
13 posted on 06/20/2003 7:31:43 AM PDT by MEG33
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: KellyAdmirer
Further, Pax Romana actually began when Octavian (Augustus) defeated his rivals in the Triumvirate (Antony and Lepidus) and became emperor by proclamation of the Senate. Is that what you suggest for Bush?

As an aside, during the Pax,Rome (a superpower in its day) put the development of its citizens ahead of conquest. This was enabled by active defense of its borders. Will Bush do this?

Its neighbors benefited from the Pax Romana as much as did Rome, in large part because those that Rome did not conquer knew they could be conquered.

14 posted on 06/20/2003 7:31:43 AM PDT by Cacophonous
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: Young Werther
That is a great lesson to teach!
15 posted on 06/20/2003 7:33:32 AM PDT by MEG33
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies]

To: Ragtime Cowgirl
If I correctly recall, Clinton sent troops into the Balkans because Milosevic was the "latest Hitler" du jour. He was a really bad guy; had supposedly committed genocide. I suppose you supported Clinton's actions and our continuted presence in the Balkans?
16 posted on 06/20/2003 7:34:44 AM PDT by Cacophonous
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 11 | View Replies]

To: Grampa Dave
VDH?

Are you talking about the guy who claimed Serbia was a threat to the United States?
17 posted on 06/20/2003 7:41:39 AM PDT by JohnGalt (They're All Lying)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: JohnGalt
Have a nice weekend in your fantasy world. John Galt, FR's Baghdad Bob defending the third party losers.
18 posted on 06/20/2003 7:44:47 AM PDT by Grampa Dave (Evil Old White Devil Californian Grampa for big Al Sharpton and Nader in primaries!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 17 | View Replies]

To: Young Werther
"With Great Power comes Great Responsibility"!

You teaching the children...so cool! Thank you.

The American entertainment newsmedia is the most powerful propaganda tool in history.

The ACLU and "McCarthyism campaign" made it un-PC to tell the truth - what years of Madison Avenue, KGB, CIA, common sense and the Bible prove - we are absolutely influenced by what we hear and see.

The left is playing the same game they played during Vietnam - dissing our troops, defending our enemies...only this time we have access to our own sources and our own small voice on the world stage.

19 posted on 06/20/2003 7:45:01 AM PDT by Ragtime Cowgirl ( "The overwhelming majority of the Iraqi people are happy to see us there." Jay Garner, June 18.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies]

To: Cacophonous
You seem to be attacking a straw man for some reason in order to get in digs about President Bush, while completely evading the point - if a poll were possible about Rome while it ruled the Mediterranean world, no doubt everyone outside its borders would have wildly "disapproved" of them - just as everyone internationally appears to disapprove of us now.

So, feel free to go on with your "empire" tangent, which obviously is never going to happen, which has nothing to do with anything I posted.

20 posted on 06/20/2003 7:45:15 AM PDT by KellyAdmirer
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-4041-47 next last

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.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson