Victor Davis Hanson: Fantasyland

VDH ^ | July 2, 2004 | Victor Davis Hanson

[quidnunc]

We live in an upside-down civilization of hit Michael Moore conspiracy films, of novels about how to kill a sitting President of the United States, of elite American newsmen ridiculing brave Iraq democrats, and of allied peoples abroad who tell pollsters that they prefer beheaders and fascists to win in Iraq. Perhaps we should take a hard look at this current mythic world.

The “Iraq Was a Mistake” Canard

Richard Clarke now lectures his newfound paying audiences — including the revered nonpartisan American Library Association — that Iraq was an enormous mistake. Was it really?

Our problems are tactical and manageable, not strategic and fatal. After 9-11, ridding the world of a mass killer who wished to recycle petrodollars to remake his arsenal to replay prior invasions was no error. Nor was it an “enormous mistake” to put democratic reformers in his place rather than a Mubarak-like “moderate” or Royal Family. Iraq now is what the Left all throughout the 1960s and 1970s said America should be doing — and nothing is more saddening than to see earnest and courageous reformers of the new Iraqi government being grilled and pilloried on TV by smug American pundits and reporters.

So what is the problem? We were initially victims of our own military success. The war lasted not the envisioned 150-250 days, but three weeks. That unparalleled victory spawned a host of postbellum misconceptions, leading to disappointments by the standard of a 21-day stunning victory. We demanded similar quick fixes, not the slow progress characteristic of a postwar Germany, Japan, and Korea.

Assuming that the enemy was defeated, terrified, and humiliated, rather than merely temporarily discredited, we let down our guard. At least five errors followed from ignoring the old laws of war that one must first defeat, before reforming, an enemy. The human lapses share one theme: the half-measure designed to placate shrill critics at home, in Europe, and in the Arab world that only emboldened the killers who knew our minds better than we theirs.

-snip-

[quidnunc]

FYI

[Mr. Bird]

why and how it is that Middle Eastern, mostly Arab Muslim, youths kill Westerners worldwide—and yet Africans, South Americans, and Asians impoverished usually do not. It might just be that the stew of American appeasement, past Cold War support for illicit and corrupt grandees like the Royal Family, too much oil money too fast, Soviet-style statist remnants, endemic anti-Semitism, and Islam itself have all combined to create something like a strain of Hitlerism, which at this late hour cannot be reasoned with, but rather only destroyed.

Incredible that so many people are blind to this idea.

[Tolik]

Victor Davis Hanson:

...(5) Finally, we underestimated homegrown opposition to the war. Thus we saw little reason to confront it intellectually or morally. Assuming few here could identify with fascism, gender apartheid, terrorism, and intolerance, we forgot that forty years of postcolonial studies, multiculturalism, cultural relativism, and aristocratic pacifism in our schools and public discourse had imbued a real mistrust of the United States that was far stronger than any ideological revulsion to Islamic fascism. Shrill Deanism morphed into conspiratorial Moorism and finally ended up as the canonical outrage of the Democratic Party.

Yet because the strategy—eliminate fascism and implant democracy—was sound, the tactical lapses can be reversed and the situation remedied. Remember, as historians we must do more than cite mistakes—otherwise we would have given up after Iwo or Okinawa—but rather adjudicate to what degree they are fatal to our larger purposes. And so far none are.

So let us speed up the reconstruction money. Help more Iraqis to get back to work and especially to appear on television. With the new government, insist on zero tolerance of killers in places like Fallujah. Accept that the antiwar left has never supported free elections in a post-Cold-War Hanoi, Havana, or Ramallah, and won’t in Baghdad. It will grow silent only when the violence stops, the terrorists are killed or routed, and the Iraqis are boasting about their own elections.

    Victor Davis Hanson Ping ! 

[Tolik]

Attention everybody, regretfully, VDH own site must be excerpted, as you can see here (from another thread):

http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/FORUM/THREAD/thread-history?thread_id=1161803

Thread History

Victor Davis Hanson: Response to Readership 6/28/04

Edited (Excerpt) on 06/29/2004 1:22:28 AM EDT by Jim Robinson
Reason:

Full-text posting from victorhanson.com not allowed. [Note: Excerpt by machine. Hit abuse if poorly executed--we'll select a better excerpt by hand.]

 

 

[Tolik]

No excerpting rules are so far set for the NRO.

[RAY]

VDH nailed it again!

[Steel Wolf]

Brilliant VDH, as always.

Let us face it: the Left in this country has gone absolutely crazy. Without worries of rebuke or censure, the dinosaurs of the 1960s really do wish us to give one final gift of their wisdom and humanity—and so does its best to bring us a repeat of American choppers fleeing the embassy roof, circa 1975, with millions left behind awaiting death, reeducation camps, and exile.

This is dead on. The far left is terrified of a world where invoking the word 'Vietnam' is not enough to strike fear into any conversation about military power. They need us to fail in Iraq, because their world still revolves around Vietnam.

The image of dead Americans, fleeing in defeat and shame, is the only thing that can restore their credibility. They will pursue that end by any means necessary.

Ask Moore.

[Paradox]

Let us face it: the Left in this country has gone absolutely crazy.

Thats the bottom line. I thought the Clinton Hatred sometimes (often?) displayed on FreeRepublic was a bit much, but the left has gone overboard, and nobody is really calling them on it! I remember all the talk about "Clinton Haters" in the national media, the VRWC. Where is the worry about the Bush Haters?

[CGVet58]

in the sense that these actions (royal family, intoxication of petro-wealth, etc....) were too much to handle, I would say yes, it is true. But to equate this with Hitlerism is a bit of a stretch, imo.

A Hitler could spring forth from a nation that had been harshly imposed upon in the preceding versailles treaty - which in itself is the ultimate dead-end expression of French Revanchist political thought. This might be the rub of post WWI politics; not that the depression allowed a Hitler to rise, but that the peace treaty was a severe extension of the bloody war, an "act-of-war" in and of itself, and thus a continued attack upon Germany.

How are the expressed conditions - in their admittedly short-sighted support of local tyrants like Marcos but still definitively a "containment"/defensive act - thus comparable to the reasons for the rise of Hitler? Frankly, I don't think this thread of reasoning can hold water well.

The irony is that - Iran excepted - Baathism is the poor bastard Arab child of Nazism. There are historical connections between Hitler's sponsorship of the "grand mufti of jerusalem", al-husseini during wwII (SS troops made up of muslim troops who fought in Russia, and in the balkans where they were happily carting away every Jew they could find to the ovens) that show this. But there was no need for a Hitler to appear in Arab history to give vent to the virulent anti-semitism the Arab world holds and has held for millenia.

Perhaps it's a question of semantics, but I must disagree with VDH on this one... primarily because one of the things that makes Hitler so distinct is the shock that such a monster could come from (a...) Germany that was one of the leading nations in the world and was admired in many aspects... and also, i think, because the fact that such a monster did arise from a people who were "like us" accentuated that shock with a reminder that it might happen here, too.

By contrast - again semantics - VDH's comments seem to me to presuppose that the Arabs were similarly a people of firmly esconced and high values - when the opposite is true. The Arabs were not and are not the Germans, not even like the current effete viral strain that populates that northern land.

The Islam that our history books recognize as a great civilization has been dead for 700 years, and no amount of millenial memory among the people (in deference to those who suscribe Bin Laden's reference to "the tragedy of Al-Andaluz" as evidence of long-term memory in the Arab world) can replace the actual experience of a people remembering how great they were so recently, then vividly being reminded of their fall through the daily bitter taste of defeat, then bringing to power a madman who promised to slake their thirst for a return to glory.

No, this is not hitlerism in the sense of a proud and wounded civilization recently stricken down... it is simply an evil cancer that has festered for centuries.

In the final analysis though, VDH is correct; it must be destroyed - and the Arabs who have wisdom should realize how lucky they are that it is America and not one of the previous superpowers who they contend with in this great struggle... because a Rome, a Mongol Empire or a Soviet Union would utterly obliterate them, terrorists and moderates alike.

[hershey]

Sounds like a plan to me!

[hershey]

They can't bear for a republican President to achieve victory in anything because they'll be out of power for the foreseeable future. Thus they trash each and every brilliant idea, even one that saves fifty million people. They have no integrity or ethical sense left. They're totally corrupt. Clinton for eight years and the prospect of Hill for maybe eight more has done them in for good.

[sd-joe]

VDH is the absolute best at saying it like it is.

[SuziQ]

Bump for later reading.