Victor Davis Hanson: Response to Readership, complete log for August 2004

victorhanson.com ^ | August 2004 | Victor Davis Hanson

[Tolik]

This is VDH's complete log of the Response to Readership for August 2004. We must excerpt victorhanson.com, so this is just a teaser, click on the link to read the answers.

Just some of the questions he answered:
 

• Isn't the Iraqi government making the same mistake with Sadr that the Weimar government made with Hitler, trying to rein him in by promising him a position in government? I see only trouble ahead with this situation, Sadr's forces neither defeated nor humiliated, but legitimized. Shouldn't the Imam Ali shrine have been bombed weeks ago?

• What do you think the ancient Greeks would think of the modern Olympics?

• Isn't a "unified" Iraq doomed to fail because of religious and tribal conflict?

• What is the reason for the current mayhem being perpetrated by Muslim against Muslim in Iraq?

• If John Kerry wins the election, have you seen any indications that he will have the moral clarity and sense of mission to follow through for the Iraqi people, continue the war on terrorism, and actively oppose Middle Eastern autocracy and fight for Western reform?

• In your estimation how many people have lost their lives because of leftist policies and media coverage?

• The new-new left seems to derive its animus from a spiritual emptiness brought about by the material success of Western culture. Haven't we seen all of this before? Isn't Gibbon's observation about Christianity filling the spiritual vacuum of a materially successful Rome an appropriate analogy to what is happening today? 

• Can you identify the collaborative forces behind the demonization of Israel and their historical origins?

[Tolik]

    Victor Davis Hanson Ping ! 

[fml]

If John Kerry wins the election, have you seen any indications that he will have the moral clarity and sense of mission to follow through for the Iraqi people, continue the war on terrorism, and actively oppose Middle Eastern autocracy and fight for Western reform? Hanson: I wrote about that in the current National Review magazine. In short, after the fumes of Bush’s resoluteness are exhausted about 2005-6 he would return to Carterism.

______________________

Shudder!

[gattaca]

I always enjoyo reading Hanson. I see him on the History Channel every now and then. I don't know how he survives in a liberal California university.

[Valin]

Do you know or have a guess as to the kill ratio in Iraq? (Americans to insurgents)

Hanson: I do not. Rumors of some 3,000-5,000 insurgents killed in Najef and Fallujah might put it as high as 100-1 in those limited theaters. Historically wars are not necessarily won by kill ratios, inasmuch as such statistics are interpreted different ways. At Tet, it was at least 50-1 in favor of the Americans, yet that military victory was considered a loss for a variety of political reasons.




I've been looking for the same thing for a while now. So far no joy.

[TopQuark]

I don't know how he survives in a liberal California university.

He is not teaching, as far as I know: he is with Hoover Inst affiliated with Stanford. Condi Rice and Milton Friedman (the Nobel economist who fought socialism all his life) are there also, and the place is far from liberal.

[Verginius Rufus]

Until recently he was teaching at Fresno State. He had tenure long before he started taking controversial political positions--and he was so good at what he was doing as a teacher and a scholar (his productivity would be impressive even for someone at a research university, which Fresno State is not) that it would have been very difficult to get rid of him for expressing his opinions.

[AZLiberty]

He combines the worst traits of an Oliver Stone, Noam Chomsky, Howard Stern, and Gore Vidal—and all wrapped up in one.

Not just the traits, but also the weights.

[AZLiberty]

Allow me to clarify my quote from Hanson:

[Michael Moore] combines the worst traits of an Oliver Stone, Noam Chomsky, Howard Stern, and Gore Vidal—and all wrapped up in one.

Not just the traits, but also the weights.