Posted on 01/04/2006 9:17:37 AM PST by Tolik
Let me address your complaints starting with your false statement "Democracy (in Iraq or anywhere), cannot be bestowed upon any group of people by some higher power."
That is not only inaccurate as it applies to Italy, Germany, and Japan, but also ignores South Korea, Panama, and more recently in Serbia and Afghanistan. It is not our first choice to go around the globe democraticizing, but when we find ourselves at odds with aggressive dictators, it proves far wiser to stay after their removal and encourage a consensual government than bail and leave a Lebanon or Taliban Afghanistan instead.
The problem I have with paleos like yourself is your neoconservative caricature of the present policy as something long planned out in advance. George Bush did not remove Saddam prior to 9/11 and was not part of the Project for the New American Century that sought preemption in the 1980s. It was an ad hoc policy that originated after we were attacked and our choices were between bad and worse — given 25 years of appeasement of Islamic fascism and the nexus between dictatorships, petrodollars, and terrorists. Finally, we are not quite imposing democracy, since as we speak millions of Iraqis have voted and tens of thousands have risked their lives killing jihadists to preserve their achievement. There is grassroots support for democratic reform; otherwise the elections would have been boycotted and the security forces eroding with desertions.
Then there is your childish statement "I have no problem with the U.S. securing other parts of the world that are oil-rich."
What does that exactly mean? Confiscation of the Saudi oil fields, carving out a piece of Iran? If we were to do that, critics like yourself would be the first to pounce; and installing a pro-American dictator, Shah-style would make the present Iraqi insurrection look like child's play. Precisely because we are not after oil and are promoting reformers rather than thugs we have confused and are beginning to isolate the al Qaedists. Your Neanderthal-realist policy would take us back light years and only ensure that we would have perpetual 9/11s. What the terrorists hate most is what is transpiring in Iraq and Afghanistan; what they prefer is your notion of a tin-horn pro-American dictator auctioning off his resources to American oil companies without any popular support.
Your final paragraph, "No noble war cause in this nation's history ever was evidenced by the very rationale for that cause changing with the seasons, sometimes on a day-to-day basis." is incoherent. If it says what I think you are trying to convey, it is also ahistorical. Lincoln did not sell the Civil War on the Emancipation Proclamation; Wilson campaigned in 1916 on isolation from the Great War; Johnson in 1964 infamously promised not to send "American boys" to fight in Vietnam. Sometimes when we strictly adhered to the original ante-bellum objective, such as Gulf War I's expulsion of Saddam from Kuwait, we only left a greater problem for a subsequent generation. The same was true of 1951 when Truman pledged not to pursue the defeated North Koreans and Chinese back across the 38th parallel, leaving us with the present 50-year-old nightmare that culminated in a nuclear North Korea. The fact is most wars metamorphosize as they proceed; few thought that the invasion of Poland in 1939 would end at Nagasaki or prompt a 50-year Cold War against a former ally. That we removed Saddam and then found an Islamic terrorist enclave drawing in global jihadists might have been underestimated, but fighting this second wave was surely in our interests both to allow Iraq to become a more consensual society and to ensure that we continue to kill and capture jihadists abroad rather than at home. Or did we simply win after Afghanistan and the war against Islamic fascists was over and won (or lost?) until we went into Iraq?
| We update questions daily in response to questions asked by the readership. If you have a question for Victor Davis Hanson send it to author@victorhanson.com |
| January 2006 Though I support the war, I felt disheartened by James Fallows’ recent article in the Atlantic about how the Bush Administration isn't taking the war seriously. What’s your opinion on that? Hanson: I thought it was disheartening too — but because it was the same old, same old “I supported my brilliant war, but not your flawed peace” sort of second-guessing. We can all list our Monday-morning insightful advice: better galvanize the public to accept that we are in a war, balance the budget rather than run up debts during a war, secure the Iraqi borders (and ours, too), etc., etc. But the fact remains that Saddam and Mullah Omar are gone; democracies press ahead in their place; Lebanon, Libya, Egypt, and the Gulf are facing a new world where reform, not cynical realism, is in the air. The president committed billions in aid to Iraq and a substantial chunk of our military. He is demonized daily for that, and magazines like the Atlantic, Harpers, the New Yorker, and others routinely publish “You should have done this” exposés by supposedly brilliant reporters. Meanwhile, we are left with the truth: no attacks at home since 9/11, a Middle East in democratic fervor, tyrants gone, and al Qaeda less popular than in 2001. So I’ll take the long view and await the Atlantic essay in 2008 about how the present efforts were mostly wise all along. |
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
Good thing we've got a Victor Davis Hanson on our side.
Reading VDH in today's world is like drinking an icy cold beer on a blisteringly hot day.
It's an undefined ideology, the definition of which depends on whom you ask who hold the label of being a "conservative." It's kinda like dividing by zero.
Dittohead, Snow Flake, and Bushbot, so what of it?
Who cares what Hanson thinks about other conservative issues? His areas of expertise include the growth of civilizations, the nature of warfare, the importance of farming families to a nation's strength, and in the present instance, the need to deal strongly with militant Islam.
He appears to oppose illegal Mexican immigration in part because it is bad for the Mexicans involved as well as for our country's security.
I think Hanson can be described as a social conservative, as someone who understands how nations grow and decline. There's no question about his patriotism and his concern that we should not grow decadent.
Thankyou for the ping. I enjoy reading articles by VDH.
Exactly what I was thinking. Sorry Angry Reader but running away and hiding from a threat is NOT a "Conservative" response. That is the reponse of the Hysteric Leftists not us.
What's wrong with being a reformed Democrat? I'm one. If you look around Free Republic, you'll probably find hundreds of us here.
Since VDH is a Democrat, I guess the guy is wrong.
Raised to be a committed Marxist by communist intellectual parents, Horowitz was in on the ground floor of Berkeley activism, and through his work as an editor at Ramparts magazine, he emerged as a key player in the New Left. He went on to become an active supporter of the Black Panthers and something of an intimate of their founder, Huey P. Newton. Yet today he is an outspoken political conservative who has supported many right-wing causes (such as the contras in Nicaragua) and been critical of '60s radicalism in general. It would be easy to conclude that Horowitz went from A to Z this way because he's superficial and unstable. Instead, as this moving, intellectual autobiography shows, his second thoughts about leftism emerged gradually as he experienced various aspects of the "Movement." The catalytic episode came when he discovered that the Panthers had murdered a friend of his, but even then Horowitz was slow to convert, primarily because he was heavily enmeshed in what he now views as the quintessential leftist habit of judging politics by its intentions, not its acts. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Those who were once on the Left are among the most effective conservative warriors. they know the mindset because they lived it and they know the arguments because they made them.
of course debate is healthy, and it flourishes on FR, sometimes to frenzied heights. your insular outlook on the innate superiority of born and bred conservatives does you no service. many fine conservatives have come from the bowels of the dark side and accomplished much for the cause.
"Democracy (in Iraq or anywhere) cannot be bestowed upon any group of people by some higher power. It has to grow from the ground up. Is that so hard to understand?"
You mean like in Japan, among several other nations?
What an elitist moron. If democracy isn't reached by internal revoloution, it's not good enough for that guy.
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