Posted on 05/01/2008 4:30:17 AM PDT by Kaslin
The gloomy election-year refrain is that America is mired in Iraq, took its eye off Afghanistan, empowered Iran and is losing the war on terror. But how accurate is that pessimistic diagnosis?
First, the good news. For all the talk of a recent Tet-like offensive in Basra, the Mahdi Army of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr suffered an ignominious setback when his gunmen were routed from their enclaves.
This rout helped the constitutional — and Shiite-dominated — government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki renew its authority, and has encouraged Sunnis to re-enter government. Two great threats to Iraqi autonomy — Iranian-backed Shiite militiamen and Sunni-supported al-Qaida terrorists — have both now been repulsed by an elected government and its supporters.
Our armed forces are stretched, but Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and his colonels are quietly transforming a top-heavy conventional colossus into more mobile counterinsurgency forces.
Petraeus’ recent nomination to Centcom commander suggests that, like the growing influence of Gens. U.S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman in 1863, or of George Marshall when he reconfigured the Army in 1940, we at last are beginning to get the right officers in the right places at the right time.
The despairing enemy seems to sense this as well. The more al-Qaida mouthpiece Ayman al-Zawahiri threatens the West, the more he sounds like Hitler's shrill propagandist Joseph Goebbels in his bunker as the Third Reich was crumbling.
In his latest desperate rant, a suddenly "green" Zawahiri was reduced to appealing to environmentally conscious Muslims to fault the United States for our supposed culpability for global warming! No wonder polls across the Middle East show a sharp decline in support for his boss, Osama bin Laden.
We haven't been attacked in over six years since Sept. 11, while the FBI has arrested dozens of jihadist plotters. Our elected officials squabble over the Patriot Act, Guantanamo and the loss of constitutional liberties. Yet, the odd thing is not the nature of such a necessary debate, but the inability of critics to muster enough support to repeal post-9/11 legislation and policies -- a tacit admission that these measures have worked and saved thousands of American lives.
But is the war then nearly won? Hardly.
And that brings us to the bad news. We still censor ourselves in fears of terrorist threats, mortgaging the Enlightenment tradition of free and unfettered speech. In Europe, cartoonists, novelists, opera producers, filmmakers and even the pope are choosing their words very carefully about Islam -- in fear they will become the objects of riots and death threats.
Here at home, our State Department is advising its officials to avoid perfectly descriptive terms for our enemies like “jihadist” and “Islamo-fascist” in favor of vague terms like “violent extremist” or “terrorist” -- as if we could just as easily be fighting Basque separatists.
Even more worrying, Americans cannot find a substitute for imported oil. The result is that $110-a-barrel petroleum is slowing our economy, weakening our international financial clout -- and sending billions in capital into the hands of our otherwise unproductive enemies.
The way to shut down Iran's reactor or its subsidies for Hezbollah is not necessarily through bombing but by getting oil back down below $50 a barrel, which would cut the value of Iranian petroleum production by nearly $100 billion a year and weaken an already weak economy.
Saudi Arabia largely ignores our pleas to help rebuild Iraq and cease its money flowing into the hands of radical Islamists. And why should they listen to us? After all, at present astronomical prices, their oil production is worth nearly half-a-trillion dollars a year — with Chinese, Europeans and Indians waiting in line to pay even more.
In all our major wars — except the present one — Americans have won through a combination of military prowess, correctly identifying the enemy and economic savvy. In the Civil War, the South was blockaded and starved of its cotton revenues, an effort that proved every bit as important as Gettysburg and Sherman's "March to the Sea." Germany was blockaded in both World Wars and cut off from precious metals, oil and food. The Soviet economy collapsed before its military could. Only in this war has our own profligacy empowered our enemies.
After years of learning how to fight an unfamiliar war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and to protect us at home, we are finally getting most things right. But if our soldiers and intelligence agencies have learned how to win, our politically correct diplomats and the American consumer haven't — and are doing as much at home to empower radical Islam as those on the front lines are to defeat it.
I simply cannot understand how it is not one of our highest national priorities to drill more oil in the U.S. and off the coasts. I cannot understand why we are not on a war footing to undertake this critical national task.
Here's the deal. We can win all the wars we want but what good does it do when we are transferring all our assets over to the enemy? And then, they turn around and use all those dollars we sent to them and fund terrorism around the globe and buy up key businesses and finance university research for their own nefarious purposes. They don't have to create anything, they simply, and legally, buy it all from us...to use against us.
Why does no one get this. In the day where everything is labeled a “crisis”. This is a genuine crisis. If not stopped we WILL pay a severe national price in about one generation.
We've cut our family's consumption of gasoline by about 70%.
Now if we could just convince our tree-hugging reps in D.C. to allow more drilling, a single gas blend standard, and construction of refineries . . .
After the 70’s oil embargo, I learned my lesson.
I started working out of my house in 1979 and never looked back...
and lets not forget nuclear...we could be energy independent in ten years and in fact, SELLING electricity to other countries; if we just put our collective minds to the task!
Since this day, the US has not shot down an Iraqi aircraft, an Iraqi Tank, or a uniformed Iraqi Soldier. Since this day the leader of Iraq has not been in power. Since this day the war has been over and won by the US. And since this day, we have been trying to establish a new government in Iraq.
And all that without any help from Iran, terrorist, or the demorats.
My understanding is the following:
Amount of U.S. oil consumption that comes from the Middle East: only three percent from Iraq and Kuwait. The rest of our imported oil comes from places like Canada, Venezuela, Mexico, Nigeria, Algeria, Ecuador, and England.
venezuela is an enemy. Not sure about the others. I know that iran and others in the ME benefit from high oil prices, but my understanding is that we are not buying a lot of oil from our enemies in the middle east.
Thank you. That is technically correct. However, as you suggest, the high cost of crude lifts all boats, so to speak.
We should immediately strengthen the dollar including ratcheting up the interest rates. Then we should drill all over the country and drive the price of oil back into the ground. Yet, no one really wants to do anything other than throw up their hands and say, “nothing can be done, blame the evil oil companies”.
We should be drillin in the gulf, of the coast of California and Alaska.
What I would like to see is for oil to be removed from the commodities market. I dont think that will happen, but I find oil to be to valuable to our military and our economy to allow oil producing naitons to control the price by the standards the market sets.
The battle on the homefront has not yet begun in earnest.
We are doing as much at home to empower radical Islam as those on the front lines are to defeat it.
Victor Davis Hanson Ping !
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/
You mean "...if we just got liberals out of the way!"
“In my view VDH get it exactly right. We have done some good things and have, by and large, won the war militarily. For some inexplicable reason however we continue to ignore the fact that we are transferring billions and billions of dollars to our enemies every month through oil revenue.
I simply cannot understand how it is not one of our highest national priorities to drill more oil in the U.S. and off the coasts. I cannot understand why we are not on a war footing to undertake this critical national task.
Here’s the deal. We can win all the wars we want but what good does it do when we are transferring all our assets over to the enemy? And then, they turn around and use all those dollars we sent to them and fund terrorism around the globe and buy up key businesses and finance university research for their own nefarious purposes. They don’t have to create anything, they simply, and legally, buy it all from us...to use against us.
Why does no one get this. In the day where everything is labeled a “crisis”. This is a genuine crisis. If not stopped we WILL pay a severe national price in about one generation. “
You, sir, have read my mind and expressed my thoughts more eloquently than I could have. Thank you.
It’s not all “we.”
We wish it were all “we.”
But there is a sizeable element in America that hates America and all America stands for and has stood for.
This element is in every way and every sense an internal enemy that has to be taken into account.
We definitely need to get back to “MADE IN THE USA”.
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.