There is a great deal good that can be said, and should be said, about Victor Davis Hanson. Victor Davis Hanson has the right dislikes. His attacks on the American -- or at least the Californian -- university system are a pleasure to read. His contempt for those who are unfair to Israel, and his general take on the universe endear him to all sensible people.
However, much as one may permit oneself to admire him for the reasons enumerated above and for others still, there are elements of his writings that are not quite so winning. What is not endearing, and what has in fact been so disturbing and even maddening for the past 2 1/2 years, is his refusal to contemplate what the belief-system of Islam is all about -- even though in his writing he has made much of the influence of "culture" in explaining the success of Western man as warrior (those free Greeks, those serried ranks of Persian myrmidons).
He has not considered how Islam so completely molds both its adherents and the societies in which even those who are not full believers grow up and in which they drink in the atmospherics of Islam.
Had he done so, he would long ago have realized the truth of what I was writing here in March or April 2004. I began setting out exactly what would happen in Iraq and why it was inevitable: sectarian and ethnic divisions would appear more strongly than they had for some time, and those divisions cannot be healed. Neither Sunni Arabs nor Shi'a Arabs will permit them to be healed, though both will play for American protection, American military equipment and training, American fighting against their enemies under the guise of "protecting democracy." And furthermore, I wrote about why it was in American and Infidel interests for these sectarian and ethnic divisions to be encouraged -- the first being a kind of Iran-Iraq War (which should have gone on forever), with repercussions in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Pakistan, Lebanon, and the second with repercussions in Algeria and elsewhere in the Berber-haunted Maghreb, and everywhere that non-Arab Muslims have been persecuted, or treated with contumely, or have resented the linguistic and cultural imperialism of the Arabs, of which Islam is the obvious vehicle.
Hanson refused to see this, ignoring what his associate Bruce Thornton was writing in those "Private Papers." Hanson failed to see that the war in Iraq had been won, as far as Infidel interests were concerned, just as soon as Saddam Hussein was captured, his sons killed, the game of Fifty-Two Pickup successfully completed, and -- this is the main point -- the country scoured for weapons of mass destruction and for projects intended to produce such weapons, in the first case an effort of search and destroy, in the second case an effort of search and disrupt for a very long time.
All that was accomplished within the first year, and everything was then set inevitably in motion. It was time then to leave.
But this is still something Hanson has trouble with. Of course, he's much more intelligent than the smug Kristols and all those others who will keep prating about what "needs to be done" in Iraq. He has no need to obstinately defend the Administration for its folly, or its lack of low or high cunning, or its miscomprehension that this "war on terror" stuff will not do, and the "war of self-defense against the Jihad" (Jihad standing in, synecdochically, for "Islam") is what we are actually fighting.
Incidentally, I realize now that setting all this out, declaring victory, as has been done here repeatedly since late March or early April, 2004, should entitle the author of that victory-declaration to some kind of whistle-blower's award. After all, that author was trying, among other things, to halt the squandering of taxpayers' money (and the lives of soldiers). That should be worth something. A third of the avoidable hundreds of billions would seem like a lot. A million would do just fine.
Meanwhile, let's hope that Victor Davis Hanson, given his many admirers, begins to see the plans for Iraq as the hopeless -- and self-defeating from the Infidel point of view -- nonsense it is. It would help push the Pentagon and Bush and Rice into recognizing reality.
Hugh, your argument with Victor Davis Hansen is a chivalrous argument. I believe Victor Davis Hansen has no illusions about Islam. For example, he wrote:
"Politically, the Islamists accept that the world detests them — perhaps even the Chinese and Russians. But they also have discovered that much of the world finds them useful. For the Arab Street , macabre resistance to the West offers a vicarious sense of pride, especially if it is cost-free and does not completely forfeit access to Europe or the United States . Aspiring hegemons like the Chinese, or those in decline like the Europeans and Russians, enjoy it when America bloodies its nose, if for no other reason than envy and spite — and the hope that in the future they are given more consultation, befitting their prior status.
Oil is their best ally, or so the Islamists trust. The Iranians, even if shackled, boast that, Samson-like, they can pull down our entire petroleum temple upon all of us anytime they wish. The terrorists know that billions will always filter down from autocracies as bribe money into their coffers. And no gas-hungry American wants his Labor Day Winnebago parked dry on his pad because some nut let off a bomb in the Middle East .
But in the longer-term war, the Islamists have real problems. Their acquisition of weapons is always parasitical and can’t quite keep up with constant Western innovation, whether in the form of drones that take out terrorists sitting in front of their TVs, or anti-ballistic missile systems that might nullify Ahmadinejad’s nuclear blackmail."
Victor Davis Hansen has always been hopeful that thinking outside the box, the West can break Islamists of the cult of Islam. Hansen hopes that the Islamic masses will consider democracy as an alternative. Perhaps he is naive and should be more pessimistic about the outcome in Iraq, Afghanistan and everywhere.
Hugh, I share your pessimism. However, I find Victor Davis Hansen's optimism refreshing. A consequence of fighting for democracy in these countries is that if they do not accept it the criminal leaders are destabilized. If democracy fails it degenerates into the type of fight you describe such as we see in Iraq.
In a certain sense I agree with you that the war in Iraq was won in the first 30 minutes and the rest has been a mop up operation. While the press keeps harping about how the U.S. has failed this or that there, it misses the big picture that either Iraq will accept democracy or our enemies will be killing each other, a win win situation. It appears that the longer we are there and if democracy is not implemented, the Shiia and Sunnites will be at each other’s throats. This Shiia Sunnite rift appears to be widening through Lebanon and even between Teheran and Riyadh in a fight for Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem. The war in Iraq will either lead to democracy or will leave the west with no illusion that the religion of peace is at war with it. The jury is out and initial indications support your pessimism. Victor Davis Hansen however, in support of his optimism, in one article recently argued that no one would have been able to predict that the German people or Japanese people after World War II a generation of the heavily indoctrinated would have adopted democracy.
David England wrote: "...no one would have been able to predict that the German people or Japanese people after World War II a generation of the heavily indoctrinated would have adopted democracy."
The real enemy behind every barbarous happening in Iraq--Islamic ideology--was never defeated in the war. The "heavy indoctrination" that Mr. England speaks of, that was overcome in post-war Japan and Germany, continues apace in Iraq, and never really stopped there. Islam, of course, is the relentless engine of that poisonous indoctrination. Therefore, democracy is doomed to fail in Iraq, sooner or later.
Any reason for optimism in Iraq, from Victor Hanson or others, should have ended the day that the Iraqis enshrined Islam into their constitution as the primary basis of their law. Our humanitarian responsibility to the post-war Iraqi people ended on that day. They had their chance at freedom, and they blew it, not by some malevolent internal political plot or chance diplomatic event, but by calm and deliberate choice of the indoctrinated population. Victor Hanson, otherwise quite insightful, seems to be blind to the implications of that dreadful fact.
In my posting above, that was David England quoting Victor Hanson--My apologies for the mis-attribution. But the sentiment expressed was apparently a shared one.
"the war in Iraq was won in the first 30 minutes and the rest has been a mop up operation."
The only problem is, we have been forced -- by the dominant PC thought police that with so much polish police our culture -- to "mop up" with both hands tied behind our back, with one leg in a cast, with our eyes blindfolded, and with Muslims walking behind our every step to spill buckets of new sewage.