Selective Morality
When George Bush Sr. addressed an audience in Abu Dhabi, he was jeered and blamed for globalization—this from a country that can only exist with foreign expertise in a globalized world that finds, extracts, and sells its accidental petroleum fortune. What exactly have the subjects of the Gulf monarchies achieved without foreign expertise—or the armed forces of the United States that alone guarantee free and safe world commerce in and out of the Persian Gulf?
Last time a (French) journalist timidly asked Vladimir Putin about the carnage in Grozny, he was in turn invited to undergo a radical form of Russian castration, “I suggest that you have an operation so radical that nothing grows out of you again.”
So don’t expect the world’s liberal conscious to weigh in much on the latest poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko—done to a UK subject in London and in such a manner to top off the earlier medieval “oranging” of Ukraine’s Viktor Yushchenko. Russia, after all, not only has and sells nukes, uses energy blackmail against eastern Europe and the millions of the former Soviet Union, but, like the Iranians and the Syrians it arms, has a propensity to murder in grotesque fashion critics of its plutocracy in their own homelands. So it is much easier for a European or Middle East journalist to concentrate on the purported misdemeanors of a Donald Rumsfeld than the known felonies of a Vladimir Putin.
Expediency is back
So what passes for international Western morality these days? Not much. Not the reported $30 million paid in blackmail by the Europeans to Iraqi terrorists that went, no doubt, to replenish their IED inventories, dangerously low after so many attacks on Americans. Most pundits and journalists are warning more about Bush hurting Iran than Iran fulfilling its promises to wipe out Israel.
And where has the realist hysteria gone of the last month? We were supposed to talk to Iran, talk to Syria, bring in the allies, bring in the UN, bring in the Big Two—China and Russia—bring in anyone other than George Bush to solve the Iranian, Iraqi, Afghan, Palestinian, and any other crisis?
Crisis—What Crisis?
The problem, of course, was the last word “crisis.” What we announce as “crises,” our newfound “friends” consider “opportunities.” The last thing Syria wants is what we envision—two democratic and peaceful states on either side of Damascus with booming economies and free opinionated peoples. And the last thing a corrupt United Nations wants is the use of its global prestige in service of the liberal Western notion of self-rule and peaceful coexistence—a virus that would quickly doom most of the autocracies that comprise its own membership. The old imperial powers of Russia and China have discovered newfound wealth and influence in the global village’s madcap desire for both oil and “things”, whether knock-off video games or cheap T-shirts. One wants oil—acquired anywhere from genocidal Sudan to the Strangelovian Iran—the other wants its fossilized nuclear and arms industry to flesh out again by resupplying most of the weapons used in the fighting in the Middle East. Both agree that it is both psychologically gratifying and practically liberating to see the hyperpower United States checked and floundering.
Realism Redux
“Realism”, then, means nothing other than trading off our enemies’ interests in one place for our own assumed advantage elsewhere. (e.g., stop the Iranian IED supply in southern Iraq and we will lay off UN sanctions; close the Syrian border with Iraq, and Assad can creep back into Lebanon, etc.). All that is a fair, not an exaggerated, description of realism as we have known it. Syria was once invited into the first Gulf War coalition by our hands-off promises about its role in Lebanon. Kurds and Shiites were once let go in 1991 on promises to the Gulf monarchies to keep the old regional dictatorial order.
All this is hardly new to readers, but what is novel is the sudden liberal embrace of it. Why does the Democratic leadership seem to welcome in the thinking of a James Baker or Brent Scowcroft, especially since it once demonized realism, most notably the circumstances around the first Gulf War or the supposed Bush I failure to stop the genocide in the Balkans? Is it just petty spite at seeing GWB’s own turn on him?
Or is it a deeper malaise that modern liberal internationalism is neither liberal nor international. Lacking any real belief that the United States, now or in its past, has been a continual force for good, the contemporary Left hardly wants the rest of the world to suffer the American malaise of racism, sexism, homophobia, environmental degradation, and consumerism. That self-doubt is buttressed by the idea as well that confrontation is always bad, that evil does not really exist, but is a construct we create for misunderstanding, that the world’s ills are remedied by reason and dialogue.
In essence, the progressive Leftist is often affluent, insulated from the savagery about him by his material largess, and empathizes with those who are antithetical to the very forces that made him free, secure, and prosperous—as a way to assuage the guilt, at very little cost, of his own blessedness.
Darfur Again
We see odd symptoms of this progressive disease in the most surprising ways. Note the current agitating for intervention in Dafur—but without promises to “stay the course” when it gets messy (and it will); note also sermonizing about the killing there without frequently mentioning the culprits: radical and racist Islamists (notice the odd preference for the passive voice that thousands “perish” or “die” rather than Islamic nomadic and Arab nationalists raping, butchering, and machine-gunning them).
It is hard to know whether liberals are more scared of doing nothing while 400,000 “perish” or indirectly aiding George Bush’s trumped war against terror by lending their support to stopping radical Islamic killers, many of whose enablers in the Sudanese government were the very ones who hosted Osama bin Laden.
Our First Postmodern War?
Western exhaustion, guilt, and appeasement are nothing new. Much of the British aristocracy saw not much wrong with Hitler, even after the invasion of Poland. It was Churchill alone who put an end to their peace feelers to fellow travelers in Germany, still creeping out when his new British government chopped them off after the fall of France.
No need to talk about French politics in the 1930s, or the conditions in Austria before the Anschluss. Reread what Joe Kennedy or Charles Lindberg said about appeasement before December 1941, and it gives a frightening glimpse into the mind of a great segment of the population that thought it could ride out the European war, deal with a Hitlerized Europe, and live with Imperial Japan.
All that said, the West is encountering something novel, as it fights its first politically-correct war, in which all the postmodern chickens of the 1980s and 1990s have come home to roost. Thus multiculturalism makes it hard to fight non-Europeans from the former third world, inasmuch as it argued there was not just little distinctively good about the West, but rather the once recognized universal sins of mankind—racism, sexism, class oppression, inequality, patriarchy—were to be seen as exclusively Western.
If you have taught youth for generations that the story of World War II is Hiroshima and the Japanese internment, not Normandy, the Bulge, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa, then how can you expect a nation to fight an enemy without making a mistake? And if dropping the bomb on Japan to stop its daily murdering of thousands in its collapsing empire, and to avoid something that would have made the horrific Battle for Berlin look like a cakewalk is equated with the Holocaust, how can the United States marshal the moral authority to press ahead, secure that its killing of jihadists is a different sort from jihadists killing the innocent or each other?
Add into this dangerous modernist soup moral equivalence, or what we know as “conflict resolution theory.” It postulates that any use of force de facto is equivalent to any other. We see those ripples with this Orwellian notion of “proportionality”, that a democratic Israel must calibrate its response to missiles aimed entirely at its civilians by ensuring none of its own aimed at Hezbollah terrorists and their supporters miss.
Then there is moral relativism and utopian pacifism. The latter is the idea that we have finally reached a sort of end of history, where our maturity and education and bounty have changed the rules of the game, relegating war to the Neanderthals. Relativism is even more pernicious because it is anti-empirical and suspends all moral judgment: Islam is just one of many religions given to excess, not at the heart of the vast majority of killing and fighting now going on in the world at this very hour, from Iraq and Afghanistan to Chechnya to Darfur to the West Bank to Lebanon to the Philippines to Indonesia to India and on and on. A Timothy McVeigh is not much different from an Osama bin Laden; forget the former was solitary and exceptional, the latter with millions of sympathizers and emblematic of an entire global movement. Both by their resort to terror were, presto, relatively the same.
So it is going to be hard, but not impossible, to win this war. Why,then, as readers have complained, my dogged optimism?
For two reasons. One, all these nostrums are theoretical, and anti-empirical. Ultimately as lies, they will be disapproved by the evidence before them. A progressive can call the ACLU all day long, but after 9/11 if he stands in line at an airport gate listening to an imam chanting Allah Akbar as he and his friends board, our liberal friend will begin to worry. And second, our enemies have no intention of relenting. They smell blood and want our carcass, so eventually even the progressive mind will give up the pieties of peace and face the inevitable
A Footnote on WWII
At the recent D-Day symposium in New Orleans, on one panel some of us were asked why Hitler did something so stupid like declaring war on the United States? Indeed from hindsight it seems an odd blunder, when there were odds that America might just fight Japan alone after Pearl Harbor. Of course, Hitler was mercurial and without a cabinet to restrain him. But given what was known at the time—and those are the questions and realities that history must deal with—there was a certain brutal logic to his declaration of war.
America was unarmed, without much of an army, and with a history of appeasement that matched that of the European republics. U-boat commanders promised devastating results once they could hit convoys at their origins along the Eastern seaboard.
Germany had no navy. Once it seemed that Japan had polished off America’s, it would have an ally that could check the British navy and draw off its resources from the Atlantic, giving a vital breathing space for Hitler to finish building the Kriegsmarine.
Hitler at that point had only a one-front land war with Russia since the Balkans and North Africa were still irritants only, while the United States and Britain would have three with Japan, Germany and Italy. If Hitler were taking on the three economies of Britain, Russia,and the US, he had at his disposal everything–industry, oil, minerals– from the English Channel to Moscow, the dream of every failed European meglomaniac.
And while stalled outside Moscow on December 8, 1941, the odds still were that the planned spring offensive would see the end of the Soviet Union, especially now that the U-boats had open season on any supplies going to Russia. Britain had been unable to do any substantial damage to Germany through the air, and it was likely that American bombers would have no more luck.
And while Japan had lost nearly 10,000 in a decisive defeat in August 1939 against the Soviet Union at Khalkhin in Mongolia, there was still the possibility that Japanese infantry forces would tie down Soviet divisions in the east. Hitler also believed, and had always planned so, that war with the United States was both inevitable and winnable with advanced technology that would soon give him super battleships, intercontinental missiles, and ocean-crossing four-engine bombers.
Finally, he had a deep loathing for a multi-racial, “mongrel” United States that he considered populated by little more than Chicago gangsters and Texan cowboys. Apparently he had no concept of the inner recesses of the minds of a Henry Ford or Henry Kaiser and what they might dream up.
So mad, of course, his declaration of war was, but, given his conventional wisdom of 1939, understandable.
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43 Comments
Carl Cornejo:Where’s the Philosopher when you really need him?:
“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones togehter; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silent, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.” (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8)
Needless to say, NOW is the time to kill Muslim fascists wherever they intend to strike. NOW is the time to speak of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Iran’s sectarian puppetry in Iraq, Hezbollah and Syria’s machinations in Lebanon, the Darfur genocide, al-Qaeda and Hezbollah’s infiltration into America through Mexico — with finance and forgery help from Hugo Chavez — Pope-hatred in Turkey, movements among the Uyghurs in northwestern China, and even Islamic separatism in Thailand and Indonesia as fronts in World War III, a clash for civilization itself, Islam(ic fundamentalism) vs. everyone else. NOW is the time to wage total war against these thugs, casting off postmodern political correctness and cultural nihilism in the process. (For some reason, I now find “relativism” no longer strong enough to describe every bit of gibberish coming out of the collective mouth of the Marxist-emasculated Democratic leadership.)
Nov 26, 2006 - 1:40 pm WillyShake:I am enjoying Martin Gilbert’s enthralling book, Churchill: A Life and my reading now brings me to the fallout of the Munich Agreement. As you mentioned Joseph Kennedy, I thought this brief anecdote would be apropos…
Gilbert writes that Churchill was attending a dinner party where he overheard someone relating the words of Ambassador Kennedy to the effect that “when war came Britain, facing defeat, would surrender to Hitler.”
Outraged by Kennedy’s views, Churchill declared, “No, the Ambassador should not have spoken so…he should not have said that dreadful word. Yet supposing (as I do not for one moment suppose) that Mr Kennedy were correct in his tragic utterance, then I for one would willingly lay down my life in combat, rather than, in fear of defeat, surrender to the menaces of these most sinister men. It will then be for you, the Americans, to preserve and to maintain the great heritage of the English-Speaking peoples” (Gilbert, 615).
And so it is. Incidentally, Churchill was about 64 yrs old when he said those words, but I don’t doubt that he meant them.
Yet it is his description of the fall of Czechloslovakia only a few months earlier that fills me with the most dread over what we may do to the people of Iraq (& have done before to the Kurds following the 1st Gulf War!) if we abandon them. He said (in words that sound eerily similar to passages from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings):
“All is over. Silent, mournful, abandon, broken, Czechoslovakia recedes into the darkness. She has suffered in every respect by her association with the Western democracies and with the League of Nations, of which she has always been an obedient servant… [In a period of time] “which may be measured by years, but which may be measured only by months, Czechoslovakia will be engulfed in the Nazi regime…[Many people] “no doubt honestly” [believed that they were only] “giving away the interests of Czechoslovakia, whereas I fear we shall find that we have deeply compromised , and perhaps fatally endangered, the safety and even the independence of Great Britain and France.” (Gilbert, 598).
When will we learn that we cannot buy peace at the expense of the democratic freedom of our smaller allies?
Nov 26, 2006 - 3:55 pm Andy T:Um… Yes and no.
I agree with your characterization completely, both with respect to the nature of Islam and of the American liberal.
The problem, is that time is against us. Europe is slipping. Islamic-nuclear bombs are spreading. Russia is de-democratizing. China is imperializing. America’s WWII generating is dying. Righteous people de-populate.
The optimistic piece of your world view depends on some cataclysmic awakening. I believe that the path to our destruction is entropy. Lots of little battles lost everyday.
Time is too short. We must act now.
For me, the good news is that there is only one battle — Iran. Without Iran, there is a chance, a small chance, that Islam mellows without further action.
Nov 26, 2006 - 4:52 pm Bill Bradley:We obviously have very implacable foes.
But the Iraq policy having become a spectacular failure, what is the strategy for a military victory in Iraq?
I mean, I have a bust of Churchill in my office. It’s not laying out a strategy.
Nov 26, 2006 - 5:17 pm Al Reasin:My concern is that if 9/11 didn’t wake us up, what is it going to take; crude nuclear weapons in several ships entering US ports? And with our withered industrial base how do we recover if world commerce comes to a complete halt due to security uncertainties? Would we retaliate, and against whom, considering all of the hand ringing going on now over Iraq and our history of being the only power to have used nuclear weapons. I used to believe that we had a deep well of patriotism and desire to protect our culture. I’m not so sure after observing the acceptance of the media’s and the elites’ continuous self-flagellation some 5+ years after 9/11 and the preceding declaration of war in 1998 against the West by al Qaeda.
With my son deploying to Iraq for combat duty, I am now more than ever concerned that there will be a repeat of the 1975 abandonment of an ally and the discounting of the sacrifice of our military while the homeland suffers little deprivation until the time we are attacked again. Our citizens seemly refuse to believe that unlike the North Vietnamese, this enemy will follow us home, if he is not already here via our porous borders. I’m obviously not as optimistic as you.
Nov 26, 2006 - 5:31 pm Ritchie Emmons:Dr. Hanson, You mention that you’ve been questioned by people for your “dogged optimism” regarding this war vs Islamic radicalism. I for one am immensely grateful for it. Your dogged optimism is the main source of my dogged optimism.
I share the fears of many that we Westerners are refusing to fully appreciate the threat before us and will see terrible (avoidable) tragedies before we eventually stand up and apply a modern day Hiroshima/Nagasaki attack (same effect, not necessarily same form) to crush the Islamists.
Anyway, please continue your valuable writing. Your view of the big picture and sobriety are in such short supply these days. However, my guess is that you will be regarded by history to have been right all along. You won’t have many peers so regarded though.
Nov 26, 2006 - 5:39 pm Tom Wall:Prof Hanson, Interesting commentary as usual. Putin is totally ruthless and will do what he thinks is in Russia’s best interests and to H*ll with the rest of the World. Who’s to stop him?
I would like to add a timely comment regarding WWII.
This past August the submarine USS Wahoo was discovered off the North coast of Japan. Cmdr. Dudley Morton and his crew paid the ultimate sacrifice. The Wahoo was one of our leading subs in Japanese tonnage sunk or destroyed. It wasn’t always that way early on. Far from it. I read Cmdr Morton’s 6th Combat Patrol Report conducted during August 1943. He called it off and returned to base due to consistent torpedo malfunctions.
They were out 28 days, steamed a total 7,810 miles and consumed 60,733 Gallons of fuel oil. They made 9 attacks which only netted 96 Tons destroyed, and that was 3 small boats destroyed by deck guns. There were 6 torpedo attacks using the Mark XIV torpedo. All 10 expended either ran errant, broached, or bounced off the target which netted a fat zero.
They adjusted their tactics as the situation demanded (A concept MSM still does not understand). They perfected the 3-torpedo spread using different settings and took the battle back to Japan. Bingo, thereafter Japanese shipping caught Hell up one side and down the other. The rest is history.
Can you imagine what today’s MSM would have made of this? I’m guessing they would declare, US Naval Setback Signals Defeat in Pacific.
Nov 26, 2006 - 11:29 pm Dave Begley - Omaha:As usual, VDH hits the nail on the head.
Our cultural has been so, so damaged by liberalism that it has undermined our will to win and defend what millions fought so hard to achieve.
I read one really, really sick example of moral relativism in the ultra-liberal “New Yorker” earlier this month. Former Jimmy Carter speechwriter Henrik Hertzberg coined the word “Christianist.”
Now we all know what he meant by that.
Christians - especially that guy who stole the elections - are just as bad as OBL and the 9/11 murderers.
How could we be so blind?
Last time I read the New Testament, the Prince of Peace wasn’t leading an armed gang to chop off the heads of his opponents.
When I see something like that I think, “What the hell is wrong with that guy? How has the cultural sunk so low?”
Also, VDH’s review of Mark Steyn’s “America Alone” prompted me to buy the book. Well worth reading.
Nov 27, 2006 - 7:15 am T.Branin:I am an avid fan of your clarity of thought as revealed in your beatifully written pieces.
I am struck by the similarities between our Japanese foe of 1945 and the Islamofascists. Sadly another parallel seems to be that the same national mindset will be required to defeat the latter. The result will be ethno-cleansing on some scale. If this country could muster such at that time, it will do it again. I have met several returning Iraq war veterans. They are to a man intelligent, dedicated to the USA, and educated. Over 30 years of contact with Americans of all kinds in a public business, I know that the backbone to defend is there. What scares me is how many will have to die before resolve dominates our foreign policy. Therefore, I am doggedly optimistic about the good ol’ USA as I take a break from reading the New Testament and strap on my pistol and head out to the range to blow off some 50 rounds of .40 cal.
Nov 27, 2006 - 8:20 am T.Branin:Type correction: I meant to say “American resolve” dominates our foreign policy.
Nov 27, 2006 - 8:22 am Jake:Wow!! VDH discovered the world is full of expediency. Then he rants, for the 100,000x, about how the rest of the America hating world won’t understand our meddling and warmaking is really positive. Like Al Sharpton, he blames our problems on our critics: who by default must be racist or america haters. This from a “respectable” historian
Nov 27, 2006 - 9:01 am Jake:Nice to see all the fascist right wing whiners here, who label all critics traitors or appeasers, still whining about liberals like the brainless, fascist red baiters most of them are. What should we do about Putin, go to war? With all the blood on the US hands, where do you people get the self righteous, hypocritical energy to whine about Putin?
Nov 27, 2006 - 9:04 am Megs:I am not a scholar or great thinker of any means. I’m simply an every day woman going about my daily life, trying to do the best I can. If I avoid all news stories and talk shows I can pretend nothing out there threatens my way of life.
But I do not avoid radio or the internet - I can’t. It seems illogical to do so. Perhaps it is because as a young girl I was taught about WWII - and not just about the internment camps. We were introduced to a camp survivor in 8th grade. And my fascination with the time period held steady from that moment on.
And the parallels are frightening - and encouraging. I wish people would pay more attention to history and realize that appeasement does nothing but makes the situation worse. I wish people would not be so scared to speak the truth - even if it is un-PC.
I enjoy reading VDH because he knows history and sees the links to the future. I hope and pray that those in charge of foreign policy find this truth soon.
Nov 27, 2006 - 9:21 am Jake:Mr. Wall,
Nov 27, 2006 - 9:54 am Adam:your pointless anecdote about naval tactics is so unenlightning. Obviously you are too dense to realize the difference between military tactics and political tactics. There was no real political opposition to a war that the Japanaes started, unlike this one. Your employment of WW ll analogies is fascistic, dishonest and stupid.
Prof Hanson,
We get it. The left evil. Muslims bad. History of war relevant. Historical parallels telling. Battle for civilization ongoing.
And on and on and on. Now for the love of God, would you please write another column other than the one you’ve reprinted every single time for the last 4 or 5 years?
Nov 27, 2006 - 10:19 am Tom Holsinger:My understanding of Hitler’s decision was that he felt, after Pearl Harbor, that the U.S. would declare war on Germany at a time of its choosing, most likely in about six months after securing the Eastern seaboard maritime defenses.
The German Navy was on his case about a golden opportunity for U-boat operations against our Eastern seaboard, so Hitler decided to pre-empt us.
Which definitely resulted in the massacre of unprotected American shipping which the Kriegsmarine predicted, courtesy of the obstinate idiocy of Admiral Ernest King.
And Hitler definitely felt that he should honor the terms of his treaty with Japan.
I also read somewhere that FDR was aware, through MAGIC decrypts of messages from the Japanese ambassador to Germany to Tokyo, that Hitler had said he would honor the alliance and declare war. FDR therefore held off declaring war on Germany after Pearl Harbor knowing that Hitler would declare war for him.
Nov 27, 2006 - 10:32 am cfbleachers:Realism=isolationism combined with appeasement
Liberalism=World Populists fronting for Socialist governance of the West
When World Populists join hands with the realpolitik crowd…we are in for a battle for the soul of the West of far greater long term consequences, than any single battle against Islamofascists.
Modern day America…has evolved into a caricature of what it once was. We have money, but we won’t spend it. We have power, but we won’t exercise it. We have status but we choose to berate it. We have moral authority but we withhold it. We have enemies, but refuse to confront them. We have had our noses bloodied by pipsqueak bullies and we refuse to stand up to them.
We have a worldwide media to get out our viewpoints and we allow them to slander us. We have phony allies and we let them turn their backs on us. We have real allies and we turn our backs on them.
We are led by World Populists with principles of convenience. They aren’t Americans in anything other than name. EVERY view of America…is shaded by their revulsion of all things American. EVERY position by our enemies, is romaticized, scrubbed, filtered and spit back at us as “proof” that we are evil.
The answer is NOT isolationism and silently cowering and scowling in a cocoon. The answer is the same as it would be if we needed to go on a diet. There is no magic pill.
Starving ourselves in isolation is dangerous and ineffective. The answer is hard work, sensible diet and exercise. But this “new” America the Paintywaist…doesn’t have the will power, the resolve, the staying power, the principles, the attention span, the leadership or the gumption it takes to do the hard work and stick-to-it attitude to stare down the bullies. To stand up to them.
To say that AMERICA is the answer…not the problem. To defend ourselves against slander from within and the pipsqueak attack of bullies from without.
We have cowered at the mention of being called “warmongerers” from our seditious leftists. We are afraid of being marginalized…by the liars of the left.
We are getting whipsawed by the Mullahfia and their hired thugs…and by the Ministry of Media and their hired guns pimping for the World Populists.
We don’t have what it takes any longer…to be a true friend to Israel…or stand up to bullies within and without our own borders.
Frankly, we have been sissified. We lack courage, honor, loyalty, …as a nation. And we are presented with two choices.
1) World Populists: We are the problem, therefore…if you can’t beat them…join ‘em. We suck, so let’s be like THEM, THEY are perfect.
2)Realpolitik: We can’t stomach the tough job of being strong, let’s abandon Israel and our allies, slink back into isolation and hope the bullies leave us alone. If we shrink down small enough, maybe people will stop noticing us.
These are our current leaders. And, apparently…we are getting precisely what we deserve.
The Greatest Generation is dying out…and replacing them…are their spoiled, cowardly, ungrateful children. Where in heaven is the argument for optimism?
Nov 27, 2006 - 10:48 am Don Beier:Much has been stated, correctly, I feel, about the dire cosequences to the Iraqi’s,Israelis and Lebanese should we “cut and run”.
Nov 27, 2006 - 10:56 am tyree:(We here in the States must also then, be prepared for another homeland hit).
What I have NOT seen anywhere, is, what then becomes of TAIWAN? Does not a cut and run in the Middle East in effect, signal to the Chinese, that Taiwan will be abandoned by America?.
Then what?
Thanks for that, Professor.
Nov 27, 2006 - 12:29 pm michael:I hope a few of the “cut and run” set will read this and gain some wisdom. The Communist Party wanted the Democrats to win, Al Queda wanted the Democrats to win, the terrorist who took over the Church of the Nativivty wanted the Democrats to win. I hope the Democrats surprize these people and listen to our generals.
In Hitler’s Pope, the author says that, after the fall of Poland, the head of the German General Staff asked the Pope to deliver a message to the British Foreign Secretary stating that, if the Allies would restrain from attacking during an associated disorder, the Army would remove Hitler. Lord Halifax, serving in Churchill’s cabinet, replied that such an arrangement was ‘not practicable.’
Nov 27, 2006 - 12:30 pm Subsunk:Jake/Adam,
I guess Professor Hanson wouldn’t have to repeat himself if you would read and understand the threats the West faces. Since you don’t believe there is a threat, feel free to blissfully, ignorantly, and self importantly go about your business — until your head is separated from your neck, you are absolutely within your rights to do so.
Don’t scream like a little girl when the boogieman shows up, because the rest of us are taking precautions for ourselves. Your loss.
Subsunk
Nov 27, 2006 - 12:43 pm Chris Joyce:That was an interesting answer to the query about why Hitler declared war on the U.S. after Pearl Harbor. It shed real light on a decision that seems bizarre to the contemporary observer.
Both Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan underestimated their adversaries. Probably both expected the U.S. (and the other democracies) to be tied up by internal divisions — the way it is today, the way it was in Vietnam, and the way it was until the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. That was the moment that the Communists and other leftists who had opposed the war suddenly did a U-turn and supported it. WW2 is the only modern war that the left didn’t oppose, which in turn enabled the massive collective effort that was so successful.
I’ve had to do technical and educational writing to deadlines. The experience has made me humble regarding typos and other errors. Nonetheless, it’s jarring to see the adjective “conscious” used in place of the noun “conscience”. Please understand that this is intended as constructive observation from one of your fans.
Nov 27, 2006 - 3:36 pm Mike Devereaux:Hi there, Jake!
I am sure that in your world, Neville Chamberlain was not an appeaser.
Notice how I did that, Jake? Pay attention! It’s important. I didn’t name-call, as you did in your three posts above, with: “America-haters”, “fascist right wing whiners”, “brainless, fascist red baiters”, “self righteous”, “your pointless anecdote”, “unenlightening”, “so dense”, “fascistic, dishonest and stupid”, “hypocritical energy to whine” or refer to Mr. Hanson snidely via the phrase ‘this from a “responsible” journalist’.
Look up the phrase “ad-hominem” on Wikipedia as a means of debate style. I would like to take your three posts above and your picture - if you have a picture, please supply it? - and add them to the “Ad hominem” Wikipedia article. This would provide perfect illustrative examples of the concept of the ad hominem attack. Your picture would serve as an example of those who use the ad hominem assault as their sole means of debate.
(Hey, wow! Notice that I didn’t say it was the only means of debate you were CAPABLE of… I said it was just the only means of debate that you USE! I shouldn’t make that careful a distinction, should I? Obviously this makes me a brainless, pointlessly-hair-splitting fascist right-wing idiot, and I’m dishonest and stupid to boot. DOH!)
Nov 27, 2006 - 3:39 pm Andrew:I thought Hitler declared war on the US because he was convinced that the US was eventually going to declare war on Germany after Rainbow Five was leaked - presumably under FDR’s instructions as the president wanted to get involved in the European front. Hitler learned from Rainbow Five disinformation that the Americans wouldn’t be ready for a military assault on Germany until 1943. So he struck while he thought he’d a good chance of winning. That’s one theory.
Nov 27, 2006 - 3:59 pm Kristan:Jake:
:::With all the blood on the US hands, where do you people get the self righteous, hypocritical energy to whine about Putin?:::
What is that? Deliberate irony?
That’s just precious.
Nov 27, 2006 - 4:39 pm wanderer:Tose moral Europeans have always got overly excited by dubbing Americans cowboys, The Euroelites have long been blind and watch to many of the depicable low brow American movies and take them for authentic it seems.
Nov 27, 2006 - 4:54 pm Ben:Is Jake really a liberal, or a sneaky right wing satirist?
Nov 27, 2006 - 5:01 pm Rob Mandel:Professor,
One note about Hitler and his declaration of war: we had been “at war” with him for over a year. As I teach in my high school history classes (yes, some of us who teach history actually know it), FDR had been directly aiding Britain for over a year, in violation of the Neutrality acts. We had been sending them war materiel as well as food, etc. Plus, we had been patrolling the western Atlantic, firing on U-boats, and sending our planes to patrol beyond destroyer range. Odd really that everything Bush is accused of doing, FDR actually did. Thankfully, he did. Anyways, we had been at war with Germany for quite a while before Dec. 8, 1941.
Nov 27, 2006 - 10:02 pm JimM:In the south the name “Jake” denotes an ignorant person with little or no education. Which seems born out by this Jake’s postings. Only ignorant people resort to name-calling when they lack a vocabulary which enables them to express their thoughts in a debate.
Both Jake and Adam write like teenagers who have heard just enough adult conversation to get them into trouble.
Nov 27, 2006 - 10:44 pm Junius:Any one who thinks that the above posts which are critical of DVH are those of a “right wing satirist” and not that of a “liberal” is one unfamiliar with the language of real “liberals”, or more properly, “Progressives”.
But I digress from my main point: In American history anelection seen as a vote for “Peace” always results in an escalated war. In 1964 LBJ & the Democrats were the “peace” ticket, and in 1965 the Vietnam war took off; in 1916 Woodrow Wilson and the Democrats were the peace party, and in 1917 we went to war; in 1862 the anti-war Democrats “thumped” the party of Lincoln, and in 1863 Lee invaded the North; and in 1812, the a coalition of Federalists and anti-war Northern Democtatic-Republicans came within a breadth of defeating James Madison, and in 1814 the White House was burned to the ground. And so the violence escalates and will intensify in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Nov 27, 2006 - 10:58 pm Jake:Excuse me, but most of you utterly predictable and stupid right wing comments are so banal and stupid, it makes me wonder if you are really competent adults or just overgrown kids playing with Daddies guns and computers. But what made you think I am an appeaser? Who is being appeased? Your WW ll analogies are utterly false and irrelevant. By the way, did you trogs know that Churchill got to be PM when Parliament gave Chamberlain a vote of no confidence because of the disastorous Norway campaign? A campaign that was 1st Sea Lord Churchill’s brainchild, like Gallipoli? As far as ad hominem attacks go, you right wing fascist morons are the experts, so you should know!
Nov 27, 2006 - 11:34 pm Jake:Funny,
Nov 27, 2006 - 11:38 pm Tom Grey - Liberty Dad:But when many notable “patriots”(AKA: Bushbotic morons) suggest we abandon Taiwan and South Korea so we can fight in Iraq, it makes me wonder about how committed they are to freedom AND our closest allies
Professor,
I think the “moral equivalence” started just after WW II, with the formation of the United Nations, and the moral elevation of non-democracy the USSR as equal to the democratic USA.
The world needs a World Cop — a Human Rights Enforcement Group, composed of democracies only. The UN should be getting half of its US support cut each year until it, without the USA, solves the Darfur (not-quite) genocide.
From Dickens thru Marx thru Galbraith, “rich capitalists are immoral” has been a constant refrain of the elites, including many successful capitalists.
The EU wants to Free Ride on US defense effort, while pretending that the US imperfections are proof of immorality. The US needs India, especially, to become a closer democratic ally.
Probably after Tel Aviv is nuked, more of the West will “wake up” — but it’s also clear that many elites are preparing their excuses. ‘Israel is guilty, so the (successful rich capitalist) Jews deserved it.’
I think the USA needs to occupy the oil producing Iranian land and impose Free Press and Free Religion, as well as local only democracy and local based security. But I don’t believe the Dem party is willing to discuss ways of stopping, with force, Iran from getting the bomb.
Nov 28, 2006 - 2:03 am Improbulus Maximus:I advise everyone to carefully consider the whinings of Jake, et al, because those are the words of the enemy among us, of whom Cicero spoke: A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and he carries his banners openly against the city. But the traitor moves among those within the gates freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears no traitor; he speaks in the accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their garments, and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation; he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city; he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared. The traitor is the carrier of the plague.
Nov 28, 2006 - 5:14 am Becky:Our fools, ambitious, and traitors are all pretty much the same people now, and they have learned that the best way to attain absolute power is to align with all of our enemies. We shall soon be at war within our own borders, and Jake and his kind will be out with the muslims, fire-bombing churches and murdering people, but not out of a desire to serve the muslims’ moon god, but out of pure hatred for the culture that has given them the breath and right to complain. They are hateful, ungrateful, petulent brats, and can be treated no different from any other enemy.
This war, coming to a homeland nearest you, will be different than any other we have fought here in America. The problem is that it will be tough to know who the enemy is. We are fighting Islamofacism. Okay. But many Muslims want democracy and peace and are willing to fight for it. Many of them are helping us in Iraq.
In our current environment with legions of the likes of Jake (uninformed and high on a inferiority/superiority complex), it will be tough to determine who is the good guy and who is the bad guy. While Jake may get onboard at somepoint when he feels himself threatened, many other Jakes will get an even higher superiority fix by joining the radicals. We see this in every city in America - liberals shaking bloody hands and proclaiming themselves “progressive” for doing so.
In reality, we aren’t fighting “Muslims”, we are fighting for our freedoms and a democratic way of life. We will be fighting a ruthless enemy in an age of weapons of mass destruction. They need only a few suicidally self-righteous among them to kill millions with pathogens, WMDS or chemicals in our water supply.
In the end, this will be a fight against those of us unwilling to surrender our freedoms and lifestyle to a state, warlord, totalitarian dictator, or king, or any other tyrant. The problem will be that, unlike other wars, it will be difficult to know where our family members and neighbors stand - be they Muslims, Christians, Jews, white, black or purple.
Nov 28, 2006 - 7:33 am Anonymous:“…America hating world…”
won’t understand
“…meddling and warmaking…”
Nice to see all the
“…fascist right wing whiners…”
“all critics traitors or appeasers, still whining about liberals”
“…brainless, fascist red baiters…”
“What should we do about Putin, go to war?”
“…all the blood on the US hands…”
, where do
“…you people….”
” get the self righteous, hypocritical energy to whine about Putin?”
Excuse me, but
“…most of you utterly predictable and stupid….”
” you think I am an appeaser?”
” As far as ad hominem attacks go, you right wing fascist morons are the experts, so you should know!”
Stripped to its bare essentials, Jake (and Adam) read like a primer for all that I have been saying. Devoid of rational thought, hellbent on trashing America and all things American…and anyone who doesn’t agree with the playbook is marginalized. I am a centrist…and these people have turned me off completely. THEY are the greatest danger we face. Not the strawmen they try to create out of anyone who DARES to disagree with their puerile rantings.
Nov 28, 2006 - 9:36 am Roy Earle:Great read Prof, thanks.
I think the ‘progressive disease’ is partly the result of the way the leftist thinks. They appear to be unable to discern their own hypocrisy on any issue. For example, cheering for warmongers in the middle east whilst claiming to be anti-war, jet setting around the world whilst preaching about poverty or global warming, or the classic global anti-global movement.
Their mind set is nearly always subjective, and appears shallow and hypocritical to more objective observers. The decline in academic vigor since the sixties has allowed these populist ideas to progress without serious critical examination, and left a shallow and unthinking media.
Also, I believe that the teaching of hate is a central theme in ‘progressive’ education. You are allowed, even encouraged, to hate the rich, polluters, christians, consumers, jews, white people, and even ‘men’. Jake is typical of this type of uneducated hatemonger. The Fatman (MMoore) will be pleased.
Nov 28, 2006 - 4:14 pm Roy Earle:Also, on your point of Hitler’s declaration of war on the United States; Without having read up on the first hand evidence, I would think that Hitler assumed or hoped that declaring war would induce his Axis ally to declare war on the Soviet Union, quid quo pro.
Nov 28, 2006 - 8:18 pm Theo Boehm:In their characterization of Americans as divided, useless, lazy, and unwilling to sacrifice, the Axis leaders of 1939 weren’t wrong. They were just 67 years ahead of their time.
Despite his efforts to play Cato, Prof. Hanson’s elegant warnings fall on a tiny number of increasingly deaf ears.
It should be obvious by now that it’s all over. My admittedly cloudy crystal ball can’t see the precise form the denoument will take. I suspect, however, that Prof Hanson may live long enough to inhabit Atzlán, and that his beloved California will be abbreviated not CA, but AC in the language of his new country.
Nov 28, 2006 - 11:03 pm Larry:Y’all give Jake too much credit. Ad hom, flummery, gobbledegook and a cite from his 10th grade term paper don’t make a vital threat. I served 26 years in the USAF to preserve the right of him and his ilk to spout as much nonsense as they like. Jake, if you want anyone to take you seriousy, knock off the ad hom.
Good and evil do exist in this world. I firmly believe the USA, warts and all, is the strongest force for good in all of history.
Thanks, Dr Hanson, for cutting through all the crap and “telling it like it is.”
Nov 29, 2006 - 6:57 am Jonquil:“So don’t expect the world’s liberal conscious to weigh in much on the latest poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko—done to a UK subject in London”
Oddly enough, I spent the last week in London. Both liberal and conservative newspapers made the Litvinenko poisoning the top story for the entire week; the universal reaction was outrage, horror, and demands for government action.
Nov 29, 2006 - 11:42 am Improbulus Maximus:Becky wrote: But many Muslims want democracy and peace and are willing to fight for it. Many of them are helping us in Iraq.
Okay, so where are the massive, or even miniscule demonstrations by “peaceful” muslims who support Liberty and democracy? You could take all truly peaceful muslims in the world and fit them on a small island, so stop projecting your hopefulness onto our enemy and stop believing the lies of traitors. The only solution to the problem is total extermination, because that’s what they intend for us. As McArthur said It is fatal to enter into any war without the will to win it. Muslims will never stop trying to exterminate us, so we must exterminate them.
Nov 30, 2006 - 5:00 am Thom:Professor Hanson
When discussing the reasons behind your optimism, you do not state how far the “progressive” mind is going to have to be pushed to give up it’s cherished illusions.
In my experience the most powerful mortal force is the near limitless ability of the human mind to fool itself.
A successful conclusion of this war will only come when a supermajority of the combatants buy into its existance and the necessity of winning. The amount of death and destruction that will have to occur before that happens will result in the end of the American experiment as we know it. Certainly, my children will not know the affluence and rich life that I know.
As a thought experiment, I would like you to use historical paralells and discuss what an American President would do if our country was hit by some weapon of mass destruction, from either an known or unknown source. The only appropriate response would be an immediate and “disproportionate” one. Would or could our society allow it?
I cannot imagine a circumstance in the near term where such a response would occur. Only after repeated attacks, with progressively more damage and death reaching a civilization threatening level, would such a response be allowed. Even then I suspect most of us brought up on the mother’s milk of cultural relativism would still blame the attacks on ourselves rather than the perps.
I look forward to an essay or response on the above scenario
“The real lesson of the the Holocost is that when someone says they want to kill you, believe them”
E. Weisel
Dec 2, 2006 - 5:41 am