“This is our ethanol”

So an exasperated Sen. Barbara Boxer screams that the farm-belt senators better support her regional selfishness in opposing California off-shore drilling against the national interest, in the same manner she went along with the ethanol boondoggle. Odd that she was so brazen in her confessional.

Jackson’s N-word

I give some credit to Barack Obama. His ‘hope and change’ mantra drives some to near madness and has proved a wrecking ball of liberal careers. First, in 90 days he destroyed the Clinton political machine, leaving Bill’s past 7-year effort at PC rehabilitation, after Monica and the pardons, in shambles. Now his success has enraged Jackson to the point of making a fool of himself and, once more, revealing himself as a hypocrite as well— and all but marks the end of that demagogue’s pernicious career of professional victimization as a shake-down artist.

Central California Haze

Some of the worst air experienced in my life (right up there with 1970s Athens and Cairo) lingers over the San Joaquin Valley this summer, all of it brought on by ocean winds that blew in coastal forest fire smoke from the central coast, along with a few nearby foothill and Sierra blazes. But for all the health alerts, there is oddly not a word about the ensuing carbon footprint, and the heat and soot destroying the environment.

I think we have more ash in the air than what a coal plant in Fresno would have produced in 20 years. And yet no one is talking about better forest management and the culling of trees and brush, or the need to store more water in new or heightened dams.

In the same manner that black-on-black violence does not earn the liberal outcry that the much rarer white-on-black violence garners, in the same manner that a “Men Working” sign is proof of pernicious sexism in a way that global female circumcision and honor killings are not, so too when nature proves a horrendous polluter, soot and ash are not soot and ash—but a logical byproduct of nature dealing with forest overgrowth, and a much needed refurbishing of floral ecosystems.

VP

McCain has certain requisites: the VP must be younger, more vigorous, have executive gubernatorial experience, know a great deal about the economy, be previously vetted and cross-examined, be more conservative and appeal to the base, be a proven campaigner without propensity to say silly things, have fundraising appeal and/or access to capital. If one were to collate all that with what’s on the shelf, then Romney seems the only likely choice.

Hillary snoozing but coiled

I think Hillary is still coiled. Given Obama’s sudden out-of-the-blue pronouncements, he is one “typical white person” slur or “clingers” rant away from jeopardizing the nomination. So she sits ready to strike, if he flubs up before the convention and terrifies his fund-raising base. One line can be lethal. Ford lost an election over his implication that communist Eastern Europe was free. Kerry’s “I was for it before I was against it” mish-mash doomed him. Carter’s loss of his inordinate fear of communism came back to haunt him in the 1980 election.

Hope and Change

To the degree Obama can call for “hope and change” in front of huge crowds in teleprompted set cadences, he will win; to the degree he at last must debate, do town halls, and do tough interviews, he will lose.

Who wouldn’t be for hope and change given the dismal news about the anemic dollar, the two wars, the huge trade deficits, the mortgage crisis, and so on?

But the problem with Obama’s relief package is that it seems to make things worse not better. Why pull out of Iraq now when a stable government is in sight and US casualties have nosedived? A trillion in new taxes to fund a trillion in new entitlements is not going to reduce the annual deficit, but it will stifle economic growth. In times of slow growth, the idea that we would raise simultaneously income, payroll, capital gains, and inheritance taxes makes no sense. More “oppression studies” and ethnic theme charter high schools are exactly what we don’t need for our undereducated youth—unless one thinks more therapy and less knowledge-based learning will save our students.

More competition and personal responsibility and initiative, not more centralized government control, is essential to reduce health care costs. As for NAFTA, FISA, gun control, campaign financing reform, capial punishment, late-term abortions, etc. you figure out what Sen. Obama wants, since I cannot. As far as bipartisanship, McCain has the record (ask his furious conservative base), Obama the rhetoric.

No blood for what?

One of the strangest things about the antiwar opposition is the charge that the Iraq war caused the oil price explosion. I say strange, since heretofore the Left had argued that we went into Iraq to guarantee cheap oil!

But more to the point, the supply of oil has not decreased since 2003, but grown by about 5 million per day. Even Iraqi oil is now in greater supply than before the war. The most likely culprit is instead increased demand—fueled by the growing appetites of India and China over the last five years, the global economic expansion and its need for energy, and traders’ perceptions that US demand would always increase while our production would continue to decrease. From time to time, incidents in Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon, or Iran can spike prices, but the rise was due to more fundamental problems.

Note as Iraq quiets down and its government stabilizes, there will not be a corresponding decline in oil prices on the theory the region is stable.

ANWR

There are a number of reasons to drill in ANWR:

1) The logic of “it only might provide a million barrels a day” is flawed when we beg the Saudis to pump another 300,000 to calm markets that are jittery and deal often in symbolism. The US willingness to drill there and add another million to the global pot would reverse the present psychology that we will always use more and ask the world to provide us with the increase.

2) “It will take ten years.” Such a reductionist answer could be applied to every liberal nostrum from global warming to solar and wind. The point is that should we start now on solar, wind, ANWR, coastal and shelf drilling, tar sands, shale, coal, nuclear, so that very soon each year, each new asset will kick in and soon we won’t have a nearly trillion dollar foreign energy bill. At some point do we have any national pride–giving away $140 a barrel to those who hate us and who pump it at $5 a barrel and who did not find or develop it?

3) We need to cease our hypocrisy in which we won’t drill for environmental reasons that only puts increased pressures on those who will for money and with absolute no concern about the global environment. And we should drill as much as possible both to collapse the world price and help the poor here, as well in Africa and Latin America, and to ensure that as much oil as possible is extracted under American environmentally sound practices.

4) At $140 a barrel, a million barrels per day will add, at a time of reoccurring economic difficulty, well over $50 billion to the nation’s economy each year.

Anonymous nonsense

I have often been the target of Michael Scheuer, the former CIA analyst, and author of Imperial Hubris. In his latest blast, he includes me with a list of those who he claims have “dual loyalties” to the United States, and suggests that writing for National Review and the Wall Street Journal is typical of a “fifth column” who in traitorous fashion have essentially sold out the interest of the United States on behalf of Israel. I didn’t know that I had become an Israeli stooge out in the country, 20 miles south of Fresno, not exactly known as a hotbed of Zionist activity.

Those are serious charges, and Scheuer, of course, can adduce no proof to substantiate them other than my past support, along with tens of millions of other Americans, for existing U.S. policy to support the democratic state of Israel, since it is in our political, ethical, and historical self-interest (and, remember, simultaneously we give about the same number of billions in aggregrate to Jordan, Egypt and until recently the Palestinians.) But then I have been for years confused by Scheuer’s creepiness. I could not fathom how an active CIA analyst was allowed to write a tell-all book, while on the job, damning his own government, with sometimes anonymous sources, and, in Joe-Klein-fashion, under the pseudonym “Anonymous.” I have some regrets in this life, but not signing my own name to my own work is not one of them.

But even more confusing are Scheuer’s amazing statements over the years that Al Qaeda is not a terrorist organization, that its grievances are understandable and center on Israel, that “Iraq is finished” (as in failed), and, most reprehensibly, that “the Holocaust Museum here in our country is another great ability (sic) to somehow make people feel guilty about being the people who did the most to try to end the Holocaust.”

He was once delegated to find and take care of bin Laden; and then wrote books blaming almost everyone else for the subsequent failure. Al Qaeda and Iraq were once linked, we were told, and then after the invasion, of course not. And on and on and on with the same old, same old tired trope since 9/11 that everyone is a fool except Scheuer. He ended up hating his doppelgänger Richard Clark— which made perfect sense given that their “they did it, not me” modus operandi, inability to stop or hunt down terrorists, and subsequent celebrity careers dovetailed.

McCain, where art thou?

The good news is that the so-called Newsweek poll went from having McCain 15 points down to just 3. That said, McCain is going to have to focus his campaign on just 3-4 themes, and then sharpen them, simplify them, and contrast them with Obama. E.g…

The War: Our aims are victory, and we will leave each region of Iraq as our victory on the ground allows us to turn another province over to Iraqi security forces. While my opponent Senator Obama flips and flops to match the polls, I am constant in my views—Iraq is winnable and the surge is working to an astonishing degree. That’s why the Iraqi democracy is stabilizing and reclaiming control from the terrorists. My opponent wanted all US troops out by March 2008 which would have led to our defeat five months ago and the victory of al Qaeda.

Money: Tax cuts led to greater aggregate revenues. Deficits grew due to uncontrolled federal spending. I’ll keep the money-earning tax stimuli and cut spending; my opponent will raise taxes that will stifle economic growth and cut our income, and yet spend even more money on dubious expanded federal entitlements, as our deficits grow even larger.

Energy: I’m as much for wind, solar, and conservation as Barack Obama. But for now at present rates of consumption and production, we will go bankrupt in the transition to green energy. So I will drill off the coast, develop tar sands and shale, use clean coal, and build more refineries and nuclear power plants to ensure that we don’t keep sending trillions to our enemies, that we don’t leave our poor without transportation and heating, that we don’t allow sloppy foreign state energy companies to pollute the planet, and that we don’t bankrupt our treasury. My opponent is captive to radical environmentalists whose restrictive policies helped to get us into this mess; he’ll talk about green power, as we go broke and run out fuel listening.

Illegal Immigration: We can talk all we want about “comprehensive immigration reform” but it won’t matter if we don’t close the border—now. I will; my opponent won’t. Close the border now, and all the contentious issues—amnesty, guest workers, fines and deportation—can be dealt with as the pool of illegal aliens shrinks rather grows.

Tony Snow, rip…

In 2003 I was the visiting Shifrin Professor at the US Naval Academy, and did a few Sunday morning appearances and other things with Tony Snow in the DC Fox studio. I remember how he came in with cut-offs and a tie and coat above for the camera, with an infectious laugh and aw shucks persona. I liked him a lot, and later did his radio show a few times, and saw him at some DC events. The chorus that he was “a nice guy” is exactly the impression I got every time. But one thing I noticed was that he had an excellent memory and could remember the exact details of our past conversations despite months in-between.

His decision to lecture nonstop while very very sick to take care of his family reminds me of Grant with throat cancer refusing opiates so that he could finish his memoirs (after the disastrous collapse of Grant and Ward that bankrupted him). He did just that and the royalties kept his family going years after Grant died (remember the sad photo of Grant under a blanket writing furiously at Mount MacGregor).

Nothing is more demanding than the lecture circuit (up at 5 AM to fly 9 hrs in and out airports, the mandatory pre-talk dinner, the lecture, the hostile questions, the media interview, and often the next day teaching a class or additional meetings, and then the travel back [I’d rather disk on a Massey for 14 hrs in the summer than fly to NY for a university lecture and fly back]). How Snow kept at with metastasized colon cancer and radiation/chemotherapy is almost inexplicable.

In the last two (wierdly bad) years, I’ve had a ruptured appendix and the resulting mess taken out on a wooden table in a Red Crescent clinic in Libya, , and subsequent peritonitis, and another operation for kidney stones, in addition to passing 5-6 jagged stones in the last 12 months and having 15 root canals and crowns since December in an effort to save my teeth (apparently soft teeth connected with the stone-making), all the while speaking about 35 times out-of-state per year. On bad days, I would often think of Snow and realize how minor my own ailments were in comparison–and again wonder how he did it.

Drilling is the thing

Almost every argument against more drilling, shale, tar sands, etc. is a loser in political terms. Saying it will take “10 years” and therefore not worth it is equally applicable to claiming cutting carbon emissions will take “20 years” and therefore silly. The notion that ANWR will only shave off a few cents from the price of a gallon of gas is equally bankrupt given the multifarious sources–coast, continental shelf, shale, etc.–we could draw upon for another million barrels a day each. And “we can’t drill our way out of it” is equally stupid, since no one is advocating increased production in a vacuum–but rather concurrent conservation, wind and solar, electric cars etc. Drilling is a transitional solution to get us to new energies without going bankrupt and empowering our enemies.

This is an explosive political issue–”To Drill or Not to Drill—that is the question!”
I wonder…

1. When universities open their for-profit, cash-garnering campuses in the oil-rich Middle East, do they extend their “oppression studies” curriculum as well. I mean does a Saudi petroleum engineering major, like his American counterpart, take a gender studies requirement, mutatis mutandis, learning how his gender-apartheid society harms women? Do Dubai pre-medical students in US overseas campuses learn about the evils of slavery in an African-experience course, especially how 11 million African slaves were shipped to the Arab, Muslim world? Or is such instruction left behind at the American shore, money trumping the gospel of multi-culturalism? If you think about it, a certain sort of truth emerges—that such oppression studies are felt even by those who peddle them to be unserious, since they wouldn’t dare offer them to those who in theory might need them the most. Business trumps PC?

2. How many of Barack Obama prescriptions for a better America apply to himself? Does he live a healthy lifestyle of the sort he advocates for the rest of us? A cold home, no SUV , smaller portions of food (smoking is a taboo subject)? Does he speak Spanish as the rest of us are supposed to? Is he multilingual, speaking French in Paris, Italian in Rome? Or is he simply glib, sputtering two words of French as he castigates Americans with the typical stereotypes, the notion that the Ivy Leaguer need not speak foreign languages since elite liberalism is in itself a sort of annoited creed that exempts its adherents from living the life one advocates for others?

3. How many celebrity spokespeople for environmental causes, whether an Al Gore or Laurie David or various English rock-stars, have made a pledge not to fly on private jets, live in homes larger than 3000 square feet, or drive Lexus, Mercedes or Volvo SUVs?

I could go on and on, but we all get the picture. The problem this time is that while Obama is very much a condescending Kerry redux, the Bush problem, the Congressional Republican collapse, and Obama’s racial transcendence rhetoric give him advantages Kerry never had.

General Betray Us?

Obama said not a word last autumn about the Moveon.org slander of Gen. Petraeus when he was running hard left of Clinton and the Moveon.org crowd was essential to his candidacy. But now? After West Virginia, Tennessee, Indiana, Ohio, Texas, Pennsylvania, etc. he realizes two things: there are no longer any rivals to the left, but quite a lot to the right who are turned off by him. So Moveon.org goes the way of Rev. Wright, while his grandmother, the flag lapel, guns, death penalty, Iraq, FISA, and NAFTA climb back on the bus—until he is elected (when some go back off and others get to climb on again).

A Time for Reflection

News today that al Qaeda is now reeling even in Mosul, their last stronghold, should make us all stop and ponder. For all the talk of a worn-out military, a cruel Pentagon that treats its veterans poorly, and the general Democratic notion of our soldiers as victims of an immoral war and brutal militarism, a few thousand Americans, with vast odds against them, have nearly crushed Islamic fundamentalists, won the hearts and minds of Arab Muslims in the ancient caliphate, stabilized a constitutional government, and silenced their critics here at home and abroad. The American expeditionary army and marines in Iraq, and its commander David Petraeus, surely must be regarded as one of the most capable militaries in recent memory—all to the relative silence in our mainstream newspapers, network news, and opinion journalists.

Such a strange age…

The country goes into a fevered state over whether there was or was not yellowcake for sale to Saddam down in Niger. The result is that a Special Prosecutor—charged with finding out who leaked the name of a CIA employee as retaliation for her husband’s (wrong) finding that Niger did not wish to sell yellowcake—knew who leaked Ms. Plame’s identity, and knew that she was not a covert agent anyway. Instead Prosecutor Fitzgerald indicts someone else—who happens to be the real target of a hysterical Washington media. Meanwhile with no more than a tsk, tsk, we learn that 1.2 million pounds of Saddam’s yellowcake have been sitting all the time in storage in Iraq, and are now quietly sold off to the Canadians. Dispute over a few ounces of yellowcake in Africa tie up DC for a year, while tons of the stuff sit quitely in Iraq in leaky drums.

No, it is a crazy age…

Worried about Congressional rankings in the single digits, Democratic Senators and Congress people are parading out to news conferences to assure us that “we can’t drill our way out of this energy crisis” (who said we could?), and that what little oil we would find off our coasts (no mention of the natural gas) would “take ten years” and only shave “pennies” off a gallon of gas.
Examine the logic: we don’t develop these resources because of the time lag? But isn’t there a time lag in creating a viable electric battery, a hydrogen car, solar and wind farms, a new nuclear plant? And the logic is puerile: we simply freeze and assume a fetal position since the results of our labors are only of long-term use?

As for a “few pennies.” Well, a few pennies here, a few there really do add up. In other words, a million barrels in Anwr, a million off our coasts, a million from tar sands, a million in shale, a million on the continental shelf, a million from conservation and pretty soon we have saved trillions in imported oil costs, and provided the necessary bridge, the critical breathing space for electric cars or flex-fuels, or whatever. No supporter of drilling thinks we are going to return to the days of the gas-powered Yukon and Hummer. But we need to preserve our civilization and not mortgage it to the Arabs, Russians, Iranians, and Venezuelans in the process of going green.

The Messiah

First we were told to be on guard for fainting at Obama rallies. Then we were apprised that his candidacy marked the historic moment when the planet healed and the oceans ceased to rise. Then we were told the convention hall was simply too small for the “people” to listen to the gospel of St. Obama. And now the Germans are asked to give him the traditional Presidential podium in front of the Brandenburg Gate. The strange thing is that the elite Left that has always warned us that hoi polloi are prone to groupthink and frenzied hysteria when hypnotized by mass-appeal rhetoricians.

Global whatever

Now we are lectured that climate change is threatening civilization and we must do this and that. Twenty years ago I remember it was the Aids epidemic that was just about to break out among the heterosexual population in the fashion it had devastated the San Francisco gay community. Thus we needed to quit envisioning the virus as largely specific to gays and IV-drug users, and instead mobilize to protect the entire population from a mass epidemic. A few voices in the wilderness who argued that the mechanisms of so-called normal heterosexual sex (while perhaps conducive in their unprotected modes to all sort of venereal diseases) were nevertheless often different from both the apparent frequency and nature of homosexual sex practices, and very different from the blood exchanges of shared-needles, were derided as either illiberal, homophobic, or unhinged.

The country seems to go through these ‘we are on the brink of extinction’ panics about every 20 years or so. We all remember the 1960s population bomb and how 3-billion-person India would be starved into oblivion by now, or Ronald Reagan’s desire for a nuclear winter (remember the made-for-TV movies about a Reagan-inspired nuclear holocaust), or again the take-over of Japan, Inc. as everything from Rockefellar Center to Pebble Beach was lost to the Yellow Peril. I remember my high-school science teacher lecturing about a global ice-age to come, and we humans going the way of the dinosaurs.

I don’t think our planet overheating in the near future is going to kill off billions, but I wonder whether the entire neglect of energy questions for last 20 years, especially the need to develop shale, tar sands, more clean coal, nuclear, and drilling oil to transition us to cleaner fuels, has nearly bankrupted American civilization. Our dependencies have siphoned off trillions from our productive economy in de facto cash grants to very unproductive exporters, who see as their birthright $140 a barrel oil that cost them $4-5 to pump—after someone else provided them the know-how and expertise to find, pump, and ship it.

We seem to panic about imaginary beasts, when real monsters quietly devour us.

Oh, how I miss them…

I watched the other night Shane and Hombre, and realized how much I missed Jack Palance and Richard Boone (both Stanford attendees at one time). They were renaissance veterans, multi-talented, and in some tragic sense not fully utilized by Hollywood. Add in a Lee Marvin as well. In all candor, I don’t think a Kevin Costner, Brad Pitt, or any of the younger Hollywood generation measures up. And how could they—given the generation that came of age in WWII and the sort of country this was at the time?

The voices of Boone, Palance, and Marvin seem lost in film these days, as well as the air of disdain and tragic nobility they projected as actors.

CNN Looks at the Candidates

I was watching a rerun of the Anderson Cooper biographical documentaries of McCain and Obama. In the McCain piece here’s what I think we got in the end: Cindy McCain’s a former drug addict, a stroke victim, and fought false rumors their adopted child was an illegitimate offspring of her husband’s liasons, and is the only-child of zillionaires; McCain was knee-deep in the Keating Five, took on and then caved to the Religious Right.

In contrast, in this National Enquirer-type approach, the Obamas were blessed from the beginning—no mention (as there should not have been) of Obama’s admitted drug use, his radical past, nothing about Michelle’s divisive speeches, Princeton thesis.

Result: here is the contrast, a 42 year old who lied about his age married a princess who lied about hers, then lived apart, and then she spiralled downward while he got caught in ethics problems and flip-flops; meanwhile the super couple were drug-free, hardly privileged, and have a true partnership based on their model parenting and meritocratic-based education excellence.

In short, not even the pretense of even-handedness.

Is the Thrill Gone?

Listening to the recent various Obama speeches, I was struck by his two or three now reoccurring themes: His world-view of America is an amalgam of various victimized groups or rival interests—racial minorities, gays, and women—rather than a united citizenry that transcends its particularly tribal differences. When he talks of the military, there is almost nothing about the courage, audacity, and, yes, competence, of the US military that has done the near impossible in Iraq.

Instead the military is framed in terms of a vast group of victims in need of more government help, those who were not given adequate equipment, those suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome, those with wounds, those in need of more benefits. All that may be in part true, but it is not the whole story, and at some point it must be balanced by mention that our soldiers on the battlefield have largely defeated al Qaeda and the insurgents in Iraq, and have achieved an amazing victory that has altered the entire calculus in the Middle East and made us safer from the threat of radical Islam.

A second theme seems the self-referential Obama himself. All politicians exaggerate and frame events around themselves. But Obama’s references to his landmark legislation, whether supposed welfare reform or foreign-policy initiatives, are simply not entirely supported by his brief tenure and meager record in the US Senate. One can just now begin to notice the subdued applause and crowd unease when he showcases himself at the center of all great issues of the last two decades—when he was in fact a rookie Chicago legislator. That, of course, is the source of the Bill Clinton pique: although Obama now takes credit for what liberal nostrums emerged in the late 1990s, they in fact were due almost entirely to Clinton’s rhetorical skills and Dick Morris’s art of triangulation. Yet Obama not only gives Clinton’s eight-year tenure absolutely no deference at all, but insidiously seems to incorporate it into his own paltry legislative record.

Third is a sort of growing irrelevance of his boilerplate criticism in the vein of Bush doesn’t do diplomacy, and the result is a sort international anger at a “unilateral” cowboyish America. But then he is faced with a Korea that is beginning to be corralled by diplomatic efforts, a growing united front against Iran, and a return of the UN to Iraq, with sympathetic governments–and suddenly the rhetoric seems stale and dated. What exactly right now would Obama do differently with China, South America, Sarkozy, Merkle, the Italians or the Brits, India? Iraq? Iran? Nafta? Not much.

Flip-flopping Along
I wrote the following on the corner today about Obama’s flopitis:
Four of July Flopitis [Victor Davis Hanson]
The question is no longer on what has Obama backtracked, but rather on what has he not?

The political problems with Obama’s flopitis are twofold: one, it is coming late in the season. To defeat Hillary he went hard left in the void left by Edwards. But the primary dragged on so long, that when he just recently flipped and flopped to leave the hard left on NAFTA, Trinity Church, Rev. Wright, FISA, gun control, campaign financing, death penalty, Iran, Iraq, Jerusalem, etc. he did so in the near summer, not late winter. The result is that his formerly left positions were showcased longer than most go-to-the-center politicians and thus his abandonment of them more striking and fresh in our memories.

For each inoperative “I can no more disown Rev. Wright” statement, there comes another each day about not quite pulling out of Iraq or wire-taps sorta OK, or NOT meeting John McCain “anywhere, anytime.” Every opportunist knows that in presidential politics such shamelessness should be over and done with by March.

Second, to employ a well-known Obamism, Obama ‘raised the bar’ so high with his ‘hope and change’ sophistry about transcending lobbyists, tawdry campaign financing, et al. that he is now being hoisted by his own petard — flip-flopping is the normal sort of rank opportunism, but for a messiah it is tantamount to sacrilege and heresy.

Some of us have been ad nauseam suggesting Democratic buyer’s remorse soon, and still stand by that prediction. The problem is not that the Left will abandon him; they won’t, and will gladly put up with an Iraqi war-fighter, huge private cash raiser, wire-tapper, free-trader, and gun-rights/death penalty advocate if he brings them all back to power. (But watch their furor if Obama sinks below McCain in the polls.) Instead the rub is that Obama’s new legions of hopers and changers won’t register, work, and turn out in sufficient numbers if they feel that they’ve been had and made to look silly, and Obama is just another Jimmy Carter/Walter Mondale/John Kerry. Nor will all this triangulation necessarily win the “clingers” vote, even though the about-faces are done on their behalf.

What’s going on? Obama’s handlers knew that their candidate had boxed himself into orthodox left-wing positions during the primary, but they counted on his prophet-like charisma and landmark “new candidate” appeal charming almost anyone as he ‘evolved.’ We will see whether such brazenness will necessarily work with either tough-minded Ohio or Michigan working people or cynical you-tubers.

Usually the in-party gets blamed for all the bad news—in this case gas prices, wars, weak dollar, shaky stock market, financial instability, mortgage crisis—but if a magnetic candidate like Obama loses in a made-for-order year like this, Democrats will have to call in Bill Clinton to relearn the art of triangulation, and how to disguise the liberal agenda with a southern accent, bubba aw-shucks populism, and trivialities like school-uniforms and Sister-Souljah moments.

In his defense, we forget that Obama is trying to be the first liberal Northern Democratic candidate to make it since JFK—and I don’t think, for all his talents, he is quite a JFK.

Next flip? I expect he will soon “refine” his view of lifting the Social Security tax ceilings—once we start hearing about 60%-plus state and federal tax bites.

07/04 10:23 AM

Newsweek is running an old story of 2007 by Evan Thomas suggesting that the 300 was a sort of racist propaganda, and he thinks that it reflects the administration’s Manichean views that derive from ancient Greece/Persia faultlines. Most of the essay is moronic and simplistic, and when he gets to me, he gets everything wrong. Here’s an excerpt:

Still, the cultural significance and popular appeal of “300″ reach beyond the thrill of watching pixilated decapitations. The Persians in “300″ are the forces of evil: dark-skinned, depraved and determined to terrorize the West. The noble, light-skinned Spartans possess a fierce love of liberty, not to mention fierce six-pack abs. “Freedom is not free,” says the wife of Spartan King Leonidas. The movie was adapted from a graphic novel by Frank Miller (”Sin City”). Miller’s post-9/11 conservatism (he is reportedly working on a new graphic novel pitting Batman against Al Qaeda, titled “Holy Terror, Batman!”) suffuses his comic-book fantasies. Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that “300″ resonates for some real warriors. At a theater near Camp Pendleton outside San Diego, cheers erupted at a showing of “300,” the Los Angeles Times reported. The Marines (”The Few, the Proud”) identify with the outnumbered Spartans. In fact, “Gates of Fire,” a novelized version of the Battle of Thermopylae by Steven Pressfield, is on the Marine Corps commandant’s recommended reading list.

The analogy between the war on terror and the death struggle of ancient Greece with Persia has not been lost on some high administration officials either, especially Vice President Dick Cheney. (A White House spokesman declined to comment about the film.) In the months after 9/11, a classics scholar named Victor Davis Hanson wrote a series of powerful pieces for the National Review Online, later collected and published as a book, “An Autumn of War.” Moved by Hanson’s evocative essays, Cheney invited Hanson to dine with him and talk about the wars the Greeks waged against the Asian hordes, in defense of justice and reason, two and a half millennia ago.

Newsweek long ago became a caricature of a news magazine. It is now overtly partisan, and its style is rumor (cf. the Periscope allegation of a flushed Koran in Guantanamo that led to rioting and death abroad), the unidentified anonymous source, and the usual Bush-did-it story. I wrote an essay once about the shoddy journalism at Newsweek, which is now pretty much the communis opinio—sad because it once under prior generations was a reliable and sober magazine.

On more than one occasion, Newsweek editors have called me to ask about the Cheney dinner (and one other hilarious occasion after the Cheney hunting accident, as if I would know anything about the VP’s game hunting apparently since I, perhaps like thousands of others, had been on one occasion at a large dinner table with him). Each time I got a Newsweek call, I said the same thing: (1) I won’t comment on the specifics or offer any quotations or verbatim rehash, since it is uncivil to blab to the press conversation at private dinners, but almost everything they were asking was completely erroneous to the point of being silly; (2) the VP in 2002 invited all sorts of historians, of all sorts of persuasions to comment on past and present events. My invitation was just one of very many. (3) There were several people there on my single visit, and it was not a one-on-one conversation, and I most definitely did not lecture about “Asian hordes,” and there was nothing at that dinner (five years before the 300) that would suggest a US obsession with the “hordes” of Iran. Since neither I nor the guests in October 2002 ever spoke about the dinner, and since Thomas never claims anyone did, how would he know that I supposedly lectured about “Asian hordes” rather than, if the conversation for a moment turned to the present, the need to go to the UN and emphasize the 20-something Congressional authorizations that were under debate in October 2002 in the lead-up to the Iraq war?

But no matter—the cardboard cut-out is too tempting for the smug Newsweek editor: one-dimensional soldiers applaud a corny good versus evil comic book tale. I suppose we should instead watch a travesty like Oliver Stone’s Alexander the Great, or perhaps a more balanced, sophisticated take on Iraq like Redacted?

I wrote about Greece/Persia in a review of Tom Holland’s book on the Persian War, and two brief essays on the 300 that outlined the comic book/semi-animated genre. I’ll let the reader decide whether these are rah-rah pieces about the dark hordes of 480 BC. And I wrote on a number of occasions why it was unwise to bomb Iran.

One does not need to believe in the overt bias of the Washington press corps to realize it is a wise thing, to quote the ancient Greeks, to keep as much distance from such creepy folk as possible.

What You Won’t Read

Two of the Three in the Axis of Evil — Korea and Iraq –seem no longer to be acquiring weapons of mass destruction. Throw in Libya as well, and the end of Dr. Khan’s proliferation business, and things have gotten at least a little better. I say that because I keep reading about nuclear proliferation and America’s asleep-at-the-wheel posture, when in fact we alone supplied the pressure to stop a lot of it. Meanwhile, the Iranian theocracy will continue to issue existential threats to Israel, hint that it is nearing completion on enrichment, and rattle more sabers in hopes of creating continuing tension that helps spike oil prices and land it another $10 - $15 million a day in revenue.

And You Won’t Read This Either

That the World’s Saint, Mr. Gore, who lectures on carbon emissions and green behavior, built an ecological monstrosity of a castle that gulps energy at gargantuan rates; while the world’s villain, George Bush, built an eco-friendly, far more modest house that uses a fourth less power than the average home. But then when one compares the Kerry homes, the Edwards playhouse, and all the other liberal mansions, it makes sense. Modern liberalism for our elites is really a psychological state, in which an individual crafts an all-encompassing world view in the abstract to offset a rather materialistic and self-centered desire in the concrete. Here in California Sens. Boxer and Feinstein, and Rep Pelosi live like the privileged they are, while decrying the plight of the less fortunate. Someone who forbids drilling in ANWR rarely decides to down-size her home. A Senator Dodd who rails at the mortgage lenders’ greed has no problem taking a cut-rate loan from them–if it is a question of buying appropriate homes for his sixty-something efforts at establishing a young family. Hypocrisy is a human, not a political sin per se, but something about the combination of neo-socialist politics and extremely elite personal tastes suggests that there is a direct rather than an accidental connection—in the mind at least the former making possible the latter.

Dreams From My Grandmother

Is the title of a brief essay I wrote on Obama for NRO next week. I think as the general election unwinds, Obama will no longer omit mention of the grandmother who raised him in preference to dreaming about the African father who abandoned him—much less again throw her under the bus to save Rev. Wright by making the morally equivalent argument that her private (and confidential) fears of young black males on the streets were the same sort of prejudice as were his Rev.’s open and public denunciations of whites, Jews, Italians, etc. Now that it is no longer a question of establishing one’s racial fides in Chicago, but rather of winning hearts and minds in fly-over America, expect this modern Proteus to change shape yet again and become the child of the Midwest, his grandmother as essential to his identity as she once was an embarrassment in Chicago ward politics.

Not So Liberal

This is the apparent current logic of much of environmentally sensitive America:

a. It is ecologically wise to forbid safe drilling off Santa Barbara but OK to count on dangerous extraction off Nigeria? Don’t drill off Florida but mine coal all you want for America’s electricity in West Virginia? Please save the Alaskan tundra, but sell as much messy Siberian oil as possible?

b. Gas prices aren’t all that bad since it will force us to buy Priuses–which only the affluent can afford? I have no doubt that a lot of SUVs, Crown Victorias, and F-250s will come on the second-hand market cheaply in the near future–and will be about the only automobiles the poor can afford for small trips to the store. Not drilling in the US was about the worse thing anyone could have done for the lower classes. 3-4 million barrels a day more would indeed have lowered both the price of gas in real terms here, and cooled down the psychological climate that spurs on speculation

c. We would rather take hard-earned US cash and hand it over to Iran, Venezuela, Russia, Saudi Arabia, etc. than invest in American infrastructure by earning (soaring) federal revenues for gas and oil leasing in known areas of easily recoverable oil?

d. By any sane measure—reducing the trade deficit, bolstering the dollar, earning revenue for cash-strapped states, keeping billions out of the hands of lunatic regimes, ensuring the independence of American foreign policy, helping our own poor to afford transportation, preserving the ecology of the planet—it makes sense to drill, use coal cleanly, develop tar sands and shale, and build nuclear plants, until we transition to Obama promise of “wind, solar, and millions of new jobs in green industries!”

A Modest Proposal

Before we listen to any more sermons from actors, in the interest of intellectual seriousness and saving the planet, Hollywood celebrities should take a voluntary vow neither to fly on a private jet nor to engage in silly facial surgery. The one is energy selfishness, the other proof of intellectual lightness.

Keep Counting

FISA, NAFTA, campaign financing, Iran, town hall debates with McCain, Jerusalem, handgun control, death penalty applications, Rev. Wright— the list of Obama’s inoperative statements continues to grow. His advisors worry that the Hope and Change mantra is wearing thin (have you noticed that more and more crowds seem to roll their eyes when he gets into the sermonizing cadence when talking about the mundane?). But they worry more that when he gets specific, he says silly things or something that flips from what he said earlier–about what one would expect from someone who has very little experience, but enormous confidence in his powers to convince by his oratory.

Is San Francisco the Future?

I spent some time speaking in San Francisco recently. In crude and exaggerated terms, it reminds me of H.G. Wells Eloi and Morlocks. There are smartly dressed yuppies, wealthy gays, and chic business people everywhere downtown, along with affluent tourists, all juxtaposed with hordes of street people and a legion of young service workers at Starbucks, restaurants, etc. What is missing are school children, middle class couples with strollers, and any sense the city has a vibrant foundation of working-class, successful families of all races and backgrounds. For all its veneer of liberalism, it seems a static city of winners and losers, victory defined perhaps by getting into a spruced up Victorian versus renting in a bad district, getting paid a lot to manage something, versus very little to serve something. All in all, I got a strange creepy feeling that whatever was going on, it was unsustainable–sort of like an encapsulated Europe within an American city. The city seems to exist on tourism, and people who daily come into the city to provide a service, get paid–and leave. One businessman tried to assure me my anxieties were misplaced: “We are a revolving-door city: young people want a year or two in the “city” to have fun, so flock here, take menial jobs, cram together in an apartment, enjoy our night-life, and then leave wiser and ready to start life somewhere else in the real world. In the meantime, they are willing to work hard for us for little pay.” I think that about sums up the city.

I remember SF in the late 1950s and early 1960s as a kid visiting with his parents. A much different place altogether of affordable homes, vibrant docks, lots of construction—and children everywhere.

Obama Worries

Here are some things rarely discussed that worry me about Obama:

Class Strife.

By exempting millions from any income tax at all, he is going to institutionalize, in the fashion of Rome, two classes: the growing angry number on the receiving end of bread and circuses—and the shrinking few who will pay all the income taxes.

The former will not show gratitude, but always think a greedy class of parasites on top constantly pays them too little and has an endless supply of capital for others’ needs. Gone will be the old American notion that when we see a nice car in the parking lot (I drive an older Honda with 100,000 miles on it), we walk around it in fascination—replaced by a European desire to kick in the fenders in resentment.

Business.

Listen sometime to Obama’s references to business—90% of the time they occur in a pejorative context. And when he is not overtly critical, his curiosity is a sort of naïve, wow admiration of the hip zillionaire like a Buffet or Jobs who has made so many hundreds of millions that in their golden years they suddenly don’t care much about income tax rates, death taxes, etc.—at least not in comparison with the notion that they are seen as magnanimous liberals and proof that a choice few can be both rich and generous.

Never-never land.

Obama is counter-intuitive and seems to come up with exegeses opposite to what facts suggest. The surge is working in remarkable fashion. Nonetheless, as in 2007, he continues to insist that it has failed or is of only marginal significance—even as troops prepare to hand over entire provinces to the Iraqis and more and more are scheduled for withdrawal.

Any fool knows that wind and solar, even on hot, windy days, will not furnish more than 10% of our power needs for the immediate future. Why then would he omit other sources of much needed short-term energy, when we founded the nuclear industry, have the world’s largest supply of coal, have 3-4 million more barrels of oil per day recoverable off our coasts and in Alaska, and vast amounts of tar sands and shale? If electric cars are the answer (one per household?), then nuclear power seems essential so we can plug into the grid as we sleep. All this is simply omitted. What does “millions of new jobs in green industries” mean—especially in the foreseeable future of $5 a gallon gas?

Even Al Gore’s jet burns fossil fuels, as does John Edwards’ playroom, as do John Kerry’s mansions, as does Rev. Wright’s 10,000 sq. ft palace. Why trash the industry that allows us to live in the concrete while praising in the abstract industries that cannot help us much in the present?

One-sided history.

There is a constant refrain in his historical exempla that take a one-sided view of Americana as largely pathological. Obama always seems to reference slavery, the Underground Railroad, the Civil Rights marches, and women’s suffrage. Not a word in balance about the Founding Fathers, Andrew Jackson, Shiloh, the Way West, the Gold Rush, the age of American invention and discovery, World War I, World War II (the victories like the Bulge or Iwo, not just Hiroshima, Rosie the Riveter, and the Japanese Internment). I have no problem with evocation of past reform and needed change, just the notion that there wasn’t much else apparently good.

Less than flip-flopping

Obama seems to assume that his charisma will explain every inconsistency. Trash NAFTA to the yokels—but send backchannel assurances to elites that he is a free-trader. Waffle on Rev. Wright and adjust hourly so that the black base accepts you were “forced” to pay lip service to the “establishment”, while gaining laurels from suburban whites for your racial transcendence. In fact, talk of transcending race in the manner that a Gen. Powell or Sec. Rice had done it, while warning that your enemies will use your race and middle name against you. Praise for months public financing, and then when you don’t need it, trash both the law and your opponent who is using it.

Obamanics

I think few understand the full effect of Obama’s tax hikes—payroll, income, estate, capital gains, etc—on the so-called “rich.” I know plenty of couples who live in Bay Area and for all their income are not entitled. They make together about $200-250,000. That at first glance seems like plentitude.

But not so fast. A tiny 1200 sq. foot home in Palo Alto or Menlo Park can go for a million (a friend just bought a cottage for $800,000 [two bedrooms]). Mostly Hispanic Redwood City rarely sees a modest home for less than $700,000. Gas is right about $4.80 a gallon. State taxes hit hard with nearly a 10% take. If they send a child to a private school like Santa Clara it can cost $50,000 a year in tuition, room, board, books, and expenses. These are not all CEO jetting to Hedge Fund Retreats.

His proposed estate taxes will kill an upper-middle class California coast couple for whom a $1 million-plus house, and 401K nest eggs were a lifetime effort. Depending on the caps Obama chooses, such estates may be taxed at death a second time at 45%.

Remember two facts: the additional revenue (if it is additional, since many will hide their income or rest on their laurels given the tax bite) won’t go for deficit reduction, given whopping new entitlements. Second, those who pay 100K more a year in FICA, income, and capital gains taxes will still be the greedy rich whose income was ill-gotten anyway.

Weddings

I put on a wedding for my daughter this Saturday at 6PM at the farmhouse for about 180 guests. At 5PM it seemed like an utter disaster. The temperature in the garden was 109 and it was unbearable. Last minute runs into town to get umbrellas, fans, misters, and ice water didn’t seem like they would do much. At 5:30 suddenly a hot Valley-type wind came up—the sort of tropical blasts that often come in unexpectedly when the temperature soars over 105.

At first it provided relief, then in minutes it blew table cloths into the wind, blasted off all the table place settings, and whipped up lighting cables. Suddenly a dirt storm was more the danger than heat prostration.

But then as if by magic, at 6:00 PM, five minutes before the ceremony began, suddenly the wind died down after doing its best to cool temperatures, and the wedding went off without a hitch, followed by a lovely nighttime dinner with pleasant breezes.

In the space of 30 minutes, one guest said, “I’m dying. See what happens when you try to have a outside wedding in late June in the Valley,” followed by one that smiled, “This was a great idea to eat out here in this pleasant breeze.”

All the other wedding problems—like blown circuit breakers taking out fans and lights just before the wedding music started—were the normal minor glitches compared to the weather. My daughter got married in the same house where her grandmother had in 1947, and her great-grandmother had in 1911—and was the sixth continuous generation to live in the same bedroom.

McCain in Fresno

I attended McCain’s lunch yesterday in Fresno. It was notable for a couple of reasons. First he told a largely ag-industry audience that farm subsidies and ethanol programs were mistakes, and he still won over the crowd, most of which had been Thompson or Romney supporters. He seems to like the role of underdog, and keeps hammering away at Obama on his flip-flopping, or as I put in the NRO corner:

Time usually has been crucial in many past campaigns. In 1968 Humphrey might have won in another week; while Jerry Ford could have overtaken Carter in another 10 days. Obama is already playing a sort of 4th-quarter defense. He knows that the more town-halls, and impromptu speeches and interviews, the more likely, given his inexperience and doctrinaire liberalism, he is going to say something that comes off quirky, whether the off-the-cuff rants at fund-raisers like the clingers speech or the latest about “them” going after his middle name and race, or Cartesque lectures about over-eating Americans in SUVs and the apparent utility of high-priced gas, or the flip-flopping on Nafta, the war, campaign financing, Rev. Wright, et al. McCain is the proverbial steady tortoise, Obama the flashy racing hare — the key question being how far exactly are they respectively along the course to the finish line in November?

World War II Again

When the Wehrmacht entered the Soviet Union in 1941 and swept through during much of 1941 and 1942, thousands of Jews were murdered by special corps of Nazi executioners. To say that somehow the war prompted these deaths that otherwise would not have occurred had Hitler been left alone raises two questions: one, had Britain and France kept out of the war, and had Hitler broken his pact with Stalin and invaded Russia, would German soldiers not have killed Jews en masse? And two, if the Holocaust was only an artifact of the war, how was it that there were legions of German killers who rounded up Jews at almost the first moment they entered Russian soil? Was this all ad hoc? No prior discussion or prep? All this a sudden change of character once the shooting war started? A 1939 Hitler was reasonable,but in 1941 he experienced a sudden personality change that led to monstrous policies brought on by conditions imposed by bellicose enemies? Mein Kampf a mere thought exercise? Himmler et al simply a little over the top? The SS a bit player of the late 1930s?

I enjoy reading the posts and private emails, and here are some reactions, both to supporters and angry detractors.

World War II

I did not write that Buchanan is either a racist or an anti-Semite, only that his views on World War II are profoundly wrong—and wrong in a fashion we have not witnessed in a long time (perhaps since A.J.P. Taylor’s The Origins of the Second World War, which was, I think, far better argued).

We should remember that almost everything that Hitler said was either later contradicted by his actions or simply false or unhinged. In Italy as Gen. Kesselring was retreating, Hitler’s minion Himmler ordered the German high command there both to start rounding up Italian Jews (well over 10,000 were gassed in the camps), while Hitler lectured about avoiding blowing the river bridges in the face of advancing Americans and British on the grounds that they were of historic and artistic importance. We forget that was his method: to assemble thugs and murderers to carry out his butchery while he talked of art and culture and peace.

So it is not hard to find an isolated quote or act on Hitler’s part that seemingly suggests civilized considerations or by a great stretch might mitigate his entire and sole responsibility for millions of dead. But overall most disinterested historians and observers can see that there would have been no World War II without the career of Hitler in the 1930s.

As far as the Jewish issue, revisionists must accept that given the 6 million gassed in studied industrial fashion, neither quite seen before nor after, any suggestion that World War II was preventable had Hitler been treated with more consideration of his supposed legitimate grievances can only be interpreted as a certain callousness. While true that prior to 1939 Hitler had killed few Jews, his eugenics were well known and Nazi Jewish cleansing in business, universities, and public life was well under way in such a fashion that the later camps were logical, not an aberrant artifact of the war.

The Neocon Slur

Much of the correspondence centers on “neocon,” as in Buchanan’s wrong label “neocon court historian”. I’ve written no biography of any administration official, much less been subsidized or asked to do any particular writing to further an administration goal. I have been to the White House only on 3-4 occasions, always accompanied by a larger group of historians of widely differing views.

Neocon means “new conservative” and I suppose refers to those of the once hard left who, largely in distrust of the Soviet Union and disillusionment with Great Society programs, moved right, most prominently during the Reagan era. Buchanan himself worked with them in the Reagan White House, and I would imagine supported their tough, correct stance on rollback, and the questioning of 1960s entitlements.

The word became a pejorative slur with gusto in 2003 with the lead-up to Iraq. Perhaps some essays by neo-cons questioning the motives and patriotism (wrongly I think) of paleo-cons accentuated the falling out. But the big break came in 2004-6 with the insurgency in Iraq, when neocon became de facto synonymous with “Jew” and there were overt efforts to tie Kristol, Perle, Wolfowitz, Feith and others to a sort of covert cabal that had forced us to go to war for Israel—this despite the fact that Bush, Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld and Rice were neither Jews nor neocons nor malleable dupes. That Francis Fukuyama, James Woolsey, or Bill Bennet were neocons seemed likewise to have had little effect on the Israel “amen corner” thesis.

I came to support neocon approaches first in the wars against the Taliban and Saddam, largely because I saw little alternative—in a post-9-11 effort to stop radical Islam and state sponsors of terror—to removing such odious enemies, and did not think leaving the defeated in power (as in 1991), or leaving in defeat (as in Lebanon), or installing a postbellum strongman was viable or in U.S. interests.

Few would agree, but I persist in thinking we will prevail in Iraq, and the consensual government there will not only survive, but have a positive effect throughout the region, finally give the Iraqi people hope for a civilized future, stop Iraq’s transference of petrodollars into dangerous arsenals, worry the theocrats in Iran, and remove Iraq as a perennial threat to its neighbors.

I have always detested communism, and have never been a hard-left, disillusioned Trotskyite, but rather a conservative Democrat. In the past, my only real political jousting had been in two areas, academia in which Who Killed Homer?” questioned postmodernism and contemporary leftwing academic theory, and in books on farming such as The Land Was Everything and Letters to an American Farmer, which were defenses of the agrarian tradition and won no support from either corporate agriculture or new-age organic growers who did not like the conservative rural ethos expressed. Much of my speaking in the 1990s was to small audiences of farmers, who were being squeezed by corporate subsidized agriculture and yet were not new-age, organic leftists. Mexifornia reflects that conservative worry about the effects of unchecked illegal immigration–at a time when many or most neo-cons were Wall-Street Journal open-borderites.

I thought the 1998 letter to Clinton asking for regime change and an attack on Saddam was wrong, but, after 9/11, came to the conclusion, like 75% of Americans, that there would never be peace in the region, nor a chance to rollback Islamic radicalism with Saddam’s terrorist-sponsoring regime in power. The 12 years of no-fly-zones, embargo, oil-for-food, and UN sanctions were not only weakening and losing support, but playing into the hands of our enemies.

I remember in 1998 being called by a news agency about preemption, given that I had written a book about Sherman and Patton, The Soul of Battle, but replied that I didn’t think starting a war with Saddam was wise or would garner public support. That said, I also remember being in Greece in 1998-9 and losing a number of Greek friends over the Clinton bombing of Belgrade, which I supported on grounds that it was clumsy, but apparently the only way to stop mass killing. Remember at that time, none on the Left damned Clinton for taking us to war without UN sanction or a Congressional ratification. And firebrands like Gen. Wesley Clark did and said things far more provocative than anything the sober and judicious Gen. Petraeus has yet uttered.

I disagreed with many of the decisions made about the Iraq war, and voiced them several times in print during the last few years—especially the concentration on WMD rather than on all 23 Congressional writs to go to war, the pull-back from Fallujah, the fiery “bring ‘em on” rhetoric that sometimes was not followed up by equally aggressive action, the mysterious sudden retirement of Tommy Franks as soon as the insurgency started, the inability to find generals who believed they could win the peace, and a number of other issues.

Disbanding the army was a mistake in the short-term, I think, not because purging Saddam’s high officers was unwise (it will eventually pay dividends), but largely due to the failure of finding jobs immediately for military-age soldiers with dangerous skills. I did not think that sending another 100,000 troops was either feasible or even wise in the long term, but supported the much smaller 30,000 surge, largely because it sent a message of determination, came with Gen. Petraeus, and ushered in a change of tactics. We forget that many who were demanding the present surge, were demanding a much larger one, well beyond our force capability.

In the end, Gen. Abezaid’s policy of keeping a light footprint may be proven right, but ironically only by the Petraeus surge of 30,000 more troops to provide a window of Iraqi security. Ironic I say because while the two’s views should be antithetical, they may end up being complementary.

But unlike some other critics, I never thought such lapses were either fatal to our cause, or by any standard unusual in military history. I took issue with those who had supported the war, and then suddenly abandoned it, and with the thinking that a brilliant three-week campaign reflected their views, while a botched occupation could only have belonged to others. Rather, I assumed that the US military would always find a way to win, that the victory would be of enormous importance, and that while observers should point out perceived mistakes in operations, it was easy to do so from the rear and such criticism should never reach a level to cause a loss of morale either here or abroad, especially while soldiers were in the field of fire.

What If History

I admire counter-factual thought exercises and have contributed to a number of such volumes myself. I agree with Buchanan that Stalin’s regime was every bit as monstrous as Hitler’s, and given the size and natural wealth of the Russian Empire, and the greater prostylizing efforts of global communism, in theory as, or more, dangerous. Long ago I wrote about the irony (voiced by George Patton) of fighting to save Eastern Europe from totalitarianism and ending up by ensuring it there.

But all that said, as many readers so eloquently pointed out, by the mid-1930s, given the innate doctrines of Nazism and the career of Hitler, I don’t think there were very many options given allied leaders. A review of the 1930s again and again shows efforts to the nth degree in France and England to disown World War I, to vow peace at all costs, and to send a message to Hitler that they would never repeat the Somme and Verdun. Other than Churchill’s influential realism, there were almost no prominent allied leaders in France or Britain who tried to galvanize their countries to oppose Nazism expansionism.

Once Hitler invaded Poland, the last chance to prevent a global conflagration would have been to launch an immediate invasion in the West, to cross the Rhine with well over 100 British and French divisions. It would have been touch-and-go, but might well have stopped Hitler and precluded the disastrous chain of events that followed. The Soviet Union and Japan, we forget, became formal or de facto allies or at least non-belligerents of Hitler largely on what they had seen in 1936-9, coming away with the lesson that the allies were weak and decadent and European fascism was the wave of the future and thus in some way should be joined or at least accommodated.

Obamiana

Some wrote that I was obsessed with Obama. Curious is a better word. I can’t think (readers help please) of a presidential candidate in the 20th century (not Carter, not Harding) so unprepared to be president.

The comparison with the young Congressman, Senator, student of history, and war veteran JFK proves the opposite.

By the same token, I persist in thinking that the novels, plays, and films comparing Bush to a Nazi or in some way deserving of assassination were both reprehensible and unprecedented, surely more than the hatred expressed for Nixon, Reagan, or Clinton. And I think such genres should and will stop with Obama. Indeed, one of the most startling developments in recent memory will be the utter about-face (compare already the Obama rejection of beloved federal campaign financing, his backtracking on the war timetable, etc.) of the liberal media. It would be incensed if one did to a President OBama what has been done to Bush. Suggesting that the Right in this instance does the same I don’t think is persuasive. Even the mainstream hysterical Clinton haters, here or abroad, did not write columns praying for a John Wilkes Booth to return.

The election

I think the Obama lead will widen, but that by October we will see a certain learning curve, in which the race will hinge on how quickly Obama discovers how to be prudent versus his dally gaffes and astounding pronouncements on education, geography, world affairs, race relations, and prior associates.

In key states, I don’t think he will learn fast enough and that will make the difference, as we saw in the latter primaries. I meet more and more prudent and centrist voters, who are impressed by Obama’s rhetoric and sympathetic to the notion of an African-American president and the undeniable symbolism it entails, but simply won’t entrust their country to someone of such marginal experience and dubious past associates.

A final thought. Both McCain and Obama are change/reform candidates with ample rhetoric about a kinder, gentler politics. That said, let’s see how really different this campaign becomes. I suspect it will be every bit as nasty and tough as 2004 on both sides.

The Michigan Speech

After listening to Obama’s well-delivered Detroit speech tonight, I was struck by some reoccurring themes. He warned against those who would sow divisiveness, racial and the like, but not a word about his erstwhile pastor and purveyor of racial hatred, Rev. Wright.

He talked about old and new politics, but tore into John McCain in the old style, wrongly characterizing for the nth time McCain’s explanation that it is American casualties, not our troops’ foreign presence per se, that mostly bothers the public about Iraq—a war which Obama yet again wrote off, regardless of the amazing success of Gen. Petraeus and the Iraqi government.

In addition, he suggested that once rare natural disasters like the recent Iowa flooding are now reoccurring at 1 year and more intervals due to climate change.

Two other things struck me. Once again there was the initial warning from him about fainting during his speech, and a sort of messianic riff on why he chose to run at such a young age (e.g., because we all can’t wait any longer for his needed change). At times, he seems almost unaware of the image he conveys of self-absorption–also evident from the other night: when asked to comment on the late Tim Russert, he naturally referred to the time he, that is, Obama, interviewed Russert, rather than vice versa.

Second, at times in emphasizing a point, he will for a moment or two depart from a set speech and begin talking in his accustomed conversational style–a manner strikingly different from his usual preaching mode in which his cadence, accent, and intonation are in obvious imitation of the tradition of the African-American sermonizer.

Critics faulted Hillary for her occasional clumsy falsetto voices that were geared to particular racial and ethnic audiences. But Obama, albeit with far more elegance and panache, nevertheless switches into a delivery that is obviously patterned after a Rev. Wright, and not the natural expression, intonation, and idiom of someone who grew up in private school in Honolulu. And the nature of the audience seems to help determine the degree to which Obama delivers a speech in the style of the African-American church. So far no one has noted this, or felt it of any importance. But it is novel, if not disturbing at times to see a presidential candidate talk in conversation in one fashion, only to speak publicly in quite another–a jarring dichotomy that far exceeds the normal informal/formal pattern of private and public speech and thus borders on artifice and contrivance.

While listening to the speech, despite Obama’s praise of Hillary, I thought I heard the crowd boo at the mention of her name, especially when the Michigan governor evoked it. I think there is a tension there that is neither discussed publicly nor will abate.

A modest prediction…

Should Obama win in November, I think we will see—and should hope for— a new call for “bipartisanship” — no more filibustering, no more stalling presidential appointments in committee, no more creepy Alfred Knopf novels like Nicholson Baker’s Checkpoint, no more Michael Moore’s hit-piece documentaries about a sitting president, no more vile award-winning docu-dramas like Death of a President, no more New Republic articles with titles like, “The Case for Bush Hatred.”

No matter how controversial the Obama tenure, an ex-president Cheney (a la Gore) will not give speeches about Obama’s “brown shirts.” A conservative counterpart to Garrison Keeler should not be talking about Obama’s “brown shirts in pinstripes” and retired Senators like John Glenn surely should not be suggesting about the Obama team — “It’s the old Hitler business.” And there won’t be a black conservative who adopts the ethics of Julian Bond talking of Obama and “the Confederate swastika.”

There also won’t be a Guardian columnist like Charles Booker writing filth like the following: “The world will endure four more years of idiocy, arrogance and unwarranted bloodshed, with no benevolent deity to watch over and save us. John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr. — where are you now that we need you?”

Instead, any such vituperative movie, novel, column, or essay in the Western public domain will rightly be dubbed a “smear” and worse, and we will hear–again, as we should– calls for collective, bipartisan condemnation.

In other words, the Left will suddenly wake up and realize that over the last eight years the country and indeed the English-speaking liberal world have done enormous damage to public discourse in reprehensibly and shamefully promulgating films, books, and essays about hating and, indeed, killing a President.

After destroying the protocols of good taste and decorum, an infantile 60s generation in their age and sobriety will now understand that they themselves (see Thucydides on Corcyra) are likewise in need of some shared standards of public expression, rightly fathoming that such easy venom weakens a free society.

Yes, the Left will suddenly adopt a new maturity about a President Obama, and responsibly demand of us all to excise from our vocabulary over the top hate speech, such as comparing an elected administration to Nazis or fantasies about killing American presidents.

And this, once again, will be as it should be–albeit eight years too late.

Another modest prediction…

I think Iraq will continue to stabilize, the Europeans will continue to sober up—about the paralysis of the EU, the dangers of Iran, the problems with immigration and demography, and post facto appreciate the US role in the world over the last 8 years in destroying thousands in al Qaeda and discrediting it in Muslim eyes. And when this is all over, at some future date, many here and abroad will say of the now despised Bush “He kept us safe.”—especially should we see an Obama presidency that abruptly leaves Iraq, calls off the war on terror in favor of writs, indictments, and subpoenas, and waits on European and UN prompts about world crises.

Patrick J. Buchanan got upset that I wrote a column about the World War II revisionists, especially his book, and that of Nicholson Baker’s on the allied “crimes” of bombing German cities. I produce his column by paragraph and then comment in brackets.

In attacking my book “Churchill, Hitler and ‘The Unnecessary War’: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World,” Victor Davis Hanson, the court historian of the neoconservatives, charges me with “rewriting … facts” and showing “ingratitude” to American and British soldiers who fought World Wars I and II.
[In dealing with Mr. Buchanan, one must accept at the beginning two caveats. First, as is his style, he will always resort to ad hominem attacks in lieu of an argument. Thus note at the very beginning his sneering “court historian of the neoconservatives.”
Second, Buchanan unfortunately is neither a reliable journalist nor an historian, and thus simply cannot be trusted to report accurately what is written. He says I charge him with “rewriting… facts” (note those convenient three dots). I did not charge him with rewriting facts, but simply advancing a thesis contrary to them: “Questioning the past is a good thing, but rewriting it contrary to facts is quite another.” (emphasis added)
And I didn’t just criticize Buchanan’s book, but in a brief 750 word newspaper column lumped it together with the novelist Nicholson Baker’s (Human Smoke) equally critical attack on the allies in World War II—both as signs of the sorry state of historical revisionism that has sprung up in the climate of the Iraq war.
Writing a book whose theme is that the allies, and especially the British, unwisely and unduly pressured Hitler, and therefore were culpable for much of the carnage of World War II, again, does not “rewrite… facts”, but simply ignores them. And, yes, it does indeed serve to lessen the enormous sacrifices that American and British soldiers endured to stop a monstrosity like National Socialism, whose doctrine of racial hatred and territorial expansion logically led to a German government attacking by 1940 most of its neighbors, to the east, west, north and south, and eventually, in industrial fashion, murdering 6 million Jews.

Much of Hitler’s madness was outlined well in advance in Mein Kampf. By the late 1930s his harsh treatment of the Jews was a harbinger of things to come, once his own power was consolidated and Germany free from outside objection.]
Both charges are false, and transparently so.
Hanson cites not a single fact I got wrong and ignores the fact that the book is dedicated to my mother’s four brothers who fought in World War II. Moreover, the book begins by celebrating the greatness of the British nation and heroism of its soldier-sons.
[Within a 350-word critique devoted to the theme of his book, I cited his misreading of the Versailles Treaty (see below), and his special pleading that serves to exculpate Hitler’s Nazi government. Again, the thesis of Buchanan’s’ book is not based on facts, but can only be advanced by contradicting them. And it has a disturbing habit of mechanically at times praising those who are his natural targets—or supposedly naive victims—of the book, as if that allows him to further denigrate their wisdom and sacrifice.]

Did Hanson even read it?
[Unfortunately I did read it, and was appalled by his absence of logic—hence the column.]
The focus of “The Unnecessary War” is on the colossal blunders by British statesmen that reduced Britain from the greatest empire since Rome into an island dependency of the United States in three decades. It is a cautionary tale, written for America, which is treading the same path Britain trod in the early 20th century.
[This is as ludicrous as it is disingenuous. By 1939 the British Empire was in financial straits, its global economic position long displaced by the industrial power and growing population of the United States, and its empire an increasing economic drain. Its so-called decline had begun at the end of the nineteenth century, and was confirmed, not created, by World War II. Despite the cast-off and occasional warning about Hitler’s cruelty, the book accepts that there was nothing intrinsic within National Socialism as practiced under Hitler that would necessarily have led to war, and indeed a number of legitimate grievances that would justify Hitler’s own preemptive wars.]

Hanson agrees the Versailles Treaty of 1919 was “flawed,” but says Germany had it coming, for the harsh peace the Germans imposed on France in 1871 and Russia in 1918.
Certainly, the amputation of Alsace-Lorraine by Bismarck’s Germany was a blunder that engendered French hatred and a passion for revenge. But does Teutonic stupidity in 1871 justify British stupidity in 1919?
[Again, Buchanan misleads. I wrote that Versailles was less harsh than the treaties imposed on the defeated by Germany—and less harsh than what Germany had planned for the allies. 1871 was not a matter of “Teutonic stupidity”, but the logical result of German aggression and carefully thought-out punishment.]
Is that what history teaches, Hanson?
[Again, Buchanan is not truthful. I argued the problem was not Versailles, but the inability or the unwillingness of the allies to promote and foster German postwar democracy, occupy the country and thereby remind the German people that they had not been “stabbed in the back” in foreign territory, but militarily defeated on the battlefield and in full retreat when their generals sued for peace. That would have had a powerful effect in reminding the German people that neither Jews nor socialists had caused their defeat, but the madness of invading France, and the futility of fighting Russia, France, Britain, Italy, and the United States all at once.]

In 1918, Germany accepted an armistice on Wilson’s 14 Points, laid down her arms and surrendered her High Seas Fleet.
Yet, once disarmed, Germany was subjected to a starvation blockade, denied the right to fish in the Baltic Sea, and saw all her colonies and private property therein confiscated by British, French and Japanese imperialists, in naked violation of Wilson’s 14 Points.
Germans, Austrians and Hungarians by the millions were then consigned to Belgium, France, Italy, Serbia, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Poland and Lithuania, in violation of the principle of self-determination.
Germany was sliced in half, dismembered, disarmed, saddled with unpayable debt and forced, under threat of further starvation and invasion, to confess she alone was morally responsible for the war and all its devastation — which was a lie, and the Allies knew it.
[France, Britain, and Italy did not accept the 14 Points, and thus it was never an official allied position. Germany knew that when it discovered that Wilson could not speak for the allies, given the late entry of the United States into an ongoing allied effort. Germany lost two large slices of territory, about 13 percent of it European landmass, land once annexed from France by its invasion of 1870, and areas in what would become Poland that had been annexed by Prussia during the aggrandizement and long unification of the Germany. Much, though not all, of the returned territory had been won through coercion by imperial Germany in a series of wars, and was given back following plebiscites. As I wrote, the treaty was “flawed” by our modern sensibilities, but by the standards of the times, far less punitive than what Germany herself customarily demanded from the defeated. France did not invade Germany in 1870, 1914, or 1940, but by May 1940 found itself for the third time in seventy years with a German army advancing on Paris.]

Where was Hitler born?
“At Versailles,” replied Lady Astor.
[Buchanan’s citation of the quip of the aristocratic hostess Nancy Witcher Langhorne as an authority on Versailles is revealing and gives his game away—a woman known for her virulent anti-Semitism, pro-Hitler appeasement, and close correspondence with another kindred soul in Ambassador Joseph Kennedy. Her slurs about Czechoslovakian refugees, prejudice toward Catholics, lunatic pronouncements on slavery and blacks, and reprehensible slanders of British soldiers proved her to be unhinged—but apparently earns a citation of wisdom from Buchanan.]

As for the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk Germany imposed on Russia in 1918, is Hanson aware that the prison house of nations for which he wails, which was forced to disgorge Finland, the Baltic republics, Poland, Ukraine and the Caucasus, was ruled by Bolsheviks?
Was it a war crime for the Kaiser to break up Lenin’s evil empire?
[This is surreal and reveals Buchanan’s lack of even a simple grasp of history. Lenin had been in power for a little over a few weeks when negotiations with Germany began in November and December 1917—and only a few months when the treaty was signed in March 1918. His “evil empire” was in fact the centuries-long imperial Russia of the Tsars. Yes, imperial Germany did want Russia to “disgorge” land—so that it in turn might gorge upon them. That’s why the Kaiser seized much of the Ukraine, the Baltic States, and Belarus. Many on Buchanan’s list of free states “disgorged” in fact in the last year of the war came under sway of the German empire as virtual dependencies.

In short, Germany demanded and until defeated got its hands on a great deal of Russian territory, ninety percent of her coal, and much of Russian industry—a greed that severely hampered its efforts to transfer manpower and material to the Western front in 1918. Note that Buchanan omits my mention of Germany’s plans for Western Europe in the event of its victory, which we know from post-World War II archives would have made the Versailles treaty tame in comparison.]

Two years after Brest-Litovsk, Churchill himself was urging Britain to revise Versailles, bring Germany into the Allied fold and intervene in Russia’s civil war — against Lenin and Trotsky.
[Now Buchanan is praising the Churchill he serially damns as the fool who had prompted World War II. What Churchill was trying to do was exactly what I stated in my essay—incorporate Germany into the family of Western nations—something impossible not because of Versailles, but because a defeated German army in November 1918 retreated from foreign territory and reentered the fatherland, promulgating the myth that it had never been beaten, when in fact it was within days of annihilation by an advancing allied army that included over a million American soldiers.]
As for my thesis that the British war guarantee to Poland of March 31, 1939, was the “Fatal Blunder” that guaranteed World War II and brought down the British Empire, Hanson is mocking:
“Buchanan argues that, had the imperialist Winston Churchill not pushed poor Hitler into a corner, he would have never invaded Poland in 1939, which triggered an unnecessary Allied response.”
First, Hanson should get his prime ministers straight. It was Neville Chamberlain who issued the war guarantee to Poland after the collapse of his Munich accord. Churchill was not even in the Cabinet.
[Buchanan, again, cannot honestly reproduce quoted material. Pace Buchanan, note that I did not write “Prime Minister” Churchill—and for precisely the reason that he was not Prime Minister in September 1939 when Germany invaded Poland. But the very reason that the British turned to the “imperialist” Churchill in extremis in May 1940 was because he was on record in the British Parliament and in public life since 1932 for restoring British military preparedness, and, from at least 1936, enlightening British naïve rightists about the sinister nature of Hitler’s National Socialism. Yet Churchill is the veritable villain of Buchanan’s book, not the maniacal Hitler.]
Second, Hansen implies that I portray Hitler as a misunderstood victim. This is mendacious. Hitler’s foul crimes are fully related.
(a) Hanson, not Hansen. (b) Hitler’s crimes are mentioned in the customary Buchanan disclaimer fashion; but if they were “fully related,” they would make it impossible to empathize with a psychopath whose polices ended logically in the Holocaust.]
Third, was it moral, Hanson, for Britain to promise the Poles military aid they could not and did not deliver, thus steeling Polish resolve to resist Hitler and guaranteeing Poland’s annihilation?
[Now this is a strange contortion. The Poles were already steeled since they had known first hand German aggrandizement since 1914, had seen what Hitler had done in the Rhineland, Austria, and Czechoslovakia, and knew well the futility of appeasement. A militarily weak Britain and morally bankrupt France are to be faulted for not attacking in the West in September 1939, but applauded for at least declaring war on Hitler and finally apprising him that his aggression would no longer be treated with rhetoric but now with armed resistance. ]

Was it wise, Hanson, for Britain to declare a world war on the strongest nation in Europe over a town, Danzig, where the British prime minister thought Germany had the stronger claim?
[This is ludicrous. Danzig was a mere “town”? In fact, Britain declared war because for years Hitler had serially violated all of its WWI and international agreements, dismembered Czechoslovakia, and revealed the true nature of Nazi global aggrandizement as outlined years before in Mein Kampf.]
What were the consequences for Poland of trusting in Britain?
Crucifixion on a Nazi-Soviet cross, the Katyn massacre of the Polish officer corps, Treblinka and Auschwitz, annihilation of the Home Army, millions of brave Polish dead, half a century of Bolshevik terror.
[This is reprehensible. Now British military weakness is blamed for Auschwitz, rather than the innate sinister nature of Nazism? Does Buchanan believe that had Britain not tried to stop Hitler, the death camps would have never occurred? Does he know of the prewar Nazi precursors to the Final Solution, the geneses of which were clear from Germany’s own treatment of its chronically ill and mentally disturbed?]
And how did Churchill honor Britain’s commitment to Poland?
During trips to Moscow, Churchill bullied the Polish prime minister into ceding to Stalin that half of his country Stalin had gotten from his devil’s pact with Hitler, and yielded to Stalin’s demand for annexation of the Baltic republics and Bolshevik rule of a dozen nations of Eastern and Central Europe.
[Churchill distrusted Stalin, but by 1943 understood that a weak British Empire had no leverage at all against Stalin’s 400 divisions. Again in hindsight Churchill can be made to look illiberal, but given the realities of the times, there was no one more suspicious of the ally Stalin, or more sympathetic to the Poles. ]
Was it worth 50 million dead, Hanson, so Stalin, whose victims, as of Sept. 1, 1939, were 1,000 times Hitler’s, could occupy not only Poland, for which Britain went to war, but all of Christian Europe to the Elbe?
[How odd that the allies are indirectly blamed for the Holocaust, as if its seeds were not innate to Nazism. Most credit Stalin with the atrocious crime of killing 20-30 million of his own, versus Hitler’s 6 million. How that translates in “1,000 times” I am not sure—except by the misleading qualifier “by Sept.1 1939.” But here Buchanan engages in hindsight. In 1939, Britain knew of no other means—not political, not diplomatic, not economic—of stopping Hitler from absorbing all of Europe, an agenda of aggression clear from 1936 onward.]
Churchill was right when he told FDR in December 1941 it was “The Unnecessary War” and right again in 1948, when he wrote that, in Stalin, the world now faced “even worse perils” than those of Hitler.
[This is disingenuous. The aggregate of Churchill’s writings make it clear that he felt the war had been unnecessary only on the grounds that he felt, rightly I think, that it could have been prevented by standing up to a then weak Hitler in 1936, which would have humiliated the Nazis and perhaps even led to a change of government or at least a sort of containment of Nazism. And note Churchill’s choice of word “perils”. Churchill did not think, as implied by Buchanan, that Hitler was any less evil than Stalin, only that the Red Army and the resources of the Soviet Union gave it the potential to become far more dangerous than a much smaller Nazi empire.
Both World War II and the Cold War were necessary. And while the Soviet government was a vile and evil entity, millions of Red Army soldiers were not communists, but brave patriots who did much to stop the Wehrmacht, and, yes, by their efforts did save allied lives. Again, they fought for a horrendous government, but the motivation for many was not global communism or Comrade Stalin who had butchered millions of their families and friends, but to rid German soldiers from the soil of Mother Russia.]
So, what had it all been for?
[World War II—forced upon, not the fault of, the allies—was worth it. It ended fascism and Nazism, liberated thousands from death camps and starvation in forced labor compounds, led to a new democratic Europe, prevented the extinction of European Jewry, and reformed a once serially bellicose Germany that had attacked France three times in 70 years. Today’s Europe and Japan are proof of our grandfathers’ achievement.]

Historian Hanson should go back to tutoring undergrads about the Peloponnesian War and the Syracuse Expedition.
I guess Mr. Buchanan believes that working as a political operative in Richard Nixon’s White House is better training for history than formal study of classical languages and history. I think his ancient Greek citation is a vague reference to my support for the removal of Saddam Hussein and the effort to foster constitutional government in Iraq. But once more, Buchanan reveals his ignorance of history. The Syracuse expedition, as he calls it, was a case of a democratic Athens attacking a larger and democratic Syracuse and its Sicilian allies at a time when its adversary Sparta was not beaten. When I last looked the United States had not expanded its war on radical Islam by invading democratic India.
And the last time I had any notice of Buchanan himself was when his American Conservative magazine asked the so-called “War Nerd” (who once “daydreamed” of burning down my vineyard [which in fact later mysteriously experienced a roadside brushfire], cf. his “Victor Hanson: Portrait of an American Traitor” http://groups.google.com/group/eurolegalgroup/browse_thread/thread/62138f41e7283b35) to review A War Like No Other, and wrote an incoherent rant about Iraq rather than the book in question.
I stand by everything I wrote about Patrick J. Buchanan’s book, and find his latest effort further confirmation of his delusional views about both past and present.