Migrants at a train station in Hegyeshalon, Hungary. (Jeff J. Mitchell/Getty)
There is a tragic monotony to the latest massive human migration, this one involving Syrians fleeing their war-torn country.
Whether the migrants are from Mexico, the Islamic world, or elsewhere, it is always the same: Migrants flock to the West.
by Victor Davis Hanson // Ricochet
Gen. William T. Sherman, ca. 1864-65. Mathew Brady Collection. (Army)
One hundred and fifty years ago this September 2, William Tecumseh Sherman took Atlanta after a brilliant campaign through the woods of northern Georgia. While Grant slogged it out against Lee in northern Virginia all through the late spring and summer of 1864—the names of those battles still send chills up our collective spine: Spotsylvania, the Wilderness, Cold Harbor — Lincoln’s reelection chances were declared doomed. All summer, General George McClellan reminded Americans that he had once gotten closer to Richmond than had Grant and at far less cost — and promised that, under his presidency, the war would end with either the South free to create its own nation or to rejoin the Union with slavery intact … but that in either case the terrible internecine bloodletting would end. Then Sherman suddenly took Atlanta (“Atlanta is ours and fairly won.”); McClellan was doomed and the shrinking Confederacy was bisected once again.
What was to be next? Southerners grew confident that the besieger Sherman would become the besieged in Atlanta after the election, as his long supply lines back to Tennessee would be cut and a number of Confederate forces might converge to keep him locked up behind Confederate lines.
Photo via NRO
In postmodern wars, we are told, there is no victory, no defeat, no aggressors, no defenders, just a tragedy of conflicting agendas. But in such a mindless and amoral landscape, Israel in fact is on its way to emerging in a far better position after the Gaza war than before.
Analysts of the current fighting in Gaza have assured us that even if Israel weakens Hamas, such a short-term victory will hardly lead to long-term strategic success — but they don’t define “long-term.” In this line of thinking, supposedly in a few weeks Israel will only find itself more isolated than ever. It will grow even more unpopular in Europe and will perhaps, for the first time, lose its patron, America — while gaining an enraged host of Arab and Islamic enemies. Meanwhile, Hamas will gain stature, rebuild, and slowly wear Israel down.
Getty Images / Via Oli Scarff
Once again neighboring enemies are warring in diametrically opposite ways.
Hamas sees the death of its civilians as an advantage; Israel sees the death of its civilians as a disaster. Defensive missiles explode to save civilians in Israel; in Gaza, civilians are placed at risk of death to protect offensive missiles.
Hamas wins by losing lots of its people; Israel loses by losing a few of its own. Hamas digs tunnels in premodern fashion; Israel uses postmodern high technology to detect them. Hamas’s missiles usually prove ineffective; Israel’s bombs and missiles almost always hit their targets. Quiet Israeli officers lead from the front; loud Hamas leaders flee to the rear. Incompetency wins sympathy; expertise, disdain.
Westerners romanticize the Hamas cause; fellow Arabs of the Gulf do not. Westerners critical of Israel are still willing to visit Israel; sympathizers of Hamas do not wish to visit Gaza.
by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online
Photo of Jimmy Carter holding cabinet meeting 1977 photo by US National Archives
Our elites often diagnose Vladimir Putin as acting from “weakness” in his many aggressions.
A list of Russia’s symptoms of feebleness follows: demographic crises, alcoholism, declining longevity, a one-dimensional economy, corruption, environmental damage, etc. But weakness is a relative concept in matters of high-stakes aggression.
by Raymond Ibrahim // RaymondIbrahim.com
el7bara via Flickr
While other scriptures contain contradictions, the Koran is the only holy book whose commentators have evolved a doctrine to account for the very visible shifts which occur from one injunction to another. No careful reader will remain unaware of the many contradictory verses in the Koran, most specifically the way in which peaceful and tolerant verses lie almost side by side with violent and intolerant ones. The ulema were initially baffled as to which verses to codify into the Shari’a worldview—the one that states there is no coercion in religion (2:256), or the ones that command believers to fight all non-Muslims till they either convert, or at least submit, to Islam (8:39, 9:5, 9:29). To get out of this quandary, the commentators developed the doctrine of abrogation, which essentially maintains that verses revealed later in Muhammad’s career take precedence over earlier ones whenever there is a discrepancy. In order to document which verses abrogated which, a religious science devoted to the chronology of the Koran’s verses evolved (known as an-Nasikh wa’l Mansukh, the abrogater and the abrogated). Read more →
by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online
This summer will mark the 100th anniversary of the beginning of World War I, and we 
should reflect on the “lessons” we have been taught so often on how to avoid another such devastating conflict. Chief among them seems to be the canard that the Versailles Treaty of 1919 that officially ended the war caused a far worse one just 20 years later — usually in the sense of an unnecessary harshness accorded a defeated Imperial Germany.
But how true is that common argument of what John Maynard Keynes called a “Carthaginian peace”? Read more →
by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine
The attacks on Lone Survivor, the movie about 4 Navy Seals caught in an operation gone lethally wrong in Afghanistan, illustrate once again the fossilized orthodoxy of the left. The L.A. Weekly’s Amy Nicholson called the movie a “jingoistic snuff film” that “bleeds blood red, bone-fracture white, and bruise blue” and assumes “brown people bad, American people good.” Read more →
by Bruce S. Thornton // Defining Ideas
In the latter years of World War I, Winston Churchill met with the novelist and poet Siegfried Sassoon. Sassoon was a winner of the Military Cross––he single-handedly routed 60 Germans and captured a trench on the Hindenburg Line––and a fierce pacifist. Sassoon’s reminiscences of that meeting reveal how odd my title question would have struck most people before our time. He recalled that during their conversation, Churchill “gave me an emphatic vindication of militarism as an instrument of policy and stimulator of glorious individual achievements.” Read more →
Watch my various videos and interviews all conveniently compiled into one YouTube channel
On today’s program Victor discusses the cognitive challenges of Joe Biden; the former Veep’s basement strategy – and how Trump needs to get Biden up through the bilco doors; how November will be about the Angry Voter; Blue State leaders “neo-confederate” approach to mayhem; John Roberts, the intimidated jurist; a Trump Second-Term agenda; recalling California Governor Gavin Newsom; and reflections on the Fall of France on the 80th anniversary. The Victor Davis Hanson Podcast is produced by Sarah Schutte.
On this week’s episode, Victor discusses statue-toppling; the self-cannibalizing appetite of cultural revolutions; Juneteenth; President Trump’s new immigration order; chaos; John Bolton’s book; favorable winds that Donald Trump needs to harness to prevail in November; an attack of his criticism of retired generals; and how in the era of pandemics and riots, the city mouse is envious of his country cousin.
On today’s episode, Victor discusses his forthcoming NR piece on the emerging, partisan Military-Intelligence Complex; statue-toppling and base-renaming; the ironies and paradoxes of revolutions; Senator Graham’s planned Judiciary hearings on Flynn and collusion; BLM being a Marxist front; media madness; and the Seattle CHAZ scene.
Victor Davis Hanson explores the historical, political, and economic aspects of the rural-urban divide — and its implications for American culture.
Victor Davis Hanson looks at how the protest movement inspired by the death of George Floyd has morphed from a legitimate lament of tragedy into a dangerous, revolutionary crusade.
Victor Davis Hanson puts the efforts to uproot confederate iconography into historical perspective, examines the revolutionary zeal currently in fashion amongst progressive activists, and compares & contrasts this moment of American instability with others in the nation’s past.
Iran’s next move, a Senate impeachment trial, and the beginning of the Democratic primaries. Despite January and February’s uncertainties, Victor Davis Hanson, the Hoover Institution’s Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow, believes in this certainty: President Trump is on a path to reelection this fall.
Victor Davis Hanson talks about his National Review article "Kill Chic."
Victor Davis Hanson on Trump’s Unlikely Populism
Victor Davis Hanson discusses the damaging disclosure about Obama keeping tabs on the FBI Hillary Clinton email investigation, State Department unmasking, why Hillary’s and Obama’s hubris may be their own downfall and how this can very well be a Watergate or Iran-Contra type scandal.
Victor Davis Hanson is featured in a new episode of The Ricochet Podcast.
