America’s Middle East Dilemma
Toppling tyrants is ineffective in the long term without years of unpopular occupation. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online Two and a half years ago, the U.S. pulled every soldier out of a mostly quiet Iraq. In the void thus created, formerly al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorists calling themselves “The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria” […]
Lots of Recent Man-Caused Disasters
by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online Even the administration is now considering some sort of overseas contingency operation to cope with an outbreak of workplace violence worldwide. Each morning it seems we read that Islamic killers of Boko Haram have kidnapped or slaughtered more children. Israel alleges Hamas affiliates are behind the kidnapping […]
The New Children’s Crusade
Almost everything we are told about illegal immigration is both a lie and amoral. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online Sometime around 1212, mystics in Europe cooked up the idea that kids could part the seas, reach the Holy Land, reclaim Jerusalem, and convert the infidel Muslims. Thousands of children in Northern Europe […]
Book Review: A Genius for Destructive Change
by Terry Scambray // New Oxford Review, May 2014 Darwin: Portrait of a Genius. By Paul Johnson Viking. 176 pages. $25.95. It is a measure of the cultural contamination of materialism, given great impetus by Charles Darwin, that even a giant like Paul Johnson can be infected and attenuated by it. For Johnson is one of […]
War Was Interested in Obama
by Victor Davis Hanson // PJMedia Leon Trotsky probably did not quite write the legendary aphorism that “you may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.” But whoever did, you get the point that no nation can always pick and choose when it wishes to be left alone. Barack Obama, however, […]
Obama Quits Afghanistan
Bringing Bergdahl home was useful for closing Gitmo and winding down the war. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online Soon we shall get to the bottom of the swap of five Taliban kingpins from the Guantanamo Bay detention facility for one Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl. In time we will learn whether Bergdahl really served with […]
Illegal Immigration and Eric Cantor
by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online Eric Cantor’s luck ran out, when his long insistence of pushing immigration-reform legislation finally coincided with a massive and sudden rush of thousands to the U.S. border from Central America. That lining up of the planets explains why a good but obscure candidate beat a supposedly invincible […]
Was Benghazi a Scandal?
Scandals — or fundamental transformations? by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online If the CIA wanted to smuggle guns to Syria or interrogate al-Qaeda suspects in Benghazi, that was its business, not necessarily the administration’s. To the degree Obama was involved in overseeing events in Libya, his involvement was most likely limited to a vague […]
Fictions as Truth
For the Obama administration narrative to be accurate about the swap of five Taliban/al-Qaeda-related kingpins for Sgt. Bergdahl, we are asked to believe the following: by Victor Davis Hanson // PJ Media For the Obama administration narrative to be accurate about the swap of five Taliban/al-Qaeda-related kingpins for Sgt. Bergdahl, we are asked to believe […]
The Progressive Gitmo Myth
by Bruce Thornton// FrontPage Magazine The swap of probable deserter Bowe Bergdahl for 5 “high-risk” Guantánamo detainees is about more than political public relations. By releasing some of the worst murderers, this deal prepares the ground for Obama’s long-term goal of shutting down the Guantánamo Bay detention facility and releasing the remaining detainees. According to […]
Airlifts to D.C.?
by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online (The Corner) Concerning the latest and deliberate lack of border enforcement, all one can say is that it is very unlikely that impoverished Mexican nationals, many of them school-age children sent across the border ahead of their parents in search of American residency, will not be airlifted to […]
The Troubling Plight of the Modern University
Today’s campus is more reactionary than the objects of its frequent vituperation. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online Employment rates for college graduates are dismal. Aggregate student debt is staggering. But university administrative salaries are soaring. The campus climate of tolerance has utterly disappeared. Only the hard sciences and graduate schools have salvaged […]
Partisan Politics, Bad Ideas & the Bergdahl Swap
by Bruce S. Thornton // FrontPage Magazine President Obama’s exchange of 5 high-ranking Taliban murderers for a soldier who possibly was a deserter and collaborator encapsulates everything that is wrong with this administration’s foreign policy. The serial failures of the past 5 years reflect a toxic brew of partisan politics and naïve ideology.
Our Future Is 1979
Obama’s foreign-policy weakness encourages our enemies and disheartens our allies. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online The final acts of the Obama foreign policy will play out in the next two years. Unfortunately, bad things happen when the world concludes that the American president has become weakened, distracted, or diffident about foreign policy.
The Bergdahl Release Is Just the Beginning
by Victor Davis Hanson // The Corner (National Review Online) There has been a lot to think about during these years of Obama’s foreign policy. But the problem is not just the existential issues, from reset to Benghazi, but also the less heralded developments, such as young non-high-school graduate Edward Snowden’s trotting off with the […]
The New Regressives
by Victor Davis Hanson // PJ Media Today’s liberalism is about as liberal as the Hellenistic world was Hellenic — a glossy veneer over a rotten core. In the old days, liberalism was about the means to an end, not the end itself. Since the days of Socrates, liberalism enshrined free inquiry, guided by inductive […]
Our Bad Habit of Negotiating with Terrorists
by Bruce Thornton // FrontPage Magazine Every parent should be happy for the Bergdahl family, whose son was returned to them after five years of captivity among the Taliban. But every parent is not the president of the United States, whose primary responsibility is to protect the security and interests of all Americans, both […]
Russia: Weaker than What?
VDH commentary on the ‘CAN OR SHOULD THE WEST TRY TO STOP VLADIMIR PUTIN’S ATTEMPTS TO REABSORB PORTIONS OF THE OLD SOVIET UNION?’ issue 13 of Strategika by Victor Davis Hanson // Strategika 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, […]
D-Day at 70
Remembering the most brilliantly conducted invasion in military history by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online General Eisenhower speaks with paratroopers prior to the invasion. (Photo via Library of Congress) Seventy years ago this June 6, the Americans, British, and Canadians stormed the beaches of Normandy in the largest amphibious invasion of Europe since […]
Egalitarian Grandees
If you’re loudly green, you can have a carbon footprint the size of Godzilla’s. by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online Charting liberal hypocrisy is now old hat. From academia to the Sierra Club, elite progressives expect to live lives that are quite different from what they envision for the less sophisticated. No one […]