Blood and Oil
by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services With the gruesome killing of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, Vladimir Putin’s Russia stands accused of poisoning yet another critic.
Conquest and Concession
The fate of Hagia Sophia and the Aqsa Mosque by Raymond Ibrahim Private Papers Previous to Pope Benedict XVI’s November 30th visit to the Hagia Sophia complex in Constantinople, Muslims and Turks expressed fear, apprehension, and rage.
War Stories
Two versions of what we should do next. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Five years after September 11, and three-and-a-half years after toppling Saddam Hussein, the U.S. is almost as angry at itself as it is at the enemy. Two quite antithetical views of the war on terror — and indeed, the entire […]
Tough Idealism
Remembering that Iraq represents new foreign policy. by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services “Our own successful three-week war, but their failed three-year peace.”
Twisted Proverb
Osama bin Laden’s “Peace to whoever follows guidance” by Raymond Ibrahim Private Papers Whenever Osama bin Laden addresses the West he always prefaces his message with the simple statement, “Peace to whoever follows guidance.”
Will the West Stumble?
by Victor Davis Hanson Real Clear Politics What a stupid question. By any benchmark of economic prosperity, military power, and political stability, Western civilization — in the United States, Europe, and the former British Commonwealth — has never been stronger. Globalization has become a euphemism for Westernization, an apparent unstoppable juggernaut.
More Bark Than Bite?
by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Will the Democrats’ new control of the House and Senate shake things up that much abroad? They certainly will have plenty of opportunities to alter the present American course of fighting terrorists, the war in Iraq and our overall foreign policy.
The Fighting over the Fighting
Let’s at least be clear about the implications. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online It looks as if Americans have pushed the rock of Iraq almost to the crest, only to let go, like Sisyphus, terrified that it will roll back; we hope only that we will not be crushed in its descent. While […]
Rethinking Illegal Immigration
by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Now that the bitter election season is over, both parties will have to return to the explosive issue of illegal immigration.
The Sage and the Sword
Jihadists see West’s tragic flaw in blinkered tolerance by Bruce S. Thornton Private Papers The West’s condemnation of Israel’s accidental shelling of two Palestinian Arab houses that killed 18 people once more reveals the bizarre incoherence that addles our thinking.
My Bizarre Libyan Holiday
It wasn’t just the politics. by Victor Davis Hanson City Journal (Autumn 2006) Libya? Most are rightly taken aback at the thought. But I was also intrigued when an educational cruise line invited me to lecture this past April on the classical antiquities of Libya — or, more properly, “The Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya the […]
James Webb and Lessons in Make-Believe
by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Democracies have seen novelists who entered politics (Upton Sinclair and Mario Vargas Llosa). Sometimes politicians aspire to become novelists (Georges Clemenceau and Newt Gingrich). In almost every case, their fiction at one time or another was wrongly used against them in campaigns and political life — on the […]
Troubling “Facts” of the Paris Riots
How our newspapers might turn bias to balance. by Bruce S. Thornton Private Papers The media’s techniques for smuggling opinion into what are supposed to be news stories are so pervasive that often we don’t even notice when they are at work.
Kerryism
by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Kerry surely must be one of the saddest Democratic liabilities around. Some afterthoughts about his latest gaffe, which is one of those rare glimpses into an entire troubled ideology:
Before Iraq
The assumptions of a forgetful chattering class are badly off the mark. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online What is written about Iraq now is exclusively acrimonious. The narrative is the suicide bomber and IED, never how many terrorists we have killed, how many Iraqis have been given a chance for something different than […]
The Dark Ages: Live from the Middle East
by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services The most frightening aspect of the present war is how easily our pre-modern enemies from the Middle East have brought a stunned postmodern world back into the Dark Ages.
The Wonders of Hindsight
Looking back is a sure way to stumble. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Most of the blame game being played over the Iraqi occupation — and always with the wisdom of hindsight — is now irrelevant.
Liberals Gone Wild!
by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Why do Republicans drive leftists so crazy these days? Liberal democrats are beginning to sound like rowdy students on spring break, shrieking and exhibiting themselves on camera.
The Pseudo-Histories of the Iraq War
by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Three recent books about the “fiasco” in Iraq — Cobra II by Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor, State of Denial by Bob Woodward and just plainFiasco by Tom Ricks — have attracted a lot of attention, and sales. All three well-written exposés repeat the now well-known argument that our government’s incompetence and arrogance […]
The New Old Eco-Pessimism
by Victor Davis Hanson The American Spectator The release of Al Gore’s environmental documentary An Inconvenient Truth — and its attendant criticism that our heating planet arises out of Western pathology — harkens back to a long tradition of gloom and doom in Western thought and art.