What the President Might Say
It is about more than just Fallujah. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online We are presently engaged in a world war for our civilization and its vision of a just and humane society. Our values will either endure this present struggle and indeed be invigorated by the ordeal, or like once great civilizations of […]
The Historical Record on Afghanistan and Iraq
What will be remembered? by Victor Davis Hanson San Francisco Chronicle In the present chaos in Iraq, of course, the war’s purpose and outcome seem clouded.
Myth or Reality?
Will Iraq work? That’s up to us. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Myth #1: America turned off its allies. According to John Kerry, due to inept American diplomacy and unilateral arrogance, the United States failed to get the Europeans and the U.N. on board for the war in Iraq. Thus, unlike in Afghanistan, […]
So Lucky To Have Them
American soldiers are as impressive abroad as we are embarrassing at home. by Victor Davis Hanson Private Papers These are not really dark times. Rather I think in some ways they are among the finest in our history. No other country would or could send its youth 7,000 miles away to end fascism, implement consensual government, and […]
Our Present Chaos
Inconsistency is the order of the day. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online For the past two years we have lamented the rise of a supposedly new doctrine of preemption — or whether the United States should hit inveterate enemies while they are still vulnerable and have not yet finalized their plans to strike […]
Finish It Or Forget It
This is a war–not terrorism, insurgency, or uprising by Victor Davis Hanson Private Papers For about a year now, a baby-faced grotesque thug, Sadr, dressed up in a cleric’s robes and backed by two or three thousand gangsters has held world-wide televised press conferences as he pompously boasted about his promised imposition of Iranian-style theocracy […]
Western Cannibalism
Eating each other while our enemies smile. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online This war grows stranger here at home and abroad all the time. Despite the horrific barbarism in Fallujah and the gun-toting and killing by the Shiites, the United States is ever so steadily establishing a consensual government of sorts under impossible […]
The Mirror of Fallujah
No more passes and excuses for the Middle East by Victor Davis Hanson Private Papers What are we to make of scenes from the eighth-century in Fallujah? Random murder, mutilation of the dead, dismemberment, televised gore, and pride in stringing up the charred corpses of thosewho sought to bring food to the hungry?
Lovin’ Europe by Leavin’
It is past time fore our 60-year-old European child to move out of the house and get a life. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online One of the most misleading fables about this present struggle is that, since 9/11, we have squandered European good will through arrogance and our “unilateral” operations in Iraq.
When Should We Stop Supporting Israel?
by Victor Davis Hanson Private Papers The recent assassination of Sheik Saruman raises among some Americans the question—at what point should we reconsider our rather blanket support for the Israelis and show a more even-handed attitude toward the Palestinians? The answer, it seems to me, should be assessed in cultural, economic, political, and social terms.
We Are Finishing the War
Anatomy of our struggle against the Islamicists. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Across the globe we watch the terrible drama play out. Car and suicide bombings in Baghdad are aimed at American aid givers, U.S. peacekeepers, Iraqi civilians, and provisional government workers. Spanish civilians are indiscriminately murdered — as are Turks, Moroccans, Saudis, […]
When I Was Young . . .
by Victor Davis Hanson Private Papers When I was young, my parents in the early 1960s told me to ignore stories about the “Jews.” Of course, out here in rural California, I never met such distant persons, but only heard about them from disgruntled farmers (who, I wager, had never met any either).
Demonocracy: Beware of Once-Elected Thugs
by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online What exactly does democracy — “people power” — really mean? Even the Greeks who invented this peculiar institution were not quite sure. Was it just rule by a majority vote? Or did it include mechanisms and subsidies to ensure the participation of the poor? Or to protect the […]
Blame Whom?
by Victor Davis Hanson Private Papers Let me get this straight. Two-and-a-half years after September 11, on a similar eleventh day of the month, 911 days following 9-11, and on the eve of Spanish elections, Al Qaeda or its epigones blows up 200 and wounds 1,400 Spaniards.
Thicker Than Oil
Putting to rest the Left’s Iraq deceptions. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online It has now been almost a year since the liberation of Iraq, the fury of the antiwar rallies, and the publicized hectoring of Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky, Sean Penn, and other assorted conspiracy freaks — and we have enough evidence to […]
Grammatical Gymnastics at the New Yorker Magazine
by Victor Davis Hanson Private Papers In a recent review of Donald Kagan’s The Peloponnesian War, and my Autumn of War, (“Theatres of War: Why the battles over ancient Athens still rage” New Yorker Magazine, [January 12, 2004]), the classicist Daniel Mendelsohn says that I believe that it is immoral to suggest defeat can be seen as victory: “The […]
Do We Want to Go Back?
What to remember come November. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online The great accomplishment of the Truman administration was containment — especially the creation of a policy to ensure that Soviet Communism did not enter Western Europe. Critics on the right once argued over “Who lost China and Eastern Europe?”
How to Beat the American Military?
When you can’t face it in battle. by Victor Davis Hanson Private Papers There is a growing consensus that it is near suicide to face the United States in a conventional war. Both the long history of western warfare, and a variety of recent encounters—whether in the Falklands, the Gulf, or the Middle East—remind us […]
Words That Don’t Matter
The new buss vocabulary of anti-Americanism. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online “Preemption” is supposed to be the new slur. Its use now conjures up all sorts of Dr. Strangelove images to denigrate the present “trigger-happy” Bush administration.
The Coming of Nemesis
Hubris and the law of unintended consequences. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Irony, paradox, hubris, and nemesis are all Greek words. They reflect an early Western fascination with natural, immutable laws of destiny, perhaps akin to something like the eastern idea of karma — that excess and haughtiness can set off a chain […]