“Those Jews”
If only Israel and its supporters would disappear. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online There are certain predictable symptoms to watch when a widespread amorality begins to infect a postmodern society: cultural relativism, atheism, socialism, utopian pacifism.
The Event of the Age
Iraq is becoming the deciding issue of our time. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Talk, yell, spin, flip, back peddle — so America’s elite pundits endlessly regurgitate the debate over Iraq. Most are terrified that last week’s gloomy prognosis will be proven foolish by this week’s relative absence of bombings — only in […]
The Vision Thing
Convincing Americans to stick with a crazy Middle East. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Various Syrian foreign ministers, speaking on behalf of a recognized terrorist state, recently warned Israel for fostering “instability” throughout the region by taking out the supposedly empty infrastructure of a killers’ training base on Syrian soil.
Legends of the Fall
More myths about the current war. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online “The war is against ‘terror’.” As a number of astute observers have reminded us, terror is a method, not an enemy. And we are no more in a war against it than we were once fighting the scourge of Zeros or the plague […]
What’s It All About?
Playing high-stakes poker like never before. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online The objectives and methods of the terrorists and ambushers in Iraq are not hard to fathom. Their strategy is twofold.
Why History Has No End
Islamic rage and Western disunity show that reports of history’s demise are greatly exaggerated. by Victor Davis Hanson City Journal Writing as the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, Francis Fukuyama famously announced the “End of History.” The world, he argued, was fast approaching the final stage of its political evolution.
On the Right Side of History
The hard truth won’t go away. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online At the end of this summer of our discontent, an array of Democratic presidential hopefuls, along with a number of restless pundits, are seeking to reclaim credibility after their mistaken prognoses about the Afghan and Iraqi wars.
These Are Historic Times
Is it to be Lincoln or Sisyphus? by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online By May 1864, Abraham Lincoln was in real trouble. The spectacular victories of the past year at Gettysburg and Vicksburg were mostly forgotten — in the manner that we no longer talk much about the amazing campaign in Afghanistan or the […]
The Great Divide
Looking back on the fires of 9/11. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online So many things about September 11 have coalesced to define the attack as a singular event in American history. Three thousand Americans did not die in a fire, earthquake, or flood.
Hoping We Fail
Who loses and who wins in the high-stakes poker in Iraq? by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online It is not hard to determine who wishes the United States to succeed in rebuilding Iraq along lines that will promote consensual government, personal freedom, and economic vitality: Hardly anyone. At least, few other than the Iraqi […]
Phase Three?
The enemy is growing desperate. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online After the first two conventional military victories in Afghanistan of November 2001 and this spring in Iraq, the recent bombings suggest that we are now entering a third phase: A desperate last-ditch war of attrition in which our enemies feel that bombing, suicide […]
The Awakening
We need a clean slate in the postbellum world. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online What is a base? Is it something lke the facility in Saudi Arabia that enrages the local population, provides a rallying cry for unhinged Islamists, protects a medieval monarchy from an emerging consensual society in Iraq, and can’t be used […]
How We Collapse
The home front is more worrisome than the battlefield. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Democratic critics keep deconstructing federal reports about intelligence lapses that might have led to the tragedy of September 11. While they fault the administration — in some cases correctly — for an apparent lack of vigilance, they do not […]
Our Summer of Discontent?
Looking for symptoms of defeat by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online The forces that win or lose wars are insidious, cumulative, and often hard to discern.
War Folklore
Don’t listen to the latest groupspeak. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Just as we migrate from Scott Peterson to Kobe Bryant and back to Jessica Lynch, so too did the snowy peaks of Afghanistan bow out to the sandstorm-induced pause in Iraq and that in turn to 16 words of the president’s speech.
The Corrections
Our rocky return to a much-needed balance in foreign policy. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online The Greeks were fascinated with the need to adhere to the mean (to meson). The idea became commonplace that there was a sort of natural equilibrium in things that tended to pull events, emotions, and people themselves back […]
War’s Bitter Laws
The rules of war existed long before we entered Iraq. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Here at the millennium, the conditions under which war must be waged by Western states appear to be like none other in the history of conflict.
Old and in the Way
The American Street has sized up best the new paradoxes of foreign policy. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online The events following 9/11 created an “empire” industry — millions of words written by pundits claiming that by intervening in Afghanistan and Iraq America was now a hegemon.
The Surreal World of Iraq
Let us thank our soldiers on this Independence Day. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online That are we to make of the last four months? In 21 days at a cost of less than 200 fatalities, the United States military ended the 24-year reign of one of the most odious dictators in recent memory […]
Winning After All
Despair is not an option amid the present chaos. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online For about ten weeks now, the headlines of our major newspapers blare out something like the following: “Iraq Attacks Hamper U.S. Reconstruction” or “Increasing Resistance to U.S. Efforts in Iraq.