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 […]
Just Imagine . . .
Trying to believe in the make-believe world of the present age. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online After listening to a variety of American, Middle Eastern, and European pundits, I wish that their understanding of the way the world works were true — or at least even that they believed it to be true. […]
Weapons of Mass Hysteria
If anything, the war was about 100,000 corpses too late. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online The United States has lost less than 350 American dead in actual combat in Iraq, deposed the worst tyrant on the planet, and offered the first real hope of a humane government in the recent history of the […]
The Mind of Our Enemies
Sorting out all the agendas in Iraq. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online “It is easy to be against the war now,” boasts Howard Dean, as he goes on to describe Iraq as a hopeless quagmire.
Better or Worse?
Should we believe the gloom of the Democrats? by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Thematic in the Democratic primary campaign is that the United States is worse off now than it was before the invasion of Iraq. The harangues from some of the candidates have been quite unbelievable: Saddam Hussein’s capture did little to […]
The Election of 1864
Advantage: Commander-in-chief. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online The standing ovation for the chairman of the interim Iraqi Governing Council, the systematic refutation of all the tired canards — “unilateralism,” “preemption,” and “hubris” — praise and admiration for Afghans, the peroration about the historic times we are in and the promise to press on, […]
El Norte
The case against Bush’s immigration plan. by Victor Davis Hanson WSJ Opinion Journal Online President Bush’s recent proposal to grant legal status to thousands of Mexican citizens currently working in the U.S. under illegal auspices seems at first glance to be a good start–splitting the difference between open and closed borders, and between amnesty and […]