Author: victorhanson

Victor Davis Hanson // National Review

Once it was announced that President Trump had COVID-19, the media almost immediately talked of all the people in the “Trump orbit” who fell ill from COVID-19 — including many on his staff, U.S. senators, and at least three White House reporters.

The surreal subtext was not that the toxic Trump had been infected by someone else. Apparently reporters, in their Trump-obsessed universe, believed in some mysterious Aristotelian concept of spontaneous generation, by which his self-spawned coronavirus germs had sickened all within his deadly circuit. Or perhaps Trump was guilty of catching the germ from one of his staffers, who in turn would never have been sickened if they had never been close to Trump in the first place. The possibility that the White House “positive” reporters might have been careless at times or might’ve infected others was never entertained.

Within a few hours, the usual camps and suspects weighed in. Former Clinton and Obama staffer Zara Rahim prayed for Trump’s demise and celebrated his infection with a terse “I hope he dies.” The Washington Post hastily took down an official Twitter feed automatically posting an op-ed column expressing a similar hope for a dead president: “Imagine what it will be like to never have to think about Trump again,” on the realization that running such a headline while Trump was sick “rendered it tasteless”— as if it was not tasteless when he was well. Write that after swapping the name “Obama” for “Trump,” and the FBI would have shown up at their doors.

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Victor Davis Hanson // National Review

The news media until recently had rarely criticized the medical advice of experts — especially those who worked for federal bureaucracies, international organizations, or elite universities.

Yet the much-praised Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, has demonstrably weakened the effort to fight COVID-19.

During the critical initial weeks of the virus’s spread, Tedros parroted Chinese propaganda. He falsely assured a complacent world that the virus was probably not transmissible between humans and did not warrant travel bans. The fact that Tedros was the first WHO director not to have a medical degree was seldom cited by the media.

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Victor Davis Hanson // National Review

After the May 25, 2020, death of George Floyd while in custody of officers of the Minneapolis Police Department, protesters demanded the fair prosecution of those responsible. Yet quickly the demonstrations devolved into a veritable cultural revolution, spearheaded by two groups, Antifa and Black Lives Matter, both with strong socialist origins and agendas.

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Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness

There was once a tradition of Democratic liberalism. But that wing of the Democratic Party no longer exists and died sometime in the 1990s. Old-style liberalism has been absorbed by Progressivism at best and unapologetic socialism at worst—in a journey on the supposedly predetermined arc of history that bends toward 1984.

The new-old leftist aim is not to operate within either the existing parameters of the Constitution as written or the customs and traditions of America—a 150-year-long nine-justice Supreme Court, the Electoral College, a 50-state nation, a Senate filibuster, two senators per state, and a secure border. All are obstructions to the drive for power. 

Given its redistributionist creed, socialism cannot afford to be patent and honest. If socialism were transparent, it never would gain majority support. Joe Biden cannot talk about the Electoral College or court packing, unequivocally condemn the violence in our urban centers, discuss the Green New Deal, name his likely Supreme Court appointments, be honest about his plans for fracking, or explain his views on the borders, because he is now owned lock, stock and barrel by the hard Left whose agendas were rejected even in his own Democratic primaries.

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Victor Davis Hanson // National Review

After the summer protests and rioting in many large cities, activists demanded a defunding, or at least radical pullbacks, of the police. So-called crime experts often concurred. So some city governments ignored public warnings and diminished their police presence despite a sharp rise in crime in many cities. Looting and arson were often ignored.

If you call 911 in a large American city, there is no guarantee that anyone will answer promptly and send out police to aid the endangered. So gun sales have soared. Some people who never before owned weapons, or who even opposed the use of firearms, are now terrified to remain unarmed. Self-protection often outweighs abstract ideology.

According to a recent Gallup poll, most black Americans favor maintaining or increasing police presence. Often, city officials who support cutting back on law enforcement still expect their own homes and property to be constantly policed. The same is often true of activist elites who live far from the inner city.

Large swaths of the American West are now charred by out-of-control wildfires. Some governors and many federal bureaucrats blame the conflagrations on climate change. But those who actually live within forests, or on mountains and foothills, that are historically vulnerable to wildfires know that the epic droughts of 2013–15 killed or dried out millions of acres of trees and vegetation.

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Please read this piece by my colleague Paul Roderick Gregory published by Forbes

Trying to figure whither Nord Stream 2 (hereafter NS2) – the undersea gas pipeline from Russia to Germany – is akin to solving five complicated jigsaw puzzles at once. Competing interests, changing legal foundations, and momentum all make it difficult to either start or stop. One thing is certain: Russia is playing a long game from which it will not retreat until NS2 becomes operational.

At 95% complete and 11 billion Euros out of pocket, the NS2 consortium, comprised of Russia’s state-owned natural gas monopoly (Gazprom) and German, Austrian, and Dutch utility giants, seemed poised to enter into service by early 2021. The Trump administration had already played its sanction card to the limit, and there were just a few regulatory issues to be ironed out.

That was before the “attempted murder” (to use Angela Merkel’s characterization) of Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny on August 20 over East Siberian skies. The Navalny case, piled on top of Russian hacking of the German Bundestag and a blatant political assassination on the streets of Berlin, raised German voices in favor of stopping NS2.

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Victor Davis Hanson // National Review

The problem with conventional wisdom is not that it is always wrong. The rub is that the majority of “experts” unthinkingly and habitually mouth its validity until they ensure that it becomes static, unchanging, and immune from reexamination and dissent — an intolerant religious orthodoxy that finally become dangerous.

The recent Middle East breakthroughs are a perfect example. Both the Obama and Trump administrations sought quite different ways of navigating through the nearly 75-year-old “Middle East problem,” usually framed as the Israeli–“Palestinian” question.

Obama, in radical fashion, sought to empower and elevate Iran. The so-called Iran deal, the dropping of sanctions, the nocturnal infusions of cash, the exemptions for clear violations of the deal’s protocols, the nefarious work of Hezbollah — all that and more was excused on the theory that a growing Persian Shiite Iranian nexus from Tehran to the Mediterranean was inevitable and would “balance” both Israel and the so-called moderate Sunni Arab states. That realignment might prevent a Middle East war and end the leverage of America’s former Arab allies and Israel over us.

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Victor Davis Hanson // National Review

In 2017, the liberal Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy at Harvard University found that 93 percent of CNN’s coverage of the Trump administration was negative. The center found similarly negative Trump coverage at other major news outlets.

The election year 2020 has only accelerated that asymmetrical bias — to the point that major newspapers and network and cable-news organizations are now fused with the Joe Biden campaign.

Sometimes stories are covered only in terms of political agendas. Take COVID-19.

The media assure us that the Trump administration’s handling of the pandemic has been a disaster. But their conclusions are not supported by any evidence.

In the United States, the coronavirus death rate per million people is similar to, or lower than, most major European countries except Germany.

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Victor Davis Hanson // National Review

Fall is almost here in California. So we know the annual script.

A few ostracized voices will again warn in vain of the need to remove millions of dead trees withered from the 2013–14 drought and subsequent infestations, clean up tinderbox hillsides, and beef up the fire services. They will all be ignored as right-wing nuts or worse.

Environmentalists will sneer that the new forestry sees fires as medicinal and natural, and global warming as inevitable because of “climate deniers.”

Late-summer fires will then consume our foothills, mountains, and forests. Long-dead trees from the drought will explode and send their pitch bombs to shower the forest with flames.

Lives, livelihoods, homes, and cabins will be lost — the lamentable collateral damage of our green future. Billions of dollars will go up in smoke. The billowing haze and ash will cloud and pollute the state for weeks if not months. Tens of thousands will be evacuated and their lives disrupted — and those are the lucky.

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America—A European Power No More? Shifting Tectonics, Changing Interests, And The Shrinking Size Of U.S. Troops In Europe

Please read a new essay by my colleague, Josef Joffe in Strategika.

The Trump drawdown of U.S. troops in Europe is not the end of the alliance, but part of a familiar story. America’s military presence has been contested from Week 1—make that February 4–11, 1945. At Yalta, Franklin D. Roosevelt assured Joseph Stalin that the United States would soon depart from Europe. Its troops—three million at the peak—would all be gone in two years.

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Is It Wise To Pull Out And Redeploy 12,000 U.S. Troops From Germany?

Please read a new essay by my colleague, Angelo M. Codevilla in Strategika.

President Trump’s decision to return the U.S 2nd Cavalry Regiment currently stationed in Germany to American soil (6,500 troops), as well as to redeploy mostly Air Force units from Germany to Italy and command headquarters to Belgium and Poland (another 5,600), will have mostly modest positive military consequences and has already benefited America diplomatically. The military consequences are modest because U.S forces in Europe have long since ceased to be potential combatants.  

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Return Of Forces From Germany?

Please read a new essay by my colleagues, Peter R. Mansoor in Strategika.

On September 11, 1944, a patrol led by Staff Sergeant Warner L. Holzinger of Troop B, 85th Reconnaissance Squadron, 5th Armored Division, crossed the Our River from Luxembourg into Germany. Those five soldiers were the vanguard of a mighty Allied force that would within eight months conquer the Third Reich, thereby ending World War II in Europe.

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