Trump’s Circular Firing Squad

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By Victor Davis Hanson
National Review

Trump and his critics are attacking each other, failing to focus on the only story that counts: the welfare of the United States.

The American political system has never quite seen anything like the current opposition to President Trump and his unusual reaction to it.

We are no longer in the customary political landscape. Usually, the out-of-power opposition — in this case, the Democratic party — offers most of the criticism and all of the alternative policies in order to win in the next election. Instead, Trump has an entire circle of diverse critics shooting at him. But they just as often end up hitting one another — and themselves. Continue reading “Trump’s Circular Firing Squad” →

Sessions, P.S.

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The Corner: The one and only.

By Victor Davis Hanson
National Review

Donald Trump’s core support is found among those who want existing immigration laws enforced, an end to state-rights nullification of federal law, and no more legal adventurism that seeks to create new laws ex nihilo. Sessions, in these regards, has been excellent. Even the thought of letting him go is already fracturing Trump’s base; his dismissal would seriously wound the administration at precisely the time it needs cohesion on the health-care and tax-reform debates. Trump apparently has forgotten that one of the reasons he retains support, and why there are several indications that real positive change is in the works, are his excellent seasoned cabinet appointees such as Sessions.

The beneficiary of Sessions’s continued tenure is Trump himself. Continue reading “Sessions, P.S.” →

Trashing Jeff Sessions — Enough Already

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The Corner: The one and only.

by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review

 

President Trump has made the point for the nth time that the recusal of Jeff Sessions on matters of alleged Russian collusion invariably led to a series of events that culminated in the appointment of Robert Mueller, a prior associate of James Comey’s, to investigate Trump with a veritable blank check and a cadre of mostly liberal attorneys, fueled by a hysterical media ready to make them all Watergate-like folk heroes if they come to Beltway-correct conclusions. I fear we could soon be in Lawrence Walsh/Javert territory.

 

So in retrospect, the recusal was probably a political mistake, given that a seemingly principled decision — most observers in the administration at the time seemed to think that Sessions’s recusal at least temporarily silenced the baying wolves — was soon seen by anti-Trumpers as weakness to be exploited (the subsequent hysterical media-driven feeding frenzy quickly turned on everyone from Representative Devin Nunes to Trump’s own family) rather than probity to be appreciated. Sessions’s own current remarkable Stoicism in the context of Trump’s attacks perhaps reflects that had he to do it over again in light of what followed, he might have not recused himself.

 

But all that said, Trump is said to value loyalty and competence. And Sessions is the epitome of both. He was a force for immigration enforcement and an advocate of the ignored muscular working classes long before Trump; it was his advocacy of these issues which drew him to Trump’s 2016 populist campaign, and prompted his early and almost solitary support for Trump. He is a good man with the legal and political experience to make the fundamental changes at the Justice Department that returns it to enforcement of existing laws rather than its past errant role under Holder and Lynch of a creator of progressive agendas masquerading as an enforcement agency.

 

Politically, Trump made his point. Again, any further public criticism of Sessions undermines two of Trump’s strengths, acknowledged even by his enemies: one, that he is loyal to those even under fire who were willing to take a risk and support him when few would; and, two, he has a proven ability to appoint superb professionals who know what they are doing and yet are not part of the deep state (McMaster, Mattis, Pompeo, etc.).

 

It’s past time to let Sessions do his job and move on.

 

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/449810/donald-trump-jeff-sessions-tweets-criticism

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“Pushing Back” Iran

by Reuel Marc Gerecht

Image credit:Poster Collection, US3436, Hoover Institution Archives.

On both the left and the right, there is a consensus in Washington that the United States needs to “push back” against the Islamic Republic’s nefarious actions in the Levant, Iraq, and Yemen. The clerical regime largely controls the ground war in Syria: Tehran’s foreign Shiite militias, imported from Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and Iranian-directed native forces lead the battle against the Sunni insurrection. In Iraq, the Islamic Republic has energetically encouraged sectarian conflict, aiding politicians and militias that have taken a hardline toward political compromise with Sunnis. Iraqi members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps have become senior officials in the government. And in Yemen, Iran has backed the Shiite Houthis in their campaign to dominate the country. What once would have seemed far-fetched—Tehran trying to develop a Lebanese Hezbollah-like movement among Yemen’s “Fiver” Zaydi Shiites, who have never been close to the “Twelver” Jafaris of Iran—is now conceivable. If such Shiite militancy becomes anchored in the south of the peninsula, Tehran will surely try to aim it northward toward the badly oppressed Shiites of Bahrain and the oil-rich Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia.

But among Republicans and Democrats, no one really wants to clarify what “push back” means. For cause: Any serious American effort against the Islamic Republic will inevitably risk the nuclear agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which the Trump administration has signaled that it will, with increasing reluctance, keep but “rigorously” enforce. Within the Democratic Party, the atomic accord has become sacrosanct. Yet the two objectives cannot co-exist. The sine qua non of the agreement is to trade temporary restraints on Iran’s nuclear aspirations for the lifting of sanctions against the Islamic Republic. Any serious American effort to punish Tehran will inevitably include the use of escalating sanctions. This is so even if the United States doesn’t deploy more forces into the region, which would mean, among other things, that the only unilateral way Washington could painfully hit Tehran would be through sanctions. Neither Congress nor the White House is going to confront the Islamic Republic and concurrently fuel its expansion. American foreign policy can sustain severe contradictions, but this one would be too much: We would be paying for our own defeat. If we imagine scenarios where the United States actually puts more troops into either Syria or Iraq (unlikely with President Trump), or just keeps troops in the latter against Iran’s wishes (not at all unlikely after the defeat of the Islamic State in Mosul), then we could rapidly find ourselves in an indirect shooting war with the mullahs’ praetorians, the Revolutionary Guards, who oversee all of Iran’s foreign adventures.

To read more: http://www.hoover.org/research/pushing-back-iran#

The Korean Games of Thrones

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by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review

 

The time for pious American lectures is over.

 

North Korea

North Korea seeks respect on the cheap — and attention and cash — that it cannot win the old-fashioned way by the long, hard work of achieving a dynamic economy or an influential culture.

 

Over the last quarter-century, it has proved that feigned madness and the road to nuclear weapons (Pakistan is another good example) provide a shortcut to all three goals: It is now feared, in the news, and likely to receive another round of Western danegeld.

 

Setting off a bomb (as opposed to merely bragging that it soon will do so) seems to stave off a Western-style preemption of the sort that eventually liquidated Saddam Hussein and Moammar Qaddafi.

 

Unlike both Iraq and Libya, North Korea had two other indemnity policies that so far have ruled out Western preemption: 1) a nuclear neighboring patron like China, and 2) a nihilistic conventional artillery and missile arsenal aimed at a nearby rich Westernized South Korea. An outmoded, conventional, short-ranged asset would be largely irrelevant in most military landscapes, but it is not when based just 35 miles from Seoul (which exchanged hands five times from the beginning to end of the Korean War). Consequently, the unpredictability of Beijing and the possibility of an attack within hours on Seoul — which would end up like Dresden in 1945 — enhanced North Korea’s small nuclear arsenal.

 

What then is North Korea’s ultimate objective?

 

Most obviously, a permanent landscape of crisis, in which it can periodically test a more sophisticated bomb than the last, threaten to incinerate a Western city, and launch a missile into Western airspace. If done symphonically, periodic “crises” are then created, envoys pour into the region, the U.N. goes into panic mode, the EU weighs in, “wise men” meet, China is jawboned — and a brand-new, revised, updated, and superior aid “package” is delivered, with stern warnings not to try the con again.

 

Thus the latest Korean Caligula gets global attention, his praetorian guard is assured of its continued privilege, and China offers its Cheshire smile to signal that Armageddon is avoided.

 

This shakedown can continue indefinitely — or at least until too many other countries (see Iran) emulate North Korea and too many players make the game too expensive and too dangerous. Or it can continue until a true breakthrough in missile defense nullifies all North Korean offensive capability, or until China sees the growing costs outweighing its heretofore undeniable benefits. Continue reading “The Korean Games of Thrones” →

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From An Angry Reader:

You need some serious help.

Robert Millsap

 

Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:

Dear Angry Reader Robert Millsap,

 

In some sense, you are right. I have an acre yard that I tend myself and often could use some quite serious help in mowing, pruning, weeding, and hauling.

 

Sincerely Victor Hanson

Brawn in an Age of Brains

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Does physical labor have a future?

By Victor Davis Hanson
City Journal

Those who would never stoop to paint their own houses gladly expend far more energy sweating at the gym. During the decline in physical-labor jobs over the last 50 years, an entire compensating industry has grown up around physical fitness. As modern work becomes less physical, requiring hours at a desk or some sort of immobile standing, the fitness center has replaced the drudgery of the field, the mine, and the forest as a means to exercise the body each day. A forbidding array of exercise bikes and StairMasters not only works the body; it also reinforces the modern, scientifically backed conviction that physical fitness promotes general wellness, mental acuity, and perhaps longevity. A new slang has entered the Western vocabulary, from “abs,” “glutes,” and “cardio” to “ripped” and “toned” to describe the ideal results of daily exercise: a look of chiseled fitness. The ideal is much different from the appearance of the pipe fitter and welder of the past, whose protruding bellies and girth were not necessarily incongruous with physical strength and stamina incurred from daily physical labor. Continue reading “Brawn in an Age of Brains” →

Putin’s Playthings

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by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review

 

Putin will do anything to advance Russia’s interests because his country is in terrible shape.

 

About a year ago, Donald Trump Jr. met with a mysterious Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya. Trump Jr. was purportedly eager to receive information that could damage Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.

 

Veselnitskaya denies that she was working for the Kremlin to lobby for favorable Russian treatment. But in the past, Veselnitskaya has been connected with a number of Russian-related lobbying groups.

 

Trump Jr., for his part, proved naïve and foolish to gobble such possible setup bait. The Russians proved eager to confuse, confound, and embarrass everyone involved in the 2016 election.

 

This latest Trump family imbroglio piggybacks on six months of Russian collusion charges. National Security Adviser Michael Flynn resigned less than a month into his job after being less than candid about his contacts with the Russians. Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s erstwhile campaign manager, had some questionable Russian business interests and resigned well before the election.

 

All these stories were luridly headlined in the press. Continue reading “Putin’s Playthings” →

The Fifth American War

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by Victor Davis Hanson// National Review

 

The country is coming apart, and the advocates of radical egalitarianism are winning.

 

The wars between Trump, the media, the deep state, and the progressive party — replete with charges and counter-charges of scandal, collusion, and corruption — are merely symptoms of a much larger fundamental and growing divide between Americans that is reaching a dangerous climax.

 

On four prior occasions in American history the country nearly split apart, as seemingly irreconcilable cultural, economic, political, social, geographical, and demographic fault lines opened a path to hatred and violence.

 

During the Jacksonian Revolution of the 1830s, factions nearly ripped the country apart over whether the East Coast Founders’ establishment of a half-century would relinquish its monopoly of political power to reflect the new demographic realties of an expanding frontier — and its populist champions often deemed unfit for self-governance. For the most part, the Jacksonians won.

 

Three decades later the nation divided over slavery, prompting the most lethal war in American history to end it and force the defeated Confederate southern states back into the Union.

 

The Great Depression, and the establishment’s inept responses to it, left a quarter of the country unemployed for nearly a decade — hungry and desperate to expand government even if it entailed curtailing liberty in a way never envisioned by the Founders. The result was eventually the redefinition of freedom as the right of the individual to have his daily needs guaranteed by the state. Continue reading “The Fifth American War” →