VDH's Blade of Perseus

Victor Davis Hanson // John Bachelor Show

An article by my Hoover colleague Dr. Paul Gregory in The Hill

Much has been made of President Biden’s comment that “Nord Stream 2 is a bad deal for Europe.” Yet with the announcement by Secretary of State Antony Blinken that Nord Stream 2 sanctions are not in the U.S. national interest and will be waived, the Russian-financed European pipeline should glide to a speedy completion. There remains only German regulatory approval before Nord Stream 2 will become operational, unless Germany’s September elections yield some major surprises.

The Biden administration’s rationale appears to be that President Trump treated major ally Germany roughly, so we should give Germany what it wants — Nord Stream 2. Let our other European allies simmer; Trump hurt their feelings less than Germany’s, so they don’t count. And, besides, maybe a magnanimous gesture will bring Russia’s Vladimir Putin to a summit with Biden that will solve the world’s outstanding problems.

Trump, the alleged pro-Russian president, fought the Nord Stream 2 pipeline throughout his presidency; in that, he, like Biden, enjoyed the strong backing of the U.S. Senate. Trump wielded sanctions to scare off Western companies involved in its construction, leaving only Russian vessels, associated Russian oligarchs and the Nord Stream parent company, headquartered in Switzerland, at risk of further sanctions. Although the Nord Stream 2 project was launched in 2016, Trump managed to stave off its completion throughout his term before handing off the battle to the Biden administration.

Read the full article here

Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness

As over 3,000 rockets are fired into Israel by Hamas, the establishment of the Democratic Party seems paralyzed over how to respond to the latest Middle East war. 

It is not just that they fear that the squad, Black Lives Matter, the shock troops of Antifa, and the woke institutions such as professional sports, academia, and the media are now unapologetically anti-Israel. 

They are in terror also that anti-Israelism is becoming synonymous with rank anti-Semitism. And soon the Democratic Party will end up disdained as much as was the British Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn. 

The new core of the Democrats, as emblemized by Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), has in the past questioned the patriotism of American Jews who support Israel, and often has had to apologize for puerile anti-Semitic rants. 

Read the full article here

Victor Davis Hanson // Private Papers

I’ve been reading the Satyricon again, which I taught for a number of years in early imperial Latin literature classes for advanced Latin students. The Latin, outside of the slang and neologisms, and the fragmented text, is pretty easy. The style flows. The Cena Trimalchionis is a brilliant damnation of the combination of wealth and leisure. 

What I was struck by again were Petronius’s symptoms of a “decadent” society: obsessions with showy materialism such as food, dress, and high-price luxuries; idleness or the notion that lots of young people are just wandering around without jobs but not starving either; polite mockery of those who work with their hands; childlessness and infertility; legacy hunting or the idea of easy money by flattering one’s way into an inheritance, cults, and not just promiscuity but also pan-sexuality, orgies, pederasty, pedophilia, transgenderism, transvestism, mockery of past marriage customs and traditions, general fear of impotence, and infidelity.

Continue reading “Eeyore’s Cabinet: The Decadent Culture” →

Victor Davis Hanson // Private Papers

Part Two: Very Bad Versus Worse Choices?

1) The Japanese Empire, while doomed in Spring 1945, was more than capable of killing thousands of innocents every day the war dragged on. Depending on the nature of particular sources, and how data are compiled and interpreted, Japanese forces may have killed over 20 million Chinese, Asians, Pacific Islanders, and British Imperial and US troops. Note, the vast majority of these fatalities were civilians. For all the horrific losses of Japan in the war (e.g., 2.5-3 million civilians and soldiers), Japan probably killed more people per its own losses than any other nation in the war (including Nazi Germany [ca. 7 million German civilians and soldiers lost versus killing ca. 30 million Russians, Western Allies, Jews, Eastern Europeans, etc.]). The tragedy of World War II was in essence the story of uniformed German and Japanese soldiers killing unarmed civilians—some 70-80 percent of all the World War II dead. The Axis slaughter was unrivaled in world history, but one precipitated by the surprise attack on Poland on September 1, 1939, and the bombing of US and British bases in the Pacific (December 7-8, 1941). There was zero chance that either the United Kingdom or the United States, in either 1939 or 1941, would have launched preemptive attacks on Germany or Japan, despite the general sense that the latter might well attack them.

2) The 2-billion-dollar B-29 program was in shambles before March 1945. The experimental behemoth plane offered no evidence that it might ever shorten the war. It devoured gas and its huge fuel needs required supply by sea rather than by air. In that regard India and China bases (Operation Matterhorn) did not work for a variety of reasons, from security to general logistics. 

3) The B-29 engines heated up as they climbed fully loaded to 25,000-30,000 feet—a problem never solved completely. The plane was so sophisticated for its time that thousands of parts were needed to keep the bomber fine-tuned, and the hours in the air required unsustainable commensurate hours of maintenance. The fierce jet stream over Japan made B-29 precision bombing impossible, as well as did new models of effective Japanese fighters. The theoretical idea that long-range bombers (e.g. 1,350 miles each way from the Mariana bases to Japan, over water and often in darkness) could take out the Japanese industrial base from high altitudes, dropping high-explosive bombs and thereby avoid an invasion of the mainland was, in truth, crackpot.

Continue reading “Historian’s Corner: The Firebombing of Japan” →

Victor Davis Hanson // Private Papers

Part One: The Question 

On the evening of March 9th, 1945 over 334 B-29 heavy bombers came in low over Tokyo, Japan, on the orders of Gen. Curtis LeMay. They were carrying over 2,000 tons of napalm. In short order, waves of the huge bombers burned out perhaps 15 square miles of the central core of Tokyo. 

The resulting 80,000-120,000 deaths may have constituted the greatest loss of human life in a single day of war. It certainly was the deadliest air raid in history and exceeded the death toll of Hiroshima. 

Continue reading “Historian’s Corner: The Firebombing of Japan” →

Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness

More than 2,500 rockets have landed in Israel over the past week. Some Arab Israeli citizens are terrorizing Jewish Israelis. Apparently, as the rockets fall, these citizens are to be Arab Islamic nationalists first, and Israelis last—even if they wisely prefer to live on the Israeli rather than the Palestinian side of Israel’s hated wall.

The usual Hamas sympathizers are promising death to the Jews on social media (so much for the idea that Twitter and Facebook are “shocked, shocked” by impolite expressions of the Trumpian sort). 

Iran is always Iran—hubristic and chest-thumping that an obsequious United States will ease sanctions, allowing billions of dollars into the country, and thus empowering Iran to revive former levels of funding to Hezbollah and Hamas, to restructure the terrorist weaponry pipeline to Yemen, and to sanctify the Iran-deal trajectory to an Iranian bomb. Tehran just issued a third-rate video of the Republican Guard destroying the U.S. Capitol, apparently to show the world how it plans to humiliate an appeasing Biden State Department.

READ MORE…