by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
Tribune Media Services<\/p>\n
Richard Nixon went to Red China with political impunity. Had a Democrat tried that, he would have been branded a Commie appeaser.<\/p>\n
To this day, liberals cannot conceive that during the two world wars, progressives like Woodrow Wilson, Earl Warren, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt trampled on civil liberties in a way unimagined by Dick Cheney.<\/p>\n
Ronald Reagan signed the most liberal illegal-immigration-amnesty bill in history, and ran larger yearly deficits than Jimmy Carter had. \u201cRead my lips\u201d George H. W. Bush agreed to huge tax increases. And George W. Bush ran up the largest debt of any eight-year president, outspending Bill Clinton more than fivefold. The latter, remember, bombed Belgrade without either congressional or United Nations approval \u2014 and without anti-war protests. Without an opposition, almost anything goes.<\/p>\n
In other words, right-wing presidents can sometimes act left-wing, and left-wing presidents can act right-wing \u2014 to the embarrassed silence of their respective bases, but to the private delight of their greenlighting opponents.<\/p>\n
We have no better examples of that irony than our two most recent presidents. George W. Bush was still damned as an uncaring reactionary by the Left even as he pushed for big-government programs such as No Child Left Behind and unfunded entitlements such as Medicare prescription-drug coverage. Barack Obama was alleged to be squishy about hunting down terrorists, even as he increased targeted assassinations tenfold and found plenty of opportunistic former legal critics of Bush\u2019s national-security protocols to write justifications for them.<\/p>\n
In terms of the Obama presidency, there is now no anti-war movement. It simply vanished in January 2009. Former outrages like Guantanamo, renditions, and Predator-drone assassinations almost magically became A-okay. The left-wing base dared not continue its old Bush slurs, given its support for Obama\u2019s liberal domestic agenda. Quiet conservatives were perplexed over whether to be outraged that Predator-in-Chief Obama proved to be such an abject hypocrite, or relieved that, better late than never, he had morphed into a Bush-Cheney national-security disciple.<\/p>\n
The result is that for the next year or so, Obama can more or less do whatever he wishes abroad. If he chooses to bomb a country that poses no direct threat to the US without congressional authority, like Libya, or to assassinate a US citizen-terrorist, like Anwar al-Awlaki, the Left will keep mum. And the Right, for different reasons, probably will, too.<\/p>\n
What, then, should we expect abroad in the waning months of Obama\u2019s four-year term, with continuing economic bad news at home?<\/p>\n
Suddenly, intelligence agencies at the UN, and in the US and Europe \u2014 after once denying, during the supposedly trigger-happy Bush administration, that Iran was close to getting a bomb \u2014 now warn us that Tehran may actually test a nuclear weapon after all. Iran poses an existential threat not only to Israel, but to the entire notion of nuclear nonproliferation in the key oil-exporting Gulf. Its missiles could reach southern Europe.<\/p>\n
If we get to the scary point of Iran\u2019s going nuclear in 2012, expect the Obama administration \u2014 up for reelection and without much of a domestic record to run on in these hard times \u2014 to consider a preemptive strike. Be assured that if it does, there will be no outrage in the Democrat-controlled Senate, no campuses on fire, no\u00a0ad hominem<\/em>\u00a0Moveon.org ads in the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 all the sorts of anti-war hysteria that once sought to turn a moderate like George W. Bush into a caricature of some trigger-happy yokel from shoot-\u2019em-up Texas.<\/p>\n And conservatives? Again, they would mumble that an Obama \u201cwag the dog\u201d strike would cynically be all about the president\u2019s reelection. Or they would at least note the irony, given the Nobel Laureate\u2013in\u2013Chief\u2019s prior demonization of Bush\u2019s use of military force. Nonetheless, Republicans would largely grow silent if \u2014 a big if \u2014 a strike were successful and ended Iran\u2019s nuclear threat.<\/p>\n The truth is that the more the Obama administration floats silly symbolic trial balloons such as supporting a Ground Zero mosque, trying Khalid Sheik Mohammed in a Manhattan civilian court, and employing inane euphemisms such as \u201coverseas contingency operations\u201d and \u201cman-caused disasters\u201d in the context of radical Islamic terrorism, the more it will try to assassinate foes such as Ayman al-Zawahiri, sidekick of the late Osama bin Laden, or consider, as in Libya, giving a greater push to Syrian rebels.<\/p>\n I am not suggesting that bombing Iran is imminent or even wise, only that it is now far more likely than during the tenure of the Bush administration.<\/p>\n That\u2019s just a fact, given the weird paradoxes of American presidential politics.<\/p>\n \u00a92011 Tribune Media Services<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Richard Nixon went to Red China with political impunity. Had a Democrat tried that, he would have been branded a Commie appeaser.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[196],"tags":[584,12,1063,165,74,293,268,243,1065,353,169,222,447,162,1037,76],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-ny","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1621,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/of-laureates-and-cowboys\/","url_meta":{"origin":1460,"position":0},"title":"Of Laureates and Cowboys","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 3, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services In politics, having power and keeping it often mean fudging a little on ideology. So conservatives sometimes convince the country to do very liberal things \u2014 think of Richard Nixon going to China, Ronald Reagan granting a blanket amnesty to illegal aliens, or\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "May 2010"","block_context":{"text":"May 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/may-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1251,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/rethinking-george-bush\/","url_meta":{"origin":1460,"position":1},"title":"Rethinking George Bush?","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 20, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Former President George W. Bush left office with the lowest approval ratings since Richard Nixon. In reaction, for nearly two years President Barack Obama won easy applause by prefacing almost every speech on his economic policies with a \"Bush did it\" put-down. But\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "September 2010"","block_context":{"text":"September 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/september-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8052,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/for-obama-inconvenient-law-is-irrelevant-law\/","url_meta":{"origin":1460,"position":2},"title":"For Obama, Inconvenient Law Is Irrelevant Law","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 1, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"The president dismantles immigration law that he finds incompatible with his own larger agenda. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online There is a humane, transparent, truthful \u2014 and constitutional \u2014 way to address illegal immigration. Unfortunately, President Obama\u2019s unilateral plan to exempt millions of residents from federal immigration\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Political Culture"","block_context":{"text":"Political Culture","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/american-culture\/political-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"(John Gress\/Getty)","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/pic_giant_112714_SM_Barack-Obama-G-500x291.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6697,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-credibility-gap\/","url_meta":{"origin":1460,"position":3},"title":"Obama’s Credibility Gap","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 31, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"The former hope-and-change president no longer gets a pass. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online\u00a0 By 1968, President Lyndon Baines Johnson was finally done in by his \u201ccredibility gap\u201d \u2014 the growing abyss between what he said about, and what was actually happening inside, Vietnam. \u201cModified limited hangout\u201d and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Punditry"","block_context":{"text":"Punditry","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/punditry\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6100,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/immigration-if-the-bill-passes\/","url_meta":{"origin":1460,"position":4},"title":"Immigration: If the Bill Passes","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 23, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Both Obama's record and the results of past immigration \"reforms\" paint a bleak picture. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online There are lots of reasons to believe that most of what is promised in the current so-called comprehensive immigration-reform bill won\u2019t be honored if it is passed by the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Immigration"","block_context":{"text":"Immigration","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/immigration\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10602,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/allegations-of-foreign-election-tampering-have-always-rung-hollow\/","url_meta":{"origin":1460,"position":5},"title":"Allegations of Foreign Election Tampering Have Always Rung Hollow","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 21, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Blaming foreign influence on an election loss has become a habitual practice for unsuccessful presidential candidates, but such allegations have never rung true. On her current book tour, Hillary Clinton is still blaming the Russians (among others) for her unexpected defeat in last year\u2019s\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "George W. Bush"","block_context":{"text":"George W. Bush","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/george-w-bush\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1460"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1460"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1460\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1461,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1460\/revisions\/1461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}