by Bernard Chapin<\/p>\n
PJ Media<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cVDH\u201d are three letters that may appear random to the general public, but for conservatives they have definite meaning. They signify the person of Dr.\u00a0Victor Davis Hanson<\/a>\u00a0[1]. The\u00a0scholar<\/a>\u00a0[2],\u00a0professor<\/a>\u00a0[3], and\u00a0political pundit<\/a>\u00a0[4] is especially well known to readers of Pajamas Media.\u00a0His blog<\/a>\u00a0[5] consistently enriches the homepage and enlightens friend and foe. Dr. Hanson\u2019s latest book,\u00a0How the Obama Administration Threatens Our National Security<\/a>\u00a0[6], illustrates the peril that America\u2019s leftist, superficial commander-in-chief has produced. Both President Obama\u2019s ignorance and ideology now endanger the nation\u2019s autonomy along with the world\u2019s peace.<\/strong><\/p>\n BC<\/strong>: Dr. Hanson, first off, let me ask: do you think the president believes in the concept of American exceptionalism?<\/p>\n Dr. Hanson<\/strong>: Well, he answered that already: we Americans are exceptional only to the degree that every other country thinks it is exceptional: e.g., who can say whether Venezuelans, Iranians, or North Koreans are any different, better, or worse than Americans? Not in Obama\u2019s multicultural, morally equivalent, and utopian world. (Privately, of course, Obama assumes that the White House, the big Air Force One jet, the Chicago mansion, and all the Obamas\u2019 perks, past and present, accrue to those who live in an exceptional place, which operates on principles that are a little different from those found in Nigeria, Peru, or Albania.)<\/p>\n BC<\/strong>: Do you regard President Obama as an isolationist?<\/p>\n Dr. Hanson<\/strong>: Yes and no. He is a multicultural internationalist who yearns for the supremacy of the United Nations or its enlightened epigones, who would go around the world fining or arresting miscreant nations that leave too great a carbon footprint, are too profit-minded, or have committed an array of politically incorrect sins.<\/p>\n But in terms of America trying to maintain a global postwar order based on free commerce, consensual government, free markets, and personal freedom, well, yes, he\u2019s opposed to that in theory, and in the concrete certainly would not have supported things like past intervention in Panama, Grenada, the Balkans, Iraq, or Afghanistan. Europe will soon at last get their wish of a truly multilateral America, where we are just one of many NATO partners which may or may not support them in the United Nations. And that should be interesting: they have not had an American president to the left of them since Franklin Roosevelt.<\/p>\n BC<\/strong>: Are we currently sending a message of weakness to our foes and allies? Can anything good result from President Obama\u2019s marked\u00a0submissiveness<\/a>\u00a0[7] before the\u00a0world<\/a>\u00a0[8]?<\/p>\n Dr. Hanson<\/strong>: Obama is one bow and one apology away from a circus. The world can understand a kowtow gaffe to some Saudi royals, but not as part of a deliberate pattern. Ditto the\u00a0mea culpas<\/em>. Much of diplomacy rests on public perceptions, however trivial. We are now in a great waiting game, as regional hegemons, wishing to redraw the existing landscape \u2014 whether China, Venezuela, Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, Syria, etc. \u2014 are just waiting to see who\u2019s going to be the first to try Obama \u2014 and whether Obama really will be as tenuous as they expect. If he slips once, it will be 1979 redux, when we saw the rise of radical Islam, the Iranian hostage mess, the communist inroads in Central America, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, etc.<\/p>\n BC<\/strong>: With what country then \u2014 Venezuela, Russia, Iran, etc. \u2014 do you believe his global repositioning will cause the most damage?<\/p>\n Dr. Hanson<\/strong>: I think all three. I would expect, in the next three years, Iran to get the bomb and begin to threaten ever so insidiously its Gulf neighborhood; Venezuela will probably cook up some scheme to do a punitive border raid into Colombia to apprise South America that U.S. friendship and values are liabilities; and Russia will continue its energy bullying of Eastern Europe, while insidiously pressuring autonomous former republics to get back in line with some sort of new Russian autocratic commonwealth. There\u2019s an outside shot that North Korea might do something really stupid near the 38th parallel and China will ratchet up the pressure on Taiwan. India\u2019s borders with both Pakistan and China will heat up. I think we got off the back of the tiger and now no one quite knows whom it will bite or when.<\/p>\n BC<\/strong>: Can Obama get any more mileage from his perpetually played \u201cI\u2019m not George W. Bush\u201d card or is that card past its expiration date?<\/p>\n Dr. Hanson<\/strong>: Two considerations: 1) It\u2019s hard (in addition to being shameless), after a year, for any president to keep scapegoating a prior administration. 2) I think he will drop the reset\/\u201cBush did it\u201d throat-clearing soon, as his polls continue to stay below 50 percent. In other words, it seems to be a losing trope, poll-wise. Americans hate whining and blame-gaming.<\/p>\n So the apologies and bows don\u2019t go over well here at home; one more will be really toxic, politically speaking. Most are starting to see that our relations with Britain, Italy, Germany, or France are no better under Obama \u2014 and probably worse \u2014 than during the Bush administration.<\/p>\n If one were to ignore the media and international elites and the Western youth-obsessed culture, and just empirically ask: Does one-third of the planet in India and China respect the U.S. more or less under Obama? Is the anti-American, radical Islamic world more or less fearful of Obama\u2019s or Bush\u2019s America? Is an Ahmadinejad or Chavez more or less likely to make a risky move? \u2014 the answers would be pretty clear.<\/p>\n The world is still in its hope-and-change stupor, but slowly through the fog our allies (Britain, Colombia, Czech Republic, Israel, Poland, etc.) are seeing that they are now mere neutrals, while our enemies sense they are suddenly worthy of deference and attention. Why then be an ally when being an enemy is so much more fun?<\/p>\n BC<\/strong>: Why have relations with Israel plummeted so far so fast?<\/p>\n Dr. Hanson<\/strong>: Let us count the ways: 1) Ignorance: Obama believes that \u201cBush did it\u201d rather than the problems of the region predating Bush and postdating Obama (he apparently does not know that three wars were fought before Israel occupied the West Bank). 2) In Obama\u2019s morally equivalent universe, no one \u201cjudges\u201d the \u201cother,\u201d so a free market, democratic, and pro-Western Israel gets no more deference than does a statist, dictatorial, and anti-Western Hamas, Syria, etc. 3) In Obama\u2019s\u00a0Al Arabiya<\/em>\u00a0interview and Cairo encomium, he makes it clear enough that he is uniquely qualified, by his heritage, name, race, and temperament, to reach out to millions of oil-rich Middle East Muslims. In such a realist calculus, tiny Israel, without numbers, oil, or terrorists, doesn\u2019t quite rate the attention. 4) There are a number of widely diverse names loosely associated with Obama, past and present \u2014 Ayers, Brzezinski, Freeman, Khalidi, Powers, Rev. Wright, etc. \u2014 who are on record for their anti-Israeli views. At some point, one concludes that birds of a feather flock together. We have seen American politics come full circle: some of the right in the 1950s used to be anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic, while the left was unquestionably pro. Now, it\u2019s reversed. When I hear of virulently anti-Israeli, anti-Jewish sentiment expressed these days, I usually assume it arises, whether here or in Europe, out of a leftist, multicultural perspective that hates any who reflect Western success.<\/p>\n BC<\/strong>: Do you believe that Obama\u2019s diplomatic mishandling of Britain may lead to a deterioration in our special relationship with that nation?<\/p>\n Dr. Hanson<\/strong>: It\u2019s hard to know. Obama \u2014 the post-nationalist and trans-racial messiah \u2014 during the campaign was a big hit, both with British elites and the U.K. public at large. In some sense, his trivial snubbing of the British (cf. the Churchill bust return to sender, Brown snubs, queen fiascos, etc.) is the sort of thing that one would think the British left would welcome.<\/p>\n Again, with Europe in general, Obama presents a most interesting paradox: they wanted a man of the left, who backed away from the old postwar American role, deferred to the U.N. and its global busybodies \u2014 and now they apparently got him. Rather than our first \u201cPacific\u201d president, he\u2019s our first \u201cEurope last\u201d president \u2014 the ultimate expression of years of elite left-wing European preening and multiculturalism here at home. He\u2019s their nemesis.<\/p>\n BC<\/strong>: Was Obama\u2019s stated belief that \u201cAfghanistan is the good war\u201d merely a political ploy used before the 2008 election as a means for him to appear non-disdainful of the military? In the months to come, will we fight to win in Afghanistan?<\/p>\n