by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
PJ Media<\/em><\/p>\n These Guys Are Really Sensitive, Aren\u2019t They?<\/strong><\/p>\n I thought that former Vice President Al Gore\u2019s vein-bulging attacks on Bush & Co. marked a new \u201cno rules in the arena\u201d era of politics. Fine \u2014 if the Left wished to write novels, make films, and write op-eds about doing in Bush, and if Nazi\/brownshirt was to be on everyone\u2019s lips, from Al Gore\u2019s to Garrison Keillor\u2019s, then I thought surely they would be immune to criticism when their turn to return to power came.<\/p>\n But no. Instead we are getting this hysteria about the evil Cheney criticizing Obama, or furor that \u201cbipartisanship\u201d has ended, or mania about the archaic filibuster. It is sort of like the\u00a0retiarius<\/em>\u00a0throwing his net every which way while stabbing with trident \u2014 only to cry foul and \u201chow dare you!\u201d when nicked back by the\u00a0sica<\/em>\u00a0of the Thracian.<\/p>\n \u201cJobless Recovery\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n I am delighted as anyone that the latest unemployment figures show a slight drop in joblessness to 10%. Much of the media is upbeat as well \u2014 which raises the question: in 2004, John Kerry ran on the theme of a \u201cjobless recovery,\u201d a charge resonating through the major media outlets. Yet unemployment in the last quarter of 2004, when these accusations were most frequent, was 5.4% \u2014 and soon dipped to average 5% for 2005. If 5.4% is termed \u201cjobless\u201d, what is 10% \u2014 job-full?<\/p>\n Reset Button\/\u2019They Did It\u2019 Diplomacy<\/strong><\/p>\n Barack Obama, nearly a year into his term, is still talking about Bush culpability for everything from unemployment to Afghanistan. At what year will it ever stop?<\/p>\n Bush inherited a nuclear Pakistan, a firewall between the CIA and FBI in matters of counter-terrorism, an appeased and ascendant Osama bin Laden, unsustainable no-fly zones over Iraq (the French had already bailed), al Qaeda with a safe zone in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, and an intifada-prone Mideast \u2014 in other words, no more than the regular stuff. But I don\u2019t remember Bush talking of the creepy Clinton pardons \u2014 Eric Holder being at their epicenter \u2014 after a year in office.<\/p>\n When Clinton arrived in January 1993, the Balkans were a mess, and no one knew what to do about Milosevic. Eastern Europe and the former republics had been promised varying degrees of NATO membership. And we were running staggering trade deficits, and in a recession. But even Clinton got over blaming Bush soon enough.<\/p>\n Bush I had to deal with an invigorated Saddam Hussein, the Kuwait mess, a Noriega who was out of control, easing the Soviets out of eastern Europe, a divided Berlin reuniting \u2014 and, again, the usual stuff.<\/p>\n Reagan inherited a demoralized military, an insane regime in Khomeini\u2019s Iran, a bellicose and appeased Soviet Union, and communist expansion in Central America.<\/p>\n In other words, nothing Obama has seen overseas is, by past standards, all that unusual. Iraq was mostly quiet when he assumed office. We had not been hit again since 9\/11. The Patriot Act and anti-terrorism protocols were in play and working. The fact that he has not yet closed Guantanamo and kept Predators, tribunals, renditions, etc. apparently means he finds them useful \u2014 despite the reset rhetoric.<\/p>\n But what is different from past Presidents is the serial, incessant whine of \u2018poor me\u2019, \u2018Bush did it\u2019, \u201cwe have to hit the reset the button\u201d with the Russians, the Arabs, the Iranians, the Europeans, etc. I thought all this would have the usual shelf-life of 6 months. But here it is nearly a year and we are getting more, not less of it. We are back to the lamentations of Jimmy Carter, who, 30 years after his disastrous leadership in 1979-80 on the Iranian hostage crisis, is still talking about how others would have done worse, and how he had saved thousands of lives. Debt Will Do Us In<\/strong><\/p>\n Either Obama will stop the astronomic spending and spiraling debt, or he will not only destroy his presidency, but take his party \u2014 and many of us \u2014 down with him. He apparently did not understand that the fury against Bush was not just due to Iraq, but the unprecedented $300-400 billion annual deficits. But rather than address that, Obama has scheduled a number of trillion-dollar-plus annual deficits for the rest of his term.<\/p>\n Obama\u2019s legacy is to reduce the word \u201ctrillion\u201d \u2014 which used to be a mind-boggling concept \u2014 to the equivalent of \u201cbillion,\u201d as in a \u201ctrillion here, a trillion there.\u201d<\/p>\n There are solutions, of course. Don\u2019t laugh: the ridiculous can become the real when the money runs out. We can furlough federal employees 1-5 days a month. We can inflate our way out by expanding the money supply (I started farming with 12% inflation, and 19% interest rates and 10% unemployment, and watched the price of raisins go from $1,350 a ton to $480 in a single year: ergo, anything, I learned, is possible.[There is really no \u201cthey\u201d who will step in and save us.)<\/p>\n E.g., we can default on Social Security and Medicare \u2014 as in saying \u201cthose who make over $150,000 will not be eligible for Medicare\u201d or have 50% of their Social Security withheld as tax. Don\u2019t laugh, worse may be in store.<\/p>\n Most civilizations whose assemblies vote themselves entitlements they cannot pay for ultimately slash defense \u2014 cf. the British in the 1940s, the French in the 1930s, or the Byzantines in the 13th-15th centuries. We may too. Perhaps mothballing 2-3 carriers, or selling off our stealth fighters to India, or dissolving 4-5 divisions? Perhaps Obama will institute a federal sales tax, as in 10% or so on top of 6-10% sales taxes in many states. He may add a dollar on top of state gas taxes, making about $1.50 here in California. The above absurdities will not be in a few years at the present rate. Again, anything is possible.<\/p>\n Then There Is the Afghanistan Business<\/strong><\/p>\n I am relieved that Obama followed, sort of, the generals\u2019 suggestions and that Afghanistan could in theory follow the successful Iraqi paradigm. And I understand to send more troops offended his base, and so required some audacity of hope.<\/p>\n But, after all, candidate Obama once lectured the Left, amid all his anti-war rhetoric, that Afghanistan was the \u2018good\u2019 war, that he would send more troops, that he would, if need be, go into Pakistan in hot pursuit, that \u2026, that\u2026, etc.<\/p>\n So it is not like the Left should be surprised, much less angered. Indeed, the base is as deceptive as Obama. They too were talking of a good war in Afghanistan when it was quiet, expecting it would remain so, and happy that Obama had protected his right flank.<\/p>\n Now the only difference between Obama and his supporters is the tiny matter of governance: he has responsibilities for the fate of 26 million Afghans and soon well over 100,000 U.S. and NATO troops. Otherwise, I think as a Senator, the once most partisan Senator Obama would by now be the war\u2019s chief critic, along with his supporters.<\/p>\n More Troops Now, Less Later\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n All that said, it was a terrible mistake to talk of deadlines at the same time as reinforcements. In mid-1944 as the American armies in eastern France were becoming short of manpower (given the demands of Italy, the Pacific, the global air and sea wars, etc.), and clamoring for reinforcements, FDR did not say, as the war continued, that our divisions would start coming home by January 1945.<\/p>\n In fact, I cannot think of any President (or any king, Prime Minister, or autocratic thug) who sent troops, while at the same time promising a date to start bringing them home. Anyone who reviews the stalemated mess in Korea from June 1951 to July 1953 realizes that discussions of armistices and peace were entirely predicated on the assumed ebb and flow of battle along the 38th Parallel. The same is true in Vietnam from 1973-4. Should we launch an offensive, in conjunction with the Pakistanis on the other side of the border, to rid Afghanistan of the Taliban, then there will be less talk of a coalition government and withdrawals. Like it or not, the perception of U.S. military success and concomitant political stability and reform, not rhetoric, deadlines, or gimmicks, will determine the course of the war.<\/p>\n Afghanistan Was Lost?<\/strong><\/p>\n Here are American fatality rates in Afghanistan: 2001: 12; 2002: 49; 2003: 48; 2004: 52; 2005: 99; 2006: 98; 2007: 117; 2008: 155; so far in 2009: 301.<\/p>\n One can twist statistics in all sorts of partisan ways. But I do not think that any fair-minded student could suggest that the Afghan war \u2014 in which from 2001 through 2006 no more than 100 Americans died in any given year \u2014 was somehow lost \u2014 or even a war in the sense of WWII, Korea, or Vietnam.<\/p>\n In 2004, 987 American soldiers died outside of both Iraq and Afghanistan, mostly to accident and illness. This year\u2019s total of 301 fatalities is about the same as all the years\u2019 losses in Afghanistan from 2001 through about half of 2006.<\/p>\n So if one were to define Afghanistan as \u201clost\u201d by a standard of U.S. fatalities, it surely was not until very recently. More troops, of course, from 2002-6 might have helped subdue the Taliban (and would have increased our own losses), but, nevertheless, I don\u2019t think one can suddenly\u00a0post hoc<\/em>\u00a0say that the Afghan war has been a disaster for years.<\/p>\n Commander in Chiefs Matter<\/strong><\/p>\n Troops have to know that the man at the top wishes to win. Lincoln was irreplaceable in the summer of 1864, given the combination of dreadful news from the Army of the Potomac and his own insistence of finishing the war with the defeat of the Confederacy. In contrast, LBJ\u2019s heart wasn\u2019t in Vietnam, and the troops sensed it. Georges Clemenceau changed the dynamics of the French army when he took over in 1917. I can\u2019t imagine anyone calling Obama \u201cThe Tiger,\u201d though he has a historic chance to finish Afghanistan and achieve a dramatic victory and stabilization of the reform government there.<\/p>\n Why the Deer-in-the-Headlights?<\/strong><\/p>\n Life is not fair, and quite often so. The 2007 candidate Obama thought he hit on a neat theme. Since he was suspect on national security by the fact of running to the left of Hillary, he pounded his chest on Afghanistan as the good war that he would win (he logically concluded that a war that had cost Americans 117 fatalities in 2007 after over five years of combat was a somnolent theater).<\/p>\n Contrarily, Obama assured us that the Iraqi surge had failed and all combat troops should be out by March 2008. Presto \u2014 his \u201clet me at \u2018em\u201d on Afghanistan assured us of his ferocity, while his junk Iraq plan was simply a reflection of the majority opinion at the time.<\/p>\n Yet \u201cI\u2019m tough, but want to be smart-tough by fighting the right war\u201d was full of all sorts of contradictions (Iraq was always the easier problem, given terrain, ports, logistics, literacy, oil considerations etc.; both houses of Congress had approved both wars; by 2006 non-candidate Obama said he had no major differences with the administration on Iraq; etc.), and was bound to bite a President Obama, who now perhaps would wish to say something like this:<\/p>\n \u201cUnder my leadership, Iraq is at last quiet and a consensual government functioning. It is free of radical Islamic terrorists, and the populace has preferred American peace-keepers to al Qaeda operatives. Afghanistan, however, is my predecessor\u2019s war, not mine, and was bequeathed to me just as it was heating back up.\u201d<\/p>\n In Retrospect\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n If Obama forges a new alliance with Russia that results in the nuclear disarmament of Iran, I will praise him to the skies. (I think the opposite is more likely: a quicker Iranian bomb with Putin on board). Ditto should he make Afghanistan as quiet as Iraq is today, or achieve some sort of agreement in Palestine.<\/p>\n In turn, at some point, cannot the Obamians confess that it was in our interest that Gaddafi gave up his entire WMD arsenal, or Dr. Khan once shut down his nuclear mail-order business (let out of house arrest this year!), or there is quiet in post-surge Iraq, or that the Syrians are at least out of Lebanon, or that from 2001-9 we weren\u2019t hit again on a 9\/11 scale?<\/p>\n How odd that amid all the reset slurs, no one has mentioned just one thing that went well from 2001-9 \u2014 not one?<\/p>\n What is so hard about winning wars you begin, paying debts as you go, and keeping taxes and government small? (Is the antithesis really that appealing: quit conflicts you begin, borrow every year, raise all sorts of new taxes for new questionable government expenditures?) One is a Roman republican, the other a late imperial, ethos.<\/p>\n \u00a92009 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media These Guys Are Really Sensitive, Aren\u2019t They? I thought that former Vice President Al Gore\u2019s vein-bulging attacks on Bush & Co. marked a new \u201cno rules in the arena\u201d era of politics.<\/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":[631],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-xR","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5418,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/nobel-nobel\/","url_meta":{"origin":2099,"position":0},"title":"Nobel Nobel?","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 17, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Al Gore's evangelical liberalism reconsidered. by Bruce S. Thornton Private Papers Al Gore embodies a type that usually turns up in high school or university faculties, what we can call the evangelical liberal. These folks believe they have received the revealed truth about everything, and so are entitled to hector\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6566,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-man-for-the-times\/","url_meta":{"origin":2099,"position":1},"title":"A Man for the Times","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 30, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0NRO's the Corner\u00a0 Al Gore is at it again, recently charging that \u201cAmerican democracy has been hacked\u201d by special interests and accusing his political opponents of \u201cpolitical terrorism.\u201d This comes from a big-government, high-tax advocate who raced to unload his share of a hyped, but failed\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Left"","block_context":{"text":"The Left","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/politics\/liberalism\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3068,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/dsks-technocratic-socialism\/","url_meta":{"origin":2099,"position":2},"title":"DSK’s Technocratic Socialism","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 22, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0 The Corner The bizarre story of socialist IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn was almost storybook: The socialist guardian, now facing sordid sexual-battery charges, we are told, was slumming in a $3,000 per night hotel, with an understanding that he can show up at any time at\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Public Figures"","block_context":{"text":"Public Figures","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/public-figures\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3544,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-many-enemies-of-george-bush\/","url_meta":{"origin":2099,"position":3},"title":"The Many Enemies of George Bush","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 3, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services George Bush is not a very popular fellow. Witness the enraged reaction last week from critics to his suggestion that leaving Iraq now could have the same dire consequences as our withdrawal from Vietnam did. \"It just boggles my mind, the distortions I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "September 2007"","block_context":{"text":"September 2007","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2007\/september-2007\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3507,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-legacy-of-the-bush-administration\/","url_meta":{"origin":2099,"position":4},"title":"The Legacy of the Bush Administration?","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 24, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson The American This article appears in the \"Geopolitics\" section of the recent issue of\u00a0The American. By October, 15 months before his presidency would end, George Bush\u2019s approval ratings still hovered around 30 percent. His administration will go down, say historians such as Columbia\u2019s Eric Foner and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "October 2007"","block_context":{"text":"October 2007","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2007\/october-2007\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1689,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-and-the-new-civility\/","url_meta":{"origin":2099,"position":5},"title":"Obama and the New Civility","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 21, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"The heated rhetoric of the Bush years gone. A new age has dawned. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online It was sometime early this year that Americans finally learned the rules of proper political discourse \u2014 another dividend from the Obama administration. We can all be grateful for our\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "April 2010"","block_context":{"text":"April 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/april-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2099"}],"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=2099"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2099\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2101,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2099\/revisions\/2101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nSuggestion: a 10-day-free-period in which no one in the Obama administration says \u201cthey did it\u201d and \u201cwe had to reset\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n