by Janie Glazov<\/p>\n
FrontPage Magazine<\/em><\/p>\n FP:\u00a0<\/strong>Victor Davis Hanson, welcome to Frontpage Interview.<\/p>\n I\u2019d like to talk to you today about radical Islam and the Obama administration\u2019s ability and inclination, or lack thereof, to confront it.<\/p>\n What\u2019s the best way to begin this discussion?<\/p>\n Hanson:<\/strong>\u00a0Thanks Jamie.<\/p>\n The paradigm of discussing radical Islam is entirely different after January 20. Jihad has been institutionalized now as a benign personal odyssey rather than explicatory of the sort of murderous attacks we have seen since 1979 directed at the West, most recently with the four Islamic plots to kill Americans by radical Islamists since Obama has taken office.<\/p>\n Obama\u2019s interview with\u00a0Al Arabiya<\/em>\u00a0and his Cairo speech had two clear themes: his own personal heritage makes him uniquely qualified to undo the Bush damage; and we in the West have been equally culpable for the strained relations.<\/p>\n This sort of moral equivalence is little concerned with any redress of pathologies that in fact led to 9\/11: Western appeasement of, or indifference to, radical Islam, whose extremism was the natural dividend of a region torn by enormous oil wealth, and age old statism, tribalism, gender intolerance, and dictatorship. In the era of Obama, radical Islam and the West merely have different narratives, rather than a fascistic creed trying to destroy the notion of Western freedom and tolerance.<\/p>\n Abroad as both sides refocus on the Afghanistan theater, somehow Obama is more demoralized by our victory in Iraq than the Islamists are by their defeat; and we have forgotten in the Bush \u2018reset\u2019 button rhetoric that support for bin Laden and suicide bombing \u2014 given the terrible dividends they earned \u2014 had plummeted in polls in the Middle East. In addition, in the \u201cBush did it\u201d Obama narrative there was no mention of the arrest of Dr. Khan, the Syrian exit from Lebanon, the surrender of the Libyan WMD stockpiles, or the absence of another 9\/11.<\/p>\n The result is that many in the radical Islamic world \u2014 especially after Obama\u2019s serial trashing of the Bush-era security protocols like retaps, intercepts, and Guantanamo \u2014 may well be emboldened to think that either America questions its successful efforts at thwarting another attack since 9\/11, or in some strange way sympathizes with some of the writs against itself.<\/p>\n FP:\u00a0<\/strong>What explains the Obama administration\u2019s behavior and viewpoint in this context?<\/p>\n Hanson:<\/strong>\u00a0a) Obama is a product of his education and early life, in which America being culpable for a variety of sins was the gospel , as we see from his associates like Ayers, to his minister like Wright, to the general force of his community organizing in Chicago, to his most partisan voting record in the Senate;<\/p>\n b) Obama, like many elites on the left who thrived in the academic and organizing\/grant-giving world, understood that his exotic name, his mixed heritage, his father\u2019s Muslim roots could all be combined to present some sort of revolutionary aura within the confines of the university that would pay career dividends, and then among the general public, if packaged with a charismatic and conciliatory persona, could make one feel comfortable and good about one\u2019s supposed liberality; he thrived on being a \u2018revolutionary\u2019 lite figure in a non-threatening manner, and it\u2019s hard to give up a winning hand at this late stage;<\/p>\n c) Obama has almost no real experience with an America outside the victim politics of Chicago and the melodramas of the university. He has never run a business, never worked hard with his hands, never had to meet a budget, never understood how money is made, but instead essentially pleaded his cause to win fellowships and grants, dispensed someone else\u2019s money as a board member, made claims against government (\u201dorganizing\u201d), and written his autobiographies at a young age.<\/p>\n Life, in other words, was pretty easy, as the path from\u00a0Harvard Review<\/em>\u00a0to Nobel Prize Winner was characterized by soothing rhetoric and a host of people who, for a host of psychological reasons of their own, wished to give him something for something he didn\u2019t earn. Now he oddly seems surprised that not all those abroad are as wowed as the 2008 American electorate.<\/p>\n FP:<\/strong>\u00a0What is at stake if Obama continues along this path?<\/p>\n Hanson:\u00a0<\/strong>We have an eerie resemblance to Carterism circa 1977: the sermons, the apologies, the trashing of predecessors, the moralizing, the transnational utopianism \u2014 all manifested in naivet\u00e9 about Khomeini, the selling out of the Shah, the downplaying of a communist threat, which, in 1-2 year\u2019s time (it takes a while for others to size up an American president), earned communist expansion in Central America, the Soviets in Afghanistan, the hostage taking in Teheran, uncertainty in Korea, the rise of radical Islam and a weakened U.S. military.<\/p>\n In Obama\u2019s terms that would mean earning a nuclear Iran, a Russia convinced that we will not object to corrections in its regional map, a China eyeing opportunities everywhere, South America reverting back to a sixties credo, Europe oddly remorseful that it got what it wanted (a soft-power, Europeanized America), Israel without an ally, and many in the Mideast convinced that America is now sympathetic to its expansive and non-ending grievances. We may well see a new era of nuclear proliferation as never before.<\/p>\n FP:<\/strong>\u00a0How would you compare Obama to Clinton and Carter in terms of damaging American and Western security?<\/p>\n Hanson:<\/strong>\u00a0It is still early, but the two are instructive. Carter\u2019s self-righteousness ended in disaster and was corrected by Reagan. Clinton, for all his appeasement of radical Islam, the defense cuts, Mogadishu, Haiti, and dithering in the Balkans, at the end became finally somewhat Trumanesque: he removed Milosevic without a lot of bipartisan support, he enforced the no-fly-zones and called for regime change in Iraq, and he tried to project a centrist bipartisan foreign policy, albeit replete with the normal apologies and liberal flourishes. But he was not Jimmy Carter.<\/p>\n Obama? He has a choice; he can correct as Clinton did domestically in 1995 and save his presidency, or he can go the finger-wagging, sanctimonious route blaming the public and the \u201cright\u201d for not appreciating his moral genius. That will lead to political oblivion in 2012. It\u2019s his choice at this point, and predicated on how large the midterm correction and what will be his attitude to political rebuke.<\/p>\n FP:<\/strong>\u00a0And the American people stand where?<\/p>\n Hanson:\u00a0<\/strong>Us in the meantime? The people will have to go through a period of national uncertainty and hope that the prior strength of the United States still offers a deterrent to would-be aggressors. I omit the foreign policy effects of borrowing $2 trillion per year to dispense on constituents, but when we hit $20 trillion in aggregate debt at a 8-10% service fee, the U.S. then will have very few options at home or abroad. So, let us hope that either Obama or the voters, get wisdom in the meantime.<\/p>\n FP:<\/strong>\u00a0Victor Davis Hanson, thank you for joining Frontpage Interview.<\/p>\n \u00a92009 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Janie Glazov FrontPage Magazine FP:\u00a0Victor Davis Hanson, welcome to Frontpage Interview. I\u2019d like to talk to you today about radical Islam and the Obama administration\u2019s ability and inclination, or lack thereof, to confront it.<\/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":[517,647,518],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-yK","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1279,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-teachable-mosque-moment\/","url_meta":{"origin":2154,"position":0},"title":"Obama’s Teachable Mosque Moment","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 5, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Interview by Jamie Glazov FrontPage Magazine Frontpage Interview\u2019s guest today is Victor Davis Hanson, a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author, most recently, of\u00a0The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern. FP:\u00a0Victor Davis Hanson, welcome to Frontpage Interview. I would like\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Jamie Glazov"","block_context":{"text":"Jamie Glazov","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/jamie-glazov\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1918,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-tortured-rendezvous-with-reality-interview-with-vdh\/","url_meta":{"origin":2154,"position":1},"title":"Obama’s Tortured Rendezvous with Reality: Interview with VDH","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 4, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Jamie Glazov FrontPage Magazine FP:\u00a0Victor Davis Hanson, welcome to Frontpage Interview. First things first, let me ask you this. If our government was serious about fighting Islamic terrorism and saving lives, wouldn\u2019t Abdul Mutallab be getting water-boarded just about now? 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Thornton City Journal United in Hate: The Left\u2019s Romance with Tyranny and Terror\u00a0by Jamie Glazov (WND Books, 264 pp.) The long romance of Western leftists with some of the bloodiest regimes and political movements\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Reviews"","block_context":{"text":"Reviews","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/reviews\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2288,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/why-obama-blinked\/","url_meta":{"origin":2154,"position":5},"title":"Why Obama Blinked","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 15, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Jamie Glazov FrontPage Magazine Frontpage Interview\u2019s guest Victor Davis Hanson sheds light on the unfolding drama of a president whose unpopular proposals threaten to ruin his popularity. FP:\u00a0Victor Davis Hanson, welcome to Frontpage Interview. 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