by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
PJ Media<\/em><\/p>\n I. I am not on the Obama bus<\/p>\n I followed the Obama senatorial campaign and even his early career in Chicago, and confess I was not impressed. I think on any occasion he announces a moral standard it is reactive \u2014 not proactive \u2014 and we can be sure it serves as cover for something of questionable morality. So when he says he won\u2019t do something, it usually means he already has. Let us count the ways:<\/p>\n a) \u201cHighest ethical standards\u201d are proof we will get Richardson, Geithner, Daschle, Solis, etc. nominated who cannot or do not pay all their taxes \u2014 among other things. There will be only praise for, not silence about, tax-cheats and unethical players in Congress like Chris Dodd, John Murtha, or Charles Rangel. To suggest otherwise is to be cynical, sharp, partisan; most on the Left who preach about the Wall-Street\/DC nexus and the \u201cbig guys\u201d at the trough are silent on this disturbing new big money\/Democrat connection.<\/p>\n b) Christian, Sermon-on-the-Mount declarations about forgiveness and \u2018moving forward, not backward\u2019 indicate that \u201cBush did it\u201d is now the standard throat-clearing before every speech abroad. Suggesting that we do not wish to dredge up the past is assurance that we will try to humiliate lawyers in the Justice Department who years ago gave opinions at a time of national crisis. Do we try federal judges whose opinions we don\u2019t like?<\/p>\n c) Talking about \u201cfinancial sobriety\u201d and \u201chalving the deficit\u201d guarantee that we will triple the annual deficit, and add more to the national debt in eight years than we did in aggregate since the founding of the republic.<\/p>\n d) Soaring rhetoric about the reset button, a new softness, more listening, a new page, etc. assure us that we will have no moral compass, and treat Venezuela like Columbia, Georgia like Russia, Iran like Iraq \u2014 the more we hear of a new morality, the more we know there will be no moral distinctions.<\/p>\n e) The demonized percentile who makes over $250,000 who alone will be taxed \u2014 won\u2019t be alone to see new taxes. Confiscate all their cash and you still cannot pay off debts piling up at $1.7 trillion per year. So gas, cigarette, alcohol, taxes will climb and soon even that will not be enough. The more we do not hear that, the more it is coming.<\/p>\n f) The more Bush gave us \u201cfalse choices\u201d and shredded the constitution, the more Obama will adopt FISA, email intercepts, wiretaps, renditions, Bush\u2019s Iraq plan, the same old in Afghanistan, etc. Let us see whether Guantanamo closes within a year: watch especially the reaction to the poor teen-aged Somali pirate and ask yourself whether this administration wishes to repeat that again and again \u2014 or whether other countries wish to have their framed, railroaded, tortured, and misunderstood pseudo-terrorists back on the streets of Berlin, Paris, or Cairo. Again, when one on Team Obama trashes Bush the law shredder, then assume that we have already adopted his security protocols.<\/p>\n g) We are postracial, transracial, multicultural, etc. and rightfully so don\u2019t talk about \u2018Hussein,\u2019 or one\u2019s ethnic background, etc. But abroad? All that qualification simply means YOU don\u2019t dare do it, but HE does, all the time, everywhere, both to sway world opinion and ever so gently to distance himself from America\u2019s past when convenient : so the first thing on the Latin American summit table is \u201crace.\u201d Arabs are told to be comfortable because of Barack\u2019s names, first and second and third, his Muslim father, his non-traditional background. In other words, anytime anyone in the U.S. is told that racism is lurking its ugly head around every corner, be assured that Obama will broadcast his race and heritage to Europeans, Turks, Arabs, and Latin Americans. The two behaviors are joined at the hip. The warning always follows its antithesis.<\/p>\n II. I do not understand the morality of the Left.<\/p>\n Let me get this straight: catching the beheader and architect of mass murder Khalid Sheik Mohammed and waterboarding him in Guantanamo at the zenith of worry about more 9\/11s, anthrax attacks, and the European bombings is outright torture, an horrendous stain on the U.S. (cf. what FDR did to saboteurs caught on the east coast during WWII). But blowing up the heads of two Somali pirates during negotiations or incinerating houses of suspects in Waziristan (lots of \u201ccollateral\u201d as they say in Hollywood) is okay? Did I miss the habeas corpus, Miranda rights, Army Field Manual rules, appeals, etc. that were followed in the nano-second between the trigger pulling and the heads exploding?<\/p>\n III. There was something to admire about Joe Frazier.<\/p>\n I have another confession to make, given that I just saw an ad for a new documentary on the Ali-Frazier fights, a film I will try to see soon. Here it is \u2014 I never admired Mohammed Ali. Not that much at all.<\/p>\n He was a brilliant boxer, but his megalomania ushered a number of deleterious trends into all sports \u2014 the ego-driven gestures (which were to be later manifested in everything from spiking the ball to trash talking the opponent) were all repellant.<\/p>\n So was his weird racism \u2014 as he all but said that the more noble Joe Frazier or the sad Leon Spinks were somehow African-Americans of a different, lesser caste from himself. Then he played on white guilt, writing doggerel, offering half-educated rants, opining in juvenile fashion \u2014 all with the notion that a Howard Cosell or some other enabler would transmogrify that nonsense to the elite public as something deep and provoking, and thereby deeply fulfilling to a mostly upscale liberal audience desperate to find transracial resonance in the 1960s and 1970s.<\/p>\n No, I liked blunt, quiet, moody, and methodical Smokin\u2019 Joe Frazier far better. I never bought into the notion that he was unduly bitter and unfairly blamed Ali (cf. the latter\u2019s slurs of \u201cGorilla\u201d against Frazier). He had the harder upbringing, showed more courage with the talent he was born with, and had a quiet nobility about his carriage entirely lacking in the narcissistic Ali, who crafted the pseudo-role as the \u201cuppity\u201d successful black that white closet racists were supposed to fear and loathe.<\/p>\n Frazier\u2019s quietude was true of George Foreman whom I thought the better individual and character than Ali. Far from being status quo yes-men, both fighters showed far more courage and individuality than did Ali, whose outrageousness was scripted and calibrated to please the ruling media elite. There was a tragic dignity about Frazier lost on the better-looking, more glib, swift-footed dancer, political activist Ali.<\/p>\n IV. The whole \u201ctorture\u201d controversy took me back to fall 2001 and fall 2002. I was reading some old essays by various people written right after 9\/11 and on into 2002-3. Thomas Freedman had a dramatic, but sensible piece warning us we were in World War III and worrying that the Bush administration was doing too little and bogged down in Norman Minetta\u2019s security quirks. Andrew Sullivan in one of his earlier manifestations (which one, I am not sure) was dreaming of using nukes against Saddam should he be tied to biological weapons, and earlier whining that Bush, like his Dad, would wimp out and not have the guts to go into Baghdad. David Frum was proud of his contributions to the Axis of Evil speech, and busy writing his book,\u00a0The Right Man. I could go on, but you get the point.<\/p>\n Some others who signed the \u201cTake out Saddam\u201d letter to Bill Clinton, later proved to be the most ardent critics as they turned on Bush. Pundits who used to talk about Bush\u2019s moral clarity now talk about? \u2014 Obama\u2019s moral clarity. Call me a cynic, but there is only one constant with this Powellism: whatever is in power and riding high, the DC-NY nexus wants a part of; whatever is in decline and unpopular, they were scarcely ever for. This is the rise\/fall\/and rise of Harry Truman all over again.<\/p>\n Do the Obamians realize that no one is exempt from such cycles of adulation\/vituperation? Should this $1.7 trillion deficit gambit fail, or should we be hit again after so publicly trashing the Bush-security measures, do they grasp that the present aficionados will be the first to reincarnate yet a third time and denounce them for security laxity and economic stupidity?<\/p>\n Generally on war, Orwell was right: the quickest way to end one is to lose it. We should think hard about going into one (we did from December 2001 to March 2003, through the debates at the U.N., both houses of Congress, an off-year congressional election, national protests and rebuttal, etc.), but once in one, we should win, since the consequences of defeat outweigh all the pundits\u2019 points about \u2018my brilliant war, their stupid occupation\u201d<\/p>\n All the above should not be contrarianism, but simply common sense.<\/p>\n \u00a92009 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media I. I am not on the Obama bus I followed the Obama senatorial campaign and even his early career in Chicago, and confess I was not impressed.<\/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":[716],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-Jo","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":416,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-problem-last-night-was-not-just-obama\/","url_meta":{"origin":2814,"position":0},"title":"The Problem Last Night Was Not Just Obama","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 6, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner The problem for Obama is not that his performance was disastrous, but rather that it was his normal workmanlike coasting. But this time, and for the first time, he was pitted against a skilled debater who had both the better argument and the better\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Election 2012"","block_context":{"text":"Election 2012","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/election-2012\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1871,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-versus-obama\/","url_meta":{"origin":2814,"position":1},"title":"Obama versus Obama","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 27, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Will the real Barack Obama please stand up? by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online There is little need any more to offer consistent opposition to Barack Obama, since he himself is already running hard against the many previous incarnations of Barack Obama.\u00a0 The first one we met was Barack\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "January 2010"","block_context":{"text":"January 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/january-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":736,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/two-three-many-obamas\/","url_meta":{"origin":2814,"position":2},"title":"Two, Three, Many Obamas","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 1, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online As the campaign heats up, one problem is that we continue to meet lots of different Barack Obamas \u2014 to such a degree that we don\u2019t know which, if any, is really president. I think the president believes that private-equity firms harm the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Election 2012"","block_context":{"text":"Election 2012","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/election-2012\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9165,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-buck-never-stops-here\/","url_meta":{"origin":2814,"position":3},"title":"The Buck Never Stops Here","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 17, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Tribune Media Services In a cover story in the latest issue of The Atlantic magazine, President Obama offers astonishing scapegoating for his own foreign policy disasters.According to Obama, the deterioration of the ISIS wasteland that is now Libya was not due to improvident administration bombing followed\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Middle East"","block_context":{"text":"The Middle East","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1853,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-usual-straw-men\/","url_meta":{"origin":2814,"position":4},"title":"The Usual Straw Men","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 5, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner Cap-and-trade, statist healthcare, and an end to \u201cdon\u2019t ask, don\u2019t tell\u201d for thee. And for thou, Obama the tax cutter, Obama the gas-and-oil driller, Obama the budget freezer, Obama the anti-lobbyist reformer, Obama the bipartisan healer? This half-hearted pivoting was quite transparent: Obama made\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "February 2010"","block_context":{"text":"February 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/february-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1295,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-derangement-syndrome\/","url_meta":{"origin":2814,"position":5},"title":"Obama Derangement Syndrome?","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 29, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media I\u2019d say if you live in the United States of America and you vote for George Bush, you\u2019ve lost your mind. \u2014 John Edwards When does the legitimate \u201cI oppose Obama\u201d descend into the illegitimate \u201cI hate Obama\u201d? 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