by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
PJ Media<\/em><\/p>\n 1.\u00a0Do They all Do This?<\/em>\u00a0A good argument could be made that Jacques Chirac was deeply unpopular (along with his foreign minister Dominque de Villepin) in the U.S. and the U.K. Even more so was Gerhard Schr\u00f6der, and to a lesser extent his postmodern foreign minister Joschka Fischer, veteran of the 1960s Days of Rage.<\/p>\n No need to comment on the controversial career of Vladimir Putin. But one rarely sees Mr. Sarkozy trash Chirac, or Merkel dump on Schr\u00f6der, or Medvedev reject Putin. Is the trashing of your predecessor an Obama phenomenon? Why do transnationalist, internationalist European leaders not attack their own countrymen, much less their own cultures, but supposedly chauvinistic Americans now do? (We were told that Europeans were engaged, but not lately due to the awful Iraq and worse Bush; but with Iraq quiet and a messianic American President, do we dare suggest that its failure to involve itself in Afghanistan or to galvanize against Korea or Iran (much less in Darfur) suggests that \u201cwe hate Bush\u201d was just pretense?<\/p>\n 2.\u00a0On Being Liked<\/em>. Gaddafi likes us now thanks to Obama. So do Putin & Co. The Black Caucus just returned singing Fidel Castro\u2019s praises, who apparently likes us now thanks to Obama. No need to mention the Europeans.<\/p>\n But let us distinguish popularity from respect or even credibility. Take Europe: they are going to send combat troops to Afghanistan (not); stimulate the world economy (ask Ms. Merkel); have their transnational financial czar (so says Mr. Sarkozy), help stop Iran or North Korea (will we?)? Try Russia: they now like us too, since we did what? Stood firm on missile defense? Suggested moderation on energy blackmail? Asked to show deference to the former Soviet republics? Suggested Putin stop murdering dissidents abroad?<\/p>\n Given the world\u2019s cheap moralizing, could not Obama have just voiced one thought? Try: \u201cIt is easy to fault President Bush for much of the ill-feeling toward the United States. That is too facile an explanation. As a global leader with often conflicting world responsibilities, America is presented with bad and worse alternatives and our choices simply will never please everyone.\u201d That would be true and honest, given that Obama trashed Bush, but kept his Iraq and Afghanistan policies, and so far has not found any new solutions to old problems with Iran, North Korea and Russia.<\/p>\n 3.\u00a0The sorta, kinda, maybe war<\/em>. The world was told Guantanamo will close (when exactly?), that we no longer \u201ctorture,\u201d that we don\u2019t rendition, that Iraq was a mistake, that Obama agrees with the world that Bush was (fill in the blank). So there are no longer \u201cenemy combatants\u201d or \u201ca war on terror\u201d \u2014 but then again there are.<\/p>\n Ponder: Daily those from Waziristan to Kuwait promise another 9\/11 like hit. Iran tries everything under the sun to get its bomb. We send thousands more soldiers to Afghanistan; we kill dozens each month with Predator strikes in Afghanistan (rather a bit meaner than putting terrorists into Guantanamo cells with Korans and Mediterranean food).<\/p>\n This seems to me quite dangerous. Go through the logic: radical Islam is still trying to kill large numbers of Americans (such as they can after losing thousands in Afghanistan and Iraq the last eight years). We are killing lots of terrorists in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and upping the ante. But all the while we are reassuring the world we reject Bush\u2019s prior war (that kept us safe) and have a new approach to foreign policy based on assurances that we are now caring, listening, multipolar, etc. It seems to me that at a time of defense cuts, and repeals of the Bush anti-terrorism agenda, and increased vows of our enemies to kill us, reassuring everyone we are no longer quite at war sends a surreal message to our enemies: just enough reassurance that we are no longer unpredictable, angry, and punitive, and just enough war to really anger fascistic terrorists. There must be some sober advisors like Gen. Jones and others who see the paradox.<\/p>\n 4.\u00a0Turkish Delight?<\/em>\u00a0I have real reservations of the method of Obama\u2019s outreach to Turkey. Of course, all outreach is good in some sense. But the Turkish government is whipping up Islamic fundamentalism, has a long record of questionable behavior vis \u00e0 vis the Kurds, poses real problems with membership to the European Union, and uses NATO for blackmail as much as participation (now they want an apology from the new NATO chief for not censoring a cartoon). Cyprus and Aegean overflights are not signs of multipolar world citizenship. And when we collate our histories \u2014 Ottoman\/Turkish (e.g., long imperial enemy of the West, German imperial ally in World War I, rather tough on the Armenians, Nazi-friendly in World War II, quite murderous in Cyprus) versus American \u2014 I don\u2019t see any reason to kow-tow.<\/p>\n 5.\u00a0Casting the First Stone<\/em>. I wrote this on NRO\u2019s Corner on the really bothersome habit of \u201cAmerica bad, but me magnanimous in apologies for it\u201d, which in its essence is a form of narcissism that focuses applause on self, at the expense of the reputation of one\u2019s country.<\/p>\n In this great age of atonement, in a mere two or three days the world has been reminded that (1) the U.S. has been arrogant; (2) dismissive and derisive to Europe; (3) was a slave-owning society; (4) practiced genocide against native Americans; (5) did not let blacks vote; (6) was the only nation to have used nuclear weapons; (7) embraced torture; (8) alienated the world under Bush, and on and on. The subtext has been that those of a different race, of a different era, or under a different president have done terrible things, which I, from my own moral Olympus, must now apologize for.<\/p>\n A modest suggestion: from now on, every president who wishes to go abroad and review all his lesser citizens\u2019 collective past and present sins, with accompanying apologies \u2014 to applause from foreigners \u2014 must first, in the spirit of New Testament atonement, review his own regrettable transgressions.<\/p>\n Footnote.<\/em>The once insightful Fox News is rapidly devolving into a sort of entertainment circus. That is a tragedy, since the network for years has done wonders in offering an antithesis to the supposedly non-biased biased network news. Each news show now interviews hosts from the other Fox news hours (To save money? Free publicity?). Hawking books (written in short, breezy style, without much analysis) is done on the air rather than as commercials. Anchors show old clips of themselves and invite in analysts to praise their on-air interviews (are they going to be invited back if critical?).<\/p>\n The hosts now constantly blare out their own ratings. Murder and rapine often headline the news in the manner of the local 6PM affiliates. Quiz shows are part of the news; female analysts are almost always either young or blond or usually both, rather than simply insightful. The sober and judicious Brit Hume\u2019s presence is missed. Take away a few top-notch correspondents, and Charles Krauthammer\u2019s sagacity and depth of thinking, and there is increasingly not a lot there. (but I like Neil Cavuto\u2019s business hour and Dennis Miller\u2019s op-eds) All in all, an unfortunate development, since there is no disinterested counterpart to a 60 Minutes or NBC News, and for years Fox offered an invaluable alternative in airing real news deliberately ignored by the mainstream networks.<\/p>\n \u00a92009 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media 1.\u00a0Do They all Do This?\u00a0A good argument could be made that Jacques Chirac was deeply unpopular (along with his foreign minister Dominque de Villepin) in the U.S. and the U.K. Even more so was Gerhard Schr\u00f6der, and to a lesser extent his postmodern foreign minister Joschka Fischer, veteran of […]<\/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":[722],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-K0","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7143,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/of-pre-and-postmodern-poseurs\/","url_meta":{"origin":2852,"position":0},"title":"Of Pre- and Postmodern Poseurs","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 24, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Obama's postmodernism has met its match in premodern Putin. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0PJ Media\u00a0 Vladimir Putin thinks he has a winning formula to restore the global clout of the old Soviet Union. Contemporary Russia is a chaotic, shrinking, and petrodollar-fed kleptocracy. It certainly lacks the population, the vast resources,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Russia"","block_context":{"text":"Russia","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/europe\/russia\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3466,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/huckabee-and-the-chattering-classes\/","url_meta":{"origin":2852,"position":1},"title":"Huckabee and the Chattering Classes","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 20, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner I\u00a0having been reading some of the reactions to the negative appraisal of NRO writers to Huckabee's\u00a0Foreign Affairs\u00a0essay \u2014 the gist of it being he was unfairly ganged up on by supposed neo-cons and other purported East-Coast elites. Maybe, but I wrote my worries over\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "December 2007"","block_context":{"text":"December 2007","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2007\/december-2007\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2842,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/president-of-the-world\/","url_meta":{"origin":2852,"position":2},"title":"President of the World","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 17, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"The globe is hearing a deeply pessimistic view of what America was and is. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Given Obama\u2019s performance on his recent trip, three developments were quite astounding. First, despite this fresh climate of atonement, there was a complete absence of a single apology from\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "April 2009"","block_context":{"text":"April 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/april-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6999,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-value-of-putin\/","url_meta":{"origin":2852,"position":3},"title":"The Value of Putin","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 11, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Putin ends up existing to warn us in the West of what we are not. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online\u00a0 Vladimir Putin has the world\u2019s attention this week. The circumstances will remind everyone that reset with Russia is dead. Its working hypothesis \u2014 that it was the George\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Russia"","block_context":{"text":"Russia","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/europe\/russia\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/3488885680_b54cd50d37-219x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":12416,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/10-rules-for-postmodern-rioting\/","url_meta":{"origin":2852,"position":4},"title":"10 Rules for Postmodern Rioting","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 9, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness The peaceful protests against the terrible brutalization and death of George Floyd soon either themselves turned violent or, in many cases, were hijacked by Antifa operatives and opportunistic looters or both. It was certainly not as alleged a \u201csmall number\u201d who destroyed swaths of\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3012,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-the-great-american-hope\/","url_meta":{"origin":2852,"position":5},"title":"Obama: The Great American Hope?","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 17, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services There is great hope that President-elect Obama will change the course of U.S. foreign policy, create far greater goodwill toward America, and thereby ease world tensions. Such optimism is not based on former Sen. Obama\u2019s foreign-policy experience. In essence, he has none. Nor\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "January 2009"","block_context":{"text":"January 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/january-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2852"}],"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=2852"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2853,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2852\/revisions\/2853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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