by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
National Review Online<\/em><\/p>\n The year is quite young, and yet it has already seen a multitude of disturbing events and trends \u2014 unrest in Cairo and North Africa; nuclearization in Iran; a growing anti-American alliance among Turkey, Hezbollah, Iran, and Syria; the expansionary designs of a newly unabashed China with attendant repercussions on Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan; calls for the end of the dollar as the global currency; the muscle flexing from an \u201cI can\u2019t believe my good luck\u201d Russia; and the tottering of the European Union. I have no idea how most Americans react to any of the above, and I don\u2019t think the administration has either.<\/p>\n We do know that President Obama wants to borrow another $1.6 trillion this year to ensure expansion of EU-like entitlements. One mystery is why the Chinese \u2014 400 million of whom have never encountered Western-style medicine \u2014 apparently won\u2019t mind lending us more of their hundreds of billions of dollars in surpluses to fund Obamacare. Another is why people should risk their environments in Africa, the Russian Arctic, and Asian coastal waters to provide petroleum for a thirsty planet, while we will not take much smaller risks to satisfy our own voracious oil appetite. The only common denominator is our desire to consume more than we produce.<\/p>\n Yet the impending crises on the horizon \u2014 so reminiscent of the annus horribilis of 1979, when the wages of another American president\u2019s sermonizing and economic weakness came due \u2014 are not foreordained to come at America\u2019s expense. Were we to put our financial house in order, slash our deficits, show the world how we intend to pay down our $14 trillion debt, and make the needed long-term reforms to Social Security and Medicare, the United States would be in a unique position in comparison to an ailing and sclerotic Europe, a demographically challenged Japan, and a China with a rendezvous with social tension, environmental catastrophe, and a warped demography. We are still a more open and transparent society than our rivals \u2014 with a more meritocratic ethos, far greater social and political stability, and blessed with vast natural and human resources. Why, then, cannot we regain our exceptionalism?<\/p>\n In a word, I think we do not wish to. The problem \u2014 aside from the fact that we are a country obsessed with wrangling over distribution of old wealth (much of it provided by previous generations) rather than creation of new national riches \u2014 is that the United States does not quite know what its role should be in yet another new world order.<\/p>\n Hence, President Obama was a day late and a dollar short in figuring out both the Tehran 2009 and the Cairo 2011 protests. Like a modern-day Hamlet, he paused to examine every imaginable consequence before doing nothing \u2014 as in \u201cShould I criticize Ahmadinejad when I promised in landmark fashion to meet face to face with the Iranians? Where is the UN in all of this? If I encourage the protesters, am I interfering in the internal affairs of Iran \u2014 the way America did a half century ago, for which I just apologized? If I support democratic reform, will I appear no different from a Bush neocon? Will Mubarak survive or will he not? Should he, or should he not? Are the protesters authentic Egyptians or Westernized upper middle classes without Third World\u00a0bona fides<\/em>? Are they Kerensky types about to be swallowed up by hard-core Islamists? Could my own unique heritage not appeal to the Muslim Brotherhood as I was hoping it would when I reached out to Iran and Syria? If I pressure Mubarak, will the Right ask why I did not pressure Ahmadinejad? If I do not, will the Left accuse me of realpolitik? Isn\u2019t Bush at fault somewhere here?\u201d So many questions, so many occasions to vote present.<\/p>\n The reset \u201cI\u2019m not Bush\u201d Pavlovian foreign policy is in shambles. There comes a moment in which a trivial event finally distills chaos into clarity. In the Obama administration\u2019s case, it was the description of the Muslim Brotherhood by the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, who just assured Capitol Hill that the Brotherhood was \u201clargely secular\u201d and has \u201ceschewed violence.\u201d Keep that inanity in mind, and almost everything else becomes clear. Add \u201cMuslim\u201d to \u201cBrotherhood\u201d and these days you get \u201clargely secular.\u201d<\/p>\n The euphemisms for terrorism have become a late-night-show running joke; more, not fewer, terrorist plots directed at the US have answered Obama\u2019s Muslim outreach efforts. It is by now about as likely that Eric Holder will try KSM in a New York federal court as that Obama himself will close down Guantanamo, which he earlier described as \u201ca tremendous recruiting tool for al Qaeda.\u201d The one Obama success (in Joe Biden\u2019s words, the administration\u2019s \u201cgreatest achievement\u201d) was a still-constitutional Iraq \u2014 only because Obama dropped his own campaign promises on unilateral withdrawals and stuck to the Bush-Petraeus departure plans.<\/p>\n A strengthened US role in the UN has come to nothing. Did we gain anything by humiliating Israel in 2009? Are Venezuela and its axis moderating their efforts to turn Latin America into a Marxist utopia? Has America ever before joined Mexico \u2014 or any other foreign government \u2014 in efforts to sue one of its own states that simply wanted federal law enforced? Was Russia really all that eager to help an appeasing US diplomatically? When the US provided serial numbers of British nuclear weapons to Putin\u2019s Russia, and when Europeans like Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy have to lecture the West about the failures of multiculturalism, we are reminded that the Europeans should have been careful of what they so loudly wished for during the 2008 presidential campaign.<\/p>\n Are we inept or calculating in piling up over $4 trillion in debt in just 36 months and lowering America\u2019s global profile? If the goal of the present American administration is to turn the United States into something envisioned on university campuses, the editorial page of the New York Times, and breezy synopses on NPR, then it is right on schedule. But what would that new America look like?<\/p>\n An enormous public sector, guided by an elite European-like technocracy overseeing henchmen in public unions, would ensure spread-the-wealth redistribution, more regulation, and an ideology of equality of result that reminds us that at some point (the new financial Mason-Dixon line of $250,000 in annual income?) we have made enough money at someone else\u2019s expense. Abroad, it might mean a new America analogous to France or Germany, which from time to time would chest-pound about current crises, but would risk nothing while calibrating the\u00a0post-facto<\/em>\u00a0humanitarian rhetoric to match realities on the ground.<\/p>\n In sum, just as we are to be all equal at home, so abroad all nations are to be equal as well \u2014 if not by fiat, at least by wish. Sameness, here and abroad \u2014 that is the new national aspiration.<\/p>\n \u00a92011 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online The year is quite young, and yet it has already seen a multitude of disturbing events and trends \u2014 unrest in Cairo and North Africa; nuclearization in Iran; a growing anti-American alliance among Turkey, Hezbollah, Iran, and Syria; the expansionary designs of a newly unabashed China with attendant […]<\/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":[121,196],"tags":[612,12,229,42,77,1055,149,1039,1056,1037,67,58],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-Zw","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7521,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/our-future-is-1979\/","url_meta":{"origin":3814,"position":0},"title":"Our Future Is 1979","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 4, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Obama\u2019s foreign-policy weakness encourages our enemies and disheartens our allies.\u00a0 by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online The final acts of the Obama foreign policy will play out in the next two years. Unfortunately, bad things happen when the world concludes that the American president has become weakened, distracted,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The World"","block_context":{"text":"The World","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Photo of Jimmy Carter holding cabinet meeting 1977 photo by US National Archives","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/375px-Jimmy_Carter_convenes_a_cabinet_meeting_-_NARA_-_175123.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6785,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/peace-for-our-time\/","url_meta":{"origin":3814,"position":1},"title":"Peace for Our Time","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 25, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online\u00a0 The Iranian agreement comes not in isolation, unfortunately. The Syrian debacle instructed the Iranians that the Obama administration was more interested in announcing a peaceful breakthrough than actually achieving it. The timing is convenient for both sides: The Obama administration needed an offset\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Iran"","block_context":{"text":"Iran","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/iran\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7014,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-foreign-policy-enemy-action\/","url_meta":{"origin":3814,"position":2},"title":"Obama’s Foreign Policy: Enemy Action","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 18, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/\u00a0FrontPage Magazine\u00a0 It\u2019s often hard to determine whether a series of bad policies results from stupidity or malicious intent. Occam\u2019s razor suggests that the former is the more likely explanation, as conspiracies assume a high degree of intelligence, complex organization, and secrecy among a large number\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":8263,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-audacity-of-weakness\/","url_meta":{"origin":3814,"position":3},"title":"The Audacity of Weakness","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 5, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Obama\u2019s morally confused foreign policy is making the world more dangerous by the day. by Victor Davis Hanson\u00a0\/\/ National Review Online Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to Congress on Tuesday to warn Americans of the anti-Western threats from theocratic \u2014 and likely to soon be nuclear \u2014 Iran. Netanyahu\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":969,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/iran-1-0-2-0-3-0-4-0\/","url_meta":{"origin":3814,"position":4},"title":"Iran 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 14, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services On the campaign trail, presidential candidate Barack Obama once called for a \u201creset\u201d policy with Iran. Supposedly, the unpopularity of the Texan provocateur George W. Bush and his administration\u2019s inability to finesse \u201csoft power\u201d had needlessly alienated the Iranian theocracy. 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