by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
National Review Online<\/em><\/p>\n P<\/span>rior to September 11, the general consensus was that conventional Middle East armies were paper tigers and that their terrorist alternatives were best dealt with by bombing them from a distance \u2014 as in Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iraq, east Africa, etc. \u2014 and then letting them sort out their own rubble.<\/p>\n Then following 9\/11, the West adopted a necessary change in strategy that involved regime change and the need to win \u201chearts and minds\u201d to ensure something better was established in place of the deposed dictator or theocrat. That necessitated close engagements with terrorists in their favored urban landscape. After the last four years, we have learned just how difficult that struggle can be, especially in light of the type of weapons $500 billion inMiddle East\u00a0windfall petroleum profits can buy, when oil went from $20 a barrel to almost $80 over the last few years. To best deal with certain difficulties we\u2019ve encountered in these battles thus far, perhaps the\u00a0United States\u00a0should adopt the following set of surreal rules of war.<\/p>\n 1. Any death \u2014 enemy or friendly, accidental or deliberate, civilian or soldier \u2014 favors the terrorists. The Islamists have no claim on morality; Westerners do and show it hourly. So, in a strange way, images of the dead and dying are attributed only to our failing. If ours are killed, it is because those in power were not careful (inadequate body armor, unarmored humvees, etc), most likely due to some supposed conspiracy (Halliburton profiteering, blood for oil, wars for\u00a0Israel\u00a0, etc.). When Muslim enemies are killed, whether by intent or accidentally, the whole arsenal of Western postmodern thought comes into play. For the United States to have such power over life and death, the enemy appears to the world as weak, sympathetic, and victimized; we as strong and oppressive. Terrorists are still \u201cconstructed\u201d as \u201cthe other\u201d and thus are seen as suffering \u2014 doctored photos or not \u2014 through the grim prism of Western colonialism, racism, and imperialism.<\/p>\n In short, it is not just that Western public opinion won\u2019t tolerate many losses; it won\u2019t tolerate for very long killing the enemy either \u2014 unless the belligerents are something akin to the white, Christian Europeans of Milosevic\u2019s Serbia, who, fortunately for NATO war planners in the Balkans, could not seek refuge behind any politically correct paradigm and so were bombed with impunity. Remember, multiculturalism always trumps fascism: the worst homophobe, the intolerant theocrat, and the woman-hating bigot is always sympathetic if he wears some third-world garb, mouths anti-Americanism, and looks most un-European. To win these wars, our soldiers must not die or kill.<\/p>\n 2. All media coverage of fighting in the\u00a0Middle East\u00a0is ultimately hostile \u2014 and for a variety of reasons. Since the 1960s too many reporters have seen their mission as more than disinterested news gathering, but rather as near missionary: they seek to counter the advantages of the Western capitalist power structure by preparing the news in such a way as to show us the victims of profit-making and an affluent elite. Second, most fighting is far from home and dangerous. Trash the\u00a0U.S.\u00a0military and you might suffer a bad look at a well-stocked PX as the downside for winning the Pulitzer; trash Hezbollah or Hamas, and you might end up headless on the side of the road. Third, while in a southern\u00a0Lebanon\u00a0or the Green Zone, it is always safer to outsource a story and photos to local stringers, whose sympathies are usually with the enemy. A doctored photo that exaggerates Israeli \u201cwar crimes\u201d causes a mini-controversy for a day or two back in the States; a doctored photo that exaggerates Hezbollah atrocities wins an RPG in your hotel window. To win these wars, there must be no news of them.<\/p>\n 3. The opposition \u2014 whether an establishment figure like Howard Dean or an activist such as Cindy Sheehan \u2014 ultimately prefers the enemy to win. In their way of thinking, there is such a reservoir of American strength that no enemy can ever really defeat us at home and so take away our Starbucks\u2019 lattes, iPods, Reeboks, or 401Ks. But being checked in \u201coptional\u201d wars in\u00a0Iraq\u00a0, or seeingIsrael\u00a0falter in\u00a0Lebanon\u00a0, has its advantages: a George Bush and his conservatives are humiliated; the military-industrial complex learns to be a little bit more humble; and guilt over living in a prosperous Western suburb is assuaged. When a Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton \u2014 unlike a Nixon, Reagan, or Bush \u2014 sends helicopters or bombs into the\u00a0Middle East\u00a0desert, it is always as a last resort and with reluctance, and so can be grudgingly supported. To win these wars, a liberal Democrat must wage them.<\/p>\n 4. Europeans have shown little morality, but plenty of influence, abroad and here at home during\u00a0Middle East\u00a0wars. Europeans, who helped to bombBelgrade\u00a0, now easily condemn\u00a0Israel\u00a0in the skies over\u00a0Beirut\u00a0. They sold Saddam his bunkers and reactor, and won in exchange sweetheart oil concessions.\u00a0Iran\u00a0could not build a bomb without Russian and European machine tools.\u00a0Iran\u00a0is not on any serious European embargo list; much of the off-the-shelf weaponry so critical to Hezbollah was purchased through European arms merchants. And if they are consistent in their willingness to do business with any tyrant, the Europeans also know how to spread enough aid or money around to the\u00a0Middle East\u00a0, to ensure some protection and a prominent role in any postwar conference. Had we allowed eager Europeans to get in on the postbellum contracts in\u00a0Iraq\u00a0, they would have muted their criticism considerably. To win these wars, we must win over the Europeans by ensuring they can always earn a profit.<\/p>\n 5. To fight in the Middle East, the\u00a0United States\u00a0and\u00a0Israel\u00a0must enlist\u00a0China\u00a0,Russia\u00a0,\u00a0Europe\u00a0, or any nation in the Arab world to fight its wars.\u00a0China\u00a0has killed tens of thousands in\u00a0Tibet\u00a0in a ruthless war leading to occupation and annexation.\u00a0Russia\u00a0leveled\u00a0Grozny\u00a0and obliterated Chechnyans. Europeans helped to bomb\u00a0Belgrade\u00a0, where hundreds of civilians were lost to \u201ccollateral damage.\u201d Egyptians gassed Yemenis; Iraqis gassed Kurds; Iraqis gassed Iranians; Syrians murdered thousands of men, women, and children in\u00a0Hama\u00a0; Jordanians slaughtered thousands of Palestinians. None received much lasting, if any, global condemnation. In the sick moral calculus of the world\u2019s attention span, a terrorist who commits suicide in\u00a0Guantanamo\u00a0Bay\u00a0always merits at least 500 dead Kurds, 1,000 Chechnyans, or 10,000 Tibetans. To win these wars, we need to outsource the job to those who can fight them with impunity.<\/p>\n 6. Time is always an enemy. Most Westerners are oblivious to criticism if they wake up in the morning and learn their military has bombed a Saddam or sent a missile into Afghanistan \u2014 and the war was begun and then ended all while they were sleeping. In contrast, 6-8 weeks \u2014 about the length of the Balkan orAfghanistan\u00a0war \u2014 is the limit of our patience. After that, Americans become so sensitive to global criticism that they begin to hate themselves as much as others do. To win these wars, they should be over in 24 hours \u2014 but at all cost no more than 8 weeks.<\/p>\n Silly, you say, are such fanciful rules? Of course \u2014 but not as absurd as the wars now going on in the\u00a0Middle East\u00a0.<\/p>\n \u00a92006 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The difficulties of fighting in an absurdly complicated region. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Prior to September 11, the general consensus was that conventional Middle East armies were paper tigers and that their terrorist alternatives were best dealt with by bombing them from a distance \u2014 as in Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iraq, east Africa, […]<\/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":[771],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-11b","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3072,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/hope-and-change-in-the-middle-east\/","url_meta":{"origin":3917,"position":0},"title":"Hope and Change in the Middle East","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 20, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner This was the sort of split-the-difference address that the president is now famous for \u2014 long on Icarus-like soaring phraseology, very short on down-to-earth realities. 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