by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
National Review Online<\/em><\/p>\n F<\/span>or some time, a large number of Americans have lived in an alternate universe where everything is supposedly going to hell. If you get up in the morning to read the\u00a0New York Times<\/i>\u00a0or\u00a0Washington Post<\/i>, watch John Murtha or Howard Dean on the morning talk shows, listen to National Public Radio at noon, and go to bed reading\u00a0Newsweek<\/i>\u00a0it surely seems that the administration is incommunicado (cf. \u201cthe bubble\u201d), the war is lost (\u201cunwinnable\u201d), the Great Depression is back (\u201cjobless recovery\u201d), and America about as popular as Nazi Germany abroad (\u201calone and isolated\u201d).<\/p>\n But in the real adult world, the economy is red-hot, not mired in joblessness or relegating millions to poverty. Unemployment is low, so are interest rates. Growth is high, as is consumer spending and confidence. Our Katrina was hardly as lethal as the Tsunami or Pakistani earthquake. Thousands of Arabs are not rioting in Dearborn. American elderly don\u2019t roast and die in the thousands in their apartments as was true in France. Nor do American cities, like some in Chinese, lose their entire water supply to a toxic spill. Americans did not just vote to reject their own Constitution as in some European countries.<\/p>\n The military isn\u2019t broken. Unlike after Vietnam when the Russians, Iranians, Cambodians, and Nicaraguans all soon tried to press their luck at our expense, most of our adversaries don\u2019t believe the U.S. military is losing in Iraq, much less that it is wise now to take it on. Instead, the general impression is that our veteran and battle-hardened forces are even more lethal than was true of the 1990s \u2014 and engaging successfully in an almost impossible war.<\/p>\n Nor are we creating new hordes of terrorists in Iraq \u2014 as if a young male Middle Eastern fundamentalist first hates the United States only on news that it is in Iraq crafting a new Marshall Plan of $87 billion and offering a long-oppressed people democracy after taking out Saddam Hussein. Even al Jazeera cannot turn truth into untruth forever.<\/p>\n Instead, the apprentice jihadist is trying to win his certification as master terrorist by trying his luck against the U.S. Marines abroad rather than on another World Trade Center at home \u2014 and failing quite unlike September 11.<\/p>\n Like it or not, wars are usually won or lost when one side feels its losses are too high to continue. We have suffered terribly in losing 2,100 dead in Iraq; a vastly smaller enemy in contrast may have experienced tens of thousands of terrorists killed, and is finding its safe havens and money drying up. Panic about Iraq abounds in both the American media and the periodic fatwas of Dr. Zawahiri \u2014 but not in the U. S. government or armed forces.<\/p>\n The world does not hate the United States. Of course, it envies us. Precisely because it is privately impressed by our unparalleled success, it judges America by a utopian measure in which anything less than perfection is written off as failure. We risk everything, our critics abroad almost nothing. So the hope for our failures naturally gives reinforcement to the bleak reality of their inaction.<\/p>\n The Europeans expect our protection. The Mexicans risk their lives to get here. Indians and Japanese want closer relations. The old commonwealth appreciates our strength in defense of the West. Even the hostile Iranians, North Koreans, Cubans, Venezuelans, Chinese, and radical Islamists \u2014 despite the saber-rattling rhetoric \u2014 wonder whether we are na\u00efve and idealistic rather than cruel and calculating. All this we rarely consider when we read of anti-Americanism in our major newspapers or hear another angry (and usually well-off) professor or journalist recite our sins.<\/p>\n Al Zarqawi is in a classical paradox: He can\u2019t defeat the American or Iraqi security forces or stop the elections. So he must dream up ever more macabre violence to gain notoriety \u2014 from beheading Americans on the television to mass murdering Shiites to blowing up third-party Jordanians. But such lashing out only further weakens his cause and makes the efforts of his enemies on the battlefield easier, as his Sunni base starts to see that this psychopath really can take his supporters all down with him.<\/p>\n The Palestine problem is not even worse off after Iraq. Actually, it is far better with the isolated and disgraced Arafat gone, the fence slowly inching ahead, the worst radical Islamic terrorists on the West Bank in paradise, Israel out of Gaza, and the world gradually accepting its diplomatic presence. The real hopeless mess was 1992-2000 when a well-meaning Bill Clinton, Madeline Albright, and Dennis Ross still deluded themselves that a criminal gang leader like Yasser Arafat was a legitimate head of state or that you could start to end an endless war by giving his thugs thousands of M-16s.<\/p>\n The European way is not the answer, as we see from the farcical negotiations over Iran\u2019s time bomb. Struggling with a small military, unsustainable entitlement promises, little real economic growth, high unemployment, falling birth rates, angry unassimilated minorities, and a suicidal policy of estrangement from its benefactor the United States, Europeans show already an 11th-hour change of heart as we see in the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, and soon in France.<\/p>\n Europe\u2019s policy about Iran\u2019s nuclear program can best be summed up as\u201cHurry up, sane and Western Israel, and take out this awful thing \u2014 so we can damn you Zionist aggressors for doing so in our morning papers.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n The administration did not prove nearly as inept in the Iraqi reconstruction as the rhetoric of its opposition was empty. The government\u2019s chief lapse was not claiming the moral high ground for a necessary war against a fascist mass murderer \u2014 an inexplicable silence now largely addressed by George Bush\u2019s new muscular public defense of the war. In contrast, we can sadly recall all the alternative advice of past critics across the spectrum: invade Iraq in 1998, but get out right now; trisect Iraq; attack Syria or Iran; retreat to the Shiite south; put in hundreds of thousands of more troops; or delay the elections.<\/p>\n Donald Rumsfeld\u2019s supposed gaffe of evoking \u201cOld Europe\u201d is trumped tenfold and almost daily by slurs such as Abu Ghraib as worse than Saddam, Guantanamo as the work of Hitler, Stalin, or Pol Pot, Bush as the world\u2019s greatest terrorist, the effort to democratize Iraq as unwinnable, and American troops terrorizing Iraqi women and children.<\/p>\n Most Americans may grumble after reading the latest demonization in the press of Bush\/Cheney\/Rumsfeld, but they are hardly ready to turn over a complex Middle East to something like a President John Kerry, Vice President Barbara Boxer, Secretary of State Howard Dean, National Security Advisor Nancy Pelosi, and Secretary of Defense John Murtha \u2014 with a kitchen cabinet of Jimmy Carter and Sandy Berger.<\/p>\n So at year\u2019s end, what then is happening at home and abroad?<\/p>\n For the last three years we have seen a carbuncle swell as the old Vietnam War opposition rematerialized, with Michael Moore, the Hollywood elite, and Cindy Sheehan scaring the daylights out of the Democratic establishment that either pandered to or triangulated around their crazy rhetoric. The size of the Islamicist\/Baathist insurrection caught the United States for a time off guard, as was true also of the sudden vehement slurs from our erstwhile allies in Europe, Canada, and Asia. Few anticipated that the turmoil Iraq would force the Syrians out of Lebanon, the Libyans to give up their WMDs, and the Egyptians to hold elections \u2014 and that all the killing, acrimony, and furor over these developments would begin to engulf the Middle East and threaten the old order.<\/p>\n In the face of that growing ulcer of discontent, we quietly kept on killing terrorists, promoting elections in Iraq, pressuring Arab autocracies to democratize, and growing the economy. All that is finally lancing the boil, here and abroad \u2014 and what was in there all along is now slowly oozing out, making the cure seem almost as gross as the malady.<\/p>\n \u00a92005 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We quietly keep in killing terrorists, promoting elections in Iraq, pressuring Arab autocracies to democratize, and growing the economy. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online For some time, a large number of Americans have lived in an alternate universe where everything is supposedly going to hell.<\/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":[782],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-15s","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":12879,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/our-descent-into-collective-madness\/","url_meta":{"origin":4182,"position":0},"title":"Our Descent Into Collective Madness?","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 21, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness These are crazy times. A pandemic led to national quarantine, to self-induced recession, to riot, arson, and looting, to a contested election, and to a riot at the Capitol.\u00a0 In response, are we focusing solely on upping the daily vaccination rate?\u00a0 Getting the country\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9047,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/in-search-of-fixes-for-a-fossilized-economy\/","url_meta":{"origin":4182,"position":1},"title":"In Search of Fixes for a Fossilized Economy","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 11, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Tribune Media Services The U.S. economy grew at an anemic rate of less than 1 percent in the last quarter of 2015. While the unemployment rate has dipped below 5 percent, the all-important labor force participation rate is at a historic low of just 62.7 percent.\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12026,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/is-america-becoming-sinicized\/","url_meta":{"origin":4182,"position":2},"title":"Is America Becoming Sinicized?","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 21, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Alittle over 40 years ago, Chinese Communist strongman and reformer Deng Xiaoping began 15 years of sweeping economic reforms. They were designed to end the disastrous, even murderous planned economy of Mao Zedong, who died in 1976. 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Experts laughed him off as a na\u00eff who did not understand\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Donald Trump"","block_context":{"text":"Donald Trump","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/donald-trump\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9620,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-appointment-game\/","url_meta":{"origin":4182,"position":4},"title":"The Appointment Game","author":"Megan Ring","date":"November 21, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"The Corner The one and only \u00a0by Victor Davis Hanson\/\/ National Review \u00a0Everyone is playing the \u201cwhat if\u201d recommendation game. For what little they would be worth in an ideal world, here would be four of my slightly unorthodox recommendations: First, Larry Arnn, Hillsdale College president, for secretary of education.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Trump"","block_context":{"text":"Trump","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/trump\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":314,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-ahistorical-krugman\/","url_meta":{"origin":4182,"position":5},"title":"The Ahistorical Krugman","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 30, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Paul Krugman\u00a0weaves a fantasy tale\u00a0of how high taxes, big unions, and government regulations created a booming 1950s economy \u2014 the implication being that in reactionary fashion we can now in a second term return to our heyday under Obama\u2019s envisioned union support, growth\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Punditry"","block_context":{"text":"Punditry","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/punditry\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4182"}],"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=4182"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4182\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4183,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4182\/revisions\/4183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}