by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
National Review Online<\/em><\/p>\n T<\/span>he Greeks believed that the rising of Sirius, the Dog Star, in August made the sun grow hot, and hence inaugurated a period when people acted a little crazy \u2014 as we ourselves all saw the past few weeks.<\/p>\n But beside the natural tragedy of Katrina, the panic of rising gas prices, and other assorted August calamities such as the stampede that cost hundreds of lives in Iraq, there were also other depressing events over the course of the month.<\/p>\n In Crawford, Texas, there grew what many would call a Star Wars bar of sorts, as almost every strange character in our cultural galaxy flocked to the corner table of Cindy Sheehan.<\/p>\n Not since the California recall election have we seen such a cast. When Ms. Sheehan slurred Israel, David Duke sent his praise, while assorted white supremacists and neo-Nazis showed up to express their solidarity. When it was known that she called the president the \u201cworld\u2019s biggest terrorist,\u201d everyone from Martin Sheen and Viggo Mortensen to Al Sharpton popped in. It is a strange world when Code Pink and Aragorn are in the same chorus of adulation as the National Vanguard.<\/p>\n Sadly she is now like a fluttering moth mesmerized by a candle flame that can only singe her tiring wings. Neither divorce, family illness, nor the shame of having offended other bereaved mothers can keep Cindy away from the cameras at Crawford \u2014 until, of course, the August Dog Days pass, the opportunistic media tires of her, the angling Left finds no more blood sport left in her, and she can return to her private grief.<\/p>\n T<\/span>hen we heard a lot from the Palestinians this month. Poor Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas is embarrassed because after the Israelis left Gaza, the world sort of collectively sighed, \u201cO.K., here\u2019s your state, get to it.\u201d<\/p>\n If a few thousand Jews could create an entire new agricultural sector from scrub while under siege, surely a million free citizens of Gaza, in an age of oil riches for the Arab world, could pave their streets and build their own power plants.<\/p>\n And so just when the world was beginning to think that the Palestinians, if not the Arab world in general, were losing the angst of their perennial victimhood \u2014 so necessary to deflect blame from their own failures onto the Jews and the West \u2014 a suicide bomber struck inside Israel.<\/p>\n Prime Minister Abbas condemned the attack. But the suicidal killer was simply reifying much of what Abbas himself had said on previous occasions. When he once boasted, \u201cToday we are beginning the march of the fishermen towards freedom. Soon you will be able to fish along the whole coast of Palestine,\u201d it could only mean something like, \u201cGo to it, suicide killers, and pay no attention while I condemn you officially to the Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n And so Hamas \u2014 their leaders still hooded and often in hiding \u2014 brag of Gaza now, West Bank next, Israel itself last \u2014 as if any of them could do what the entire Arab world failed to pull off with Soviet support in 1947, 1956, 1967, and 1973. Meanwhile, we all know that the reason there is not another conventional Arab-inspired Middle Eastern war is because there is no more nuclear Soviet Union \u2014 to force us to call the Israelis off when they are on the verge of defeating and humiliating the aggressors.<\/p>\n Final question: Since the Palestinian Authority has declared that Gaza will reopen its airport for international travel, will Hamas, Hezbollah, or Islamic Jihad provide the pilots, air-traffic control, and security to protect civilian passengers from masked hijackers, suicide bombers, and missile launchers?<\/p>\n Speaking of oil, in August it seemed to have spiked at $70 a barrel, over doubling in price in about two years. For all the jihadist rhetoric about the West stealing Arab resources, almost no one has contemplated the new billions of dollars now in the hands of Middle Eastern autocracies, perhaps around $600 million a day in extra profits, or over $200 billion more a year.<\/p>\n Three questions come to mind: (1) Will the jihadists finally stop talking about oil theft and start worrying about the Arab world\u2019s price-gauging of petroleum-hungry impoverished poor Muslims in Africa and Asia? (2) Will any of this money go to the Palestinians, who apparently are now asking the strapped Europeans and Americans to resume aid to subsidize Gaza? (3) How many of these plentiful petrodollars will be recycled to jihadists and arms merchants \u2014 and what would Saddam and the Oil-for-Food thieves have done with an extra $20-30 billion a year to play with?<\/p>\n Y<\/span>et, the strangest scene of this strange August was the recent staged Sunni demonstration against the constitution in Iraq. Should we laugh or cry, applaud or wince?<\/p>\n A minority of the population, many affiliated with the past regime that wrecked the country and butchered the population, first mostly boycotted the vote, then lost, then \u2014 once bruised \u2014 came back into the political process, then left \u2014 and now is out on the street carrying the picture of the demon who would have butchered any Iraqi for such marching just a few years ago.<\/p>\n Are the Sunni leaders part of the democratic fervor or not? How can they slur democracy, but then seek a redress of grievances through democratic demonstrations? Is the strategy to be, \u201cI don\u2019t believe in constitutional government, so I will participate in it \u2014 if only to end it?\u201d<\/p>\n And their \u201cPay no attention to that man behind that curtain\u201d strangeness gets stranger. The Sunni clerics and Saddamites hold sway over a fraction of the population. They have no oil, but instead too often have a record of backing the butcher of Baghdad, while being spiritual supporters of the terrorists and killers who have tried to destroy Iraq. And yet, the mere fact that they are registering to vote in droves and airing their grievances peacefully has probably done more to undermine the insurgency than almost any recent development; after all, the terrorist Zarqawi recently threatened to kill any Sunni who voted, and now the mosques themselves are urging their flocks to do just that.<\/p>\n Back at home, there was an August strange deer-in-the-headlights quality to the Democratic leadership that may likewise be due to the heat and ennui. Despite the weak approval ratings of the president, the Democrats don\u2019t know quite what to do about Iraq.<\/p>\n There is constitutional voting, but Sunni boycotts. The insurrection continues, but our military is getting much better at stopping it. The Middle East seems to be moving in the right direction \u2014 in Lebanon, the Gulf, Libya, Egypt \u2014 but so slowly.<\/p>\n W<\/span>hat to do, what to say?<\/p>\n Is Cindy Sheehan the avatar of a new summer of 1967, a San Francisco-like reawakening that will bring us a new grassroots surge to stop the war?<\/p>\n Or is she Michael Moore redux, with whom you don\u2019t wish to be caught, Jimmy Carter-like, sitting during a televised convention?<\/p>\n She scores points with the faithful when she bashes Bush on the war, but not when stooping to call the president \u201cthe world\u2019s biggest terrorist\u201d and the US a \u201cmorally repugnant system\u201d \u2014 much less shouting the following in support of the convicted terrorist abettor Lynne Stewart: \u201cWe are waging nuclear war in Iraq, we have contaminated the entire country. It\u2019s not OK for Syria to be in Lebanon. Hypocrites! But Israel can occupy Palestine? \u201c<\/p>\n Yes, there is a real antiwar wing of the Democratic party now, but what are savvy veterans like Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, or Joe Biden to do \u2014 embrace it, ignore it, or run from it?<\/p>\n Will Sheehanism lead to Moorism, and devolve into something like the Chicago-convention street theater of 1968, and thus derail a potential Democratic victory in 2008 \u2014 sort of in the way George Soros\u2019s Moveon.org and Howard Dean probably hurt Kerry?<\/p>\n Indeed, if \u201cStop the War, now!\u201d thinking characterizes the mainstream party, is the antiwar movement going to deliver a George McGovern of 1972 all over again? Or if you hold out, will you be back-stabbed and dry-gulched by your own, as happened to Hubert Humphrey?<\/p>\n Since the Democratic establishment\u2019s political stances on the war are predicated apparently only on the ever-changing pulse of the battlefield, no one knows quite what to do \u2014 only that the cryptic American people seems to be losing interest in a war that it fears apparently we will not or cannot win, but yet does not want to resign itself yet to losing.<\/p>\n If the military beats the insurgency, the Iraqi constitution goes through, and the ripples of democracy surge throughout the Middle East, then no Democrat wants to be on record advocating a cut off in aid, a timetable of withdrawal, or for the 4th consecutive year whining about Halliburton and \u201cBush lied, thousands died.\u201d<\/p>\n On the other hand, if the losses mount, the Iraqi provincial government collapses, and real civil strife breaks out, then there will be a rush to the podium to proclaim \u201cI told you so.\u201d<\/p>\n So for the more sober Democrat pros this hot August, the conventional wisdom was to keep away from Cindy and Crawford, watch and wait, and be content with the innocuous mantra \u201ctrain more of the Iraqi security forces, talk to moderates in the region, and get our allies involved\u201d \u2014 the very things that the present administration has been actively involved in for the past three years.<\/p>\n Thank God, this sad August of natural and manmade disorder is at last over.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a92005 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" August has passed, but its craziness may not have. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online The Greeks believed that the rising of Sirius, the Dog Star, in August made the sun grow hot, and hence inaugurated a period when people acted a little crazy \u2014 as we ourselves all saw the past few weeks.<\/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":[785],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-177","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1362,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-dangerous-dog-days-of-summer\/","url_meta":{"origin":4285,"position":0},"title":"The Dangerous Dog Days of Summer","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 30, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Historian Barbara Tuchman characterized the events leading up to World War I as the \"Guns of August.\" While there is no statistical evidence that wars break out any more often in late summer than in other seasons, the world was torn apart twice\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "August 2010"","block_context":{"text":"August 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/august-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2319,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/war-what-war\/","url_meta":{"origin":4285,"position":1},"title":"War–What War?","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 2, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services The anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan headed to Martha's Vineyard this week, where President Obama is vacationing. 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He is the author of\u00a0The Western Way of War,\u00a0The Wars of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "November 2005"","block_context":{"text":"November 2005","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2005\/november-2005\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12551,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/what-or-who-decides-this-election\/","url_meta":{"origin":4285,"position":4},"title":"What or Who Decides This Election?","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 6, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review We know where to watch in the next few weeks but have no real idea what we will be watching. Yet pundits, the media, and the Left seem giddy that their polls show a Trump slump, as if they have learned nothing and forgotten\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12355,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/biden-has-become-an-albatross-for-the-democrats\/","url_meta":{"origin":4285,"position":5},"title":"Biden Has Become an Albatross for the Democrats","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 7, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Joe Biden\u00a0is the apparent Democratic presidential nominee. After all, he had a seemingly insurmountable lead in delegates going into the rescheduled August convention in the postponed Democratic primary race. 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