{"id":7582,"date":"2014-06-18T08:03:54","date_gmt":"2014-06-18T15:03:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=7582"},"modified":"2014-06-18T08:04:46","modified_gmt":"2014-06-18T15:04:46","slug":"lots-of-recent-man-caused-disasters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/lots-of-recent-man-caused-disasters\/","title":{"rendered":"Lots of Recent Man-Caused Disasters"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"Photo
Photo via aljazeera.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Even the administration is now considering some sort of overseas contingency operation to cope with an outbreak of workplace violence worldwide.<\/p>\n

Each morning it seems we read that Islamic killers of Boko Haram have kidnapped or slaughtered more children. Israel alleges Hamas affiliates are behind the kidnapping of Israeli teens, one of them an American citizen. No need to mention Iraq: We are flirting with the idea that the Iranians \u2014 who once introduced sophisticated shaped-charge IEDs to better kill and maim Americans trying to win the surge \u2014 are our new allies to stop the ISIS Islamist monsters from destroying our former Iraq allies whose religious hatreds ruined the stability following the surge. Westerners say that the more secular Assad government is the more monstrous, but then deplore the fact that al-Qaeda has taken the upper hand among the insurgents in Syria, most of them now radical Islamists.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

As a break, there is the story from Sudan of the Christian mom facing a death sentence for her supposed conversion from Islam, or the Afghan voters showing what is left of their hands after the Taliban cut off their ink-stained digits, or the latest Libyan tribal and religious violence. All this is a bit more dramatic that the usual run of things about Turkey\u2019s new Islamic intolerance or the occasional horror story from Saudi Arabia or the mess in Egypt.<\/p>\n

Apparently, none of these Islamic terrorists heard that the Obama administration very much wished to shut down Guantanamo or had blamed a video maker for the violence in Libya, or extolled Islam in the Cairo speech, or had taken every soldier out of Iraq as a token of our good will, or will be gone from Afghanistan by 2016, or had devoted NASA inter alia to Islamic outreach, or banned the words \u201cIslamic\u201d and \u201cradical Islam\u201d in association with terrorism, a word itself that is likewise excised.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t supposed to be so: John Brennan gave us riffs on the proper meaning of jihad. Barack Obama in his first interview (with\u00a0al Arabiya<\/em>) emphasized his familiarity with Islam (\u201cNow, my job is to communicate the fact that the United States has a stake in the well-being of the Muslim world that the language we use has to be a language of respect. I have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim countries.\u201d)\u00a0James Clapper assured us the Muslim Brotherhood was largely secular; John Kerry saw Israeli intransigence as a catalyst for Islamic unrest throughout the Middle East. This administration came into the Middle East to bear witness of past American zealotry, and the Middle East did not accept it.<\/p>\n

It is difficult to identify a common pathology in these examples when the requisite vocabulary has been declared politically unacceptable. When a foreign policy is based on reducing a clear and present danger to a construct of a prior administration\u2019s overzealousness, and when such a premise is hourly refuted by facts, what comes next?<\/p>\n

Who knows?\u00a0Iran as an ally and, thus, de facto the entire Iran-Syria-Hezbollah-Hamas Axis? Can Iran plant its lethal IEDs in Anbar Province? Putin again to the rescue? Final cancellation of Keystone and more federal lands off limits to encourage wind and solar and \u201cmillions of green jobs\u201d? A breakthrough initiative on climate change to solve these tensions? Another Cairo speech? More \u201cBush did it\u201d refrains? Another special envoy or regional czar?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online Even the administration is now considering some sort of overseas contingency operation to cope with an outbreak of workplace violence worldwide. Each morning it seems we read that Islamic killers of Boko Haram have kidnapped or slaughtered more children. Israel alleges Hamas affiliates are behind the kidnapping […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","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":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[848,28,59],"tags":[12,1017,162,1016],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1Yi","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":9862,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-three-headed-hydra-of-the-middle-east\/","url_meta":{"origin":7582,"position":0},"title":"The Three-Headed Hydra of the Middle East","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 16, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\/\/ National Review Trump has inherited a matrix of problems that primarily stem from Iran, Russia, and ISIS. The abrupt Obama administration pre-election pullout from Iraq in 2011, along with the administration\u2019s failed reset with Russia and the Iran deal, created a three-headed hydra in the Middle\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "ISIS"","block_context":{"text":"ISIS","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/isis\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9396,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-dream-of-muslim-outreach-has-become-a-nightmare\/","url_meta":{"origin":7582,"position":1},"title":"The Dream of Muslim Outreach Has Become a Nightmare","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 25, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Affirming Muslim grievances has only increased the Arab world\u2019s sense that Obama is weak. \u00a0 By Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online When President Obama entered office, he dreamed that his hope-and-change messaging and his references to his familial Islamic roots would win over the Muslim world. The soon-to-be\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Middle East"","block_context":{"text":"The Middle East","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3572,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/back-to-the-future-in-the-middle-east\/","url_meta":{"origin":7582,"position":2},"title":"Back to the Future in the Middle East","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 30, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services If Gen. David Petraeus can't stabilize Iraq by autumn \u2014 or if Americans decide to pull out of Iraq before he gets a fair chance \u2014 expect far worse chaos eventually to follow. We will see ethnic cleansing, mass murder of Iraqi reformers,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "July 2007"","block_context":{"text":"July 2007","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2007\/july-2007\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3897,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/messy-democracy-still-the-best-course\/","url_meta":{"origin":7582,"position":3},"title":"Messy Democracy Still the Best Course","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 5, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services The Palestinian prime minister, Hamas' Ismail Haniyeh, is shocked. He claims that without his government's knowledge, the until-now unknown terrorist group Holy Jihad Brigades kidnapped two Western journalists (who have since been released) in Gaza. Have Haniyeh and Hamas forgotten their own terrorist\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "September 2006"","block_context":{"text":"September 2006","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2006\/september-2006\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9702,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/fifteen-easy-ways-to-ruin-the-middle-east\/","url_meta":{"origin":7582,"position":4},"title":"Fifteen Easy Ways to Ruin the Middle East","author":"Megan Ring","date":"January 5, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\/\/ National Review on \"The Corner\" President Obama had lots of choices in Middle East. Unfortunately he made all the wrong ones, guided by pop ideology rather than unwelcome facts on the ground. The result is chaos at best and millions dead or displaced at worst. It\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Middle East"","block_context":{"text":"The Middle East","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8150,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/muslims-and-islamists\/","url_meta":{"origin":7582,"position":5},"title":"Muslims and Islamists","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 20, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"How do extremists relate to the population in which they live? by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online The terrorism in Paris is yet another bad chapter in an ongoing Western debate over a seeming paradox. Almost all recent global terrorism is attributable to Islamic-inspired violence \u2014 much of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Middle East"","block_context":{"text":"The Middle East","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Militants in an ISIS propoganda video","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/pic_giant_012015_SM_ISIS-Militants-500x292.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7582"}],"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=7582"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7582\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7585,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7582\/revisions\/7585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}