Damned if you do...

[Leo Daher]

Heads they win - tails we lose
by Victor Davis Hanson

We all recall that when Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction were not being eliminated as prescribed in the armistice agreements, moderate Arab governments, our own State Department, and those on the Left opposed unilateral military action to take out his missiles, germs, and stored nuclear material. Instead we were directed to the U.N. Yet once international sanctions began to have some moderate effect, the Iraqis nevertheless continued splurging on their elite, stealthily purchasing weapons, and broadcasting on CNN pictures of purportedly starving children. At that point, the initials "U.N." were insidiously replaced with "U.S.," and we incurred the world's blame for "U.S. sanctions" that "killed babies" — but without the benefit at least of ridding Iraq of the mechanisms for killing us. Of course, had we used force to blow up Iraq's ordnance of mass destruction by sustained air strikes, in 1992 or 1993, we would have been roundly denounced as interventionists and crude unilateralists, insensitive to the nuances of the Muslim world.

Pundits here and abroad wax on about how we "created bin Laden" and then "abandoned Afghanistan." They should look at histories of the Soviet invasion written during the 1980s. Most accounts, after outlining Russian atrocities, are bugle calls for U.S. action and castigation of the slow American aid to the "freedom fighters." Soviet mines disguised as dolls and toys were said to have been dropped from the sky. Prisoners were tortured, and carpet-bombing of entire villages, we were told, made it imperative to help these brave but outclassed patriots. The media saturated our screens with images of flintlocks against attack helicopters, piety pitted against atheism. And so Stinger missiles, sophisticated automatic weapons, and mobile artillery followed, sensationalized by Dan Rather and others caught up in the zeal of helping the seemingly helpless. Most military historians agree that such heavy machine guns, rocket launchers, and the Stingers turned certain Muslim defeat in 1983 into virtual stalemate by 1985. However, what once was seen as principled assistance to indigenous underdogs now is reinvented as cynical CIA machinations — "chickens coming home to roost." Of course, had we done nothing to help the Afghanis, we would then have been scolded that we were amoral Kissingerians, who did not think dying children in Afghanistan were worth confronting the wrath of the Soviet Union. Had we stayed on to create democracy we would have been dubbed naïve "nation-builders," intent on idealistic secularism in a fundamentalist society. And so we pulled out our military assistance, kept giving millions of dollars in food aid, and accepted the charge that we had "ignored" our "friends," all the while "giving aid to the Taliban."

Most Americans agree that supporting corrupt autocracies and medieval theocracies, such as Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, is against our long-term interests and must stop. But we also realized that such countries supplied not only our imported oil, but the world's as well. And so, between a rock and a hard place, we were not sure something far worse — like the evil in Algeria, Afghanistan, and Iran — might not take the sheiks' place. Yet now we are told that bin Laden might, in fact, have some legitimate grievance, because his constituencies have not had the freedom to vote and speak. That may well be so, but it does not follow that bin Laden himself would ever have sanctioned freedom or democracy, as we've seen from the Taliban gangsters. Of course, had we mandated elections in the Middle East, had bin Laden's thugs swept to victory, and then destroyed nascent democratic machinery and taken over the oil to buy frightful weapons — we would now be told by an aroused world that we were naïve, foolish, or culturally blinkered.

For much of September we were reminded, through historical fictions, that attacks against Afghanistan meant suicide-with no real study of Alexander the Great's career, the Third Anglo-Afghani war, or the true situation during the Soviet occupation of 1980-82. Then, after our initial strategic airstrikes and near-annihilation of the Taliban's traditional military assets, talking heads sarcastically referred to an absence of real targets, while critics overseas agonized that a sophisticated modern air force was simply pounding those who could not fight back. Now, weeks later, the harpies have reversed course and castigated our military for not doing enough. By this logic, we should expect in the future that when we are successful in the use of overwhelming force, we will be dubbed bullies of an outclassed foe-and that, when we suffer reverses, we will be pounced on for naively blundering into a quagmire.

For years, PBS documentaries like American Jihad demonstrated that real supporters of anti-American terrorists reside in the U.S. Anyone who has taught on American campuses in the last 20 years has been struck by the occasional vehemence of foreign students from the Middle East who quite bluntly lecture their professors on American foreign policy, spicing their remarks with open hopes of destroying Israel and expressed tolerance for terrorist groups. On Halloween night, live from the National Press Club, we saw more of it. The FBI has known that Islamic "charities" were often conduits for cash transfers to terrorists. And the State Department surely was aware that known leaders of murderous groups like Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and others openly raised money among Muslim groups, community mosques, and student organizations on campus.

Yes, we knew all that, and so are now told that our intelligence agencies are inept, naïve, and worse, for not spotting the hijackers in advance. But we also surely suspect that, had any government watchdog agency swept down on America's universities, mosques, Islamic leagues, and Muslim charities — to expel agitators hostile to the U.S., to infiltrate such groups, or to wiretap — they would have met with a storm of protest. The Islamic-American community would have quickly mobilized the considerable arsenal of our politically correct media; universities; the legal professions; and local, state, and national government to allege ethnic stereotyping, racial profiling, religious intolerance, Islamophobia, and all the usual -isms and -ologies we have become acquainted with.

We have been aware for years of what the Taliban was doing to millions of women: arbitrary executions, gender apartheid, daily degradation, child abuse, whipping, and sexual mutilation. Afghanistan violated every consideration of civilized life — from desecrating cemeteries to book burning and cultural vandalism — and was at odds with a number of United Nations pronouncements on human rights. Indeed, the Taliban was every bit as diabolical as the racist regime in South Africa and, had it had the resources of Serbia, as genocidal as the outlaws in Belgrade. Yet if the United States had taken prompt action, cut off all travel to Afghanistan and Pakistan, frozen their assets, embargoed their trade, and treated both as rogue nations (such as Cuba or North Korea), a storm of protest would have arisen both here and abroad. Moderates in the Arab world would have lectured the U.S. on our insensitivity toward Islam, while cultural relativists and anthropologists would have bleated the usual mantras of "Who is to say what always is normal?" "Are we always any better ourselves?" and "This is just a part of their culture very different from our own." Feminists who damned the Taliban would have damned just as much American military interventionism and bellicosity.

Much of the hypocrisy, of course, is simply what a great power expects from the envious and inferior — as Pericles reminded his Athenian audience in the first book of Thucydides's history. But a great deal of the paradox is the sad wages of the times, and reflects our own troubling uncertainty about morality — and our allegiance to what is relative and of the moment, rather than to what is absolute and of the ages. This new species of upscale and pampered terrorist hates America for a variety of complex reasons. He despises, of course, his own attraction toward our ease and liberality. He recognizes that our freedom and affluence spur on his appetites more than Islam can repress them.

But just as importantly, these terrorists realize that there is an easy aristocratic guilt within many comfortable Americans, who are apologetic about their culture. Few, when pressed by critics, are able or willing to defend their values and way of life when a simple "I'm sorry" or "It's our government, not me" will ease the tension. And in this hesitance, our new enemies sense both decadence and weakness. Rather than appreciating Americans' self-confidence or simple manners when we accept rebuke so politely, our enemies despise us all the more, simply because they can — and can so easily, and without rejoinder.

September 11 has taught Americans that we need to return to being the confident moral force we once were, and fast — to act resolutely and to follow principle. We must expect, but ultimately ignore, the carping; be polite, but forgo the apologies; and let our critics, not us, worry only about the tension and hurt that follows.

[David Park]

Excellent article. Email it to your liberal friends.

Here's the source:
http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson110901.shtml

[Leo Daher]

I would, if I had any liberal/leftist friends - but I'm very particular who I'm friends with.

Leo

[Mr. James]

Anyone looking for cogent analyses of the present events would be well advised to visit the National Review web site provided above and read more of Mr. Hanson's essays. If you click on one, you'll get links to his others. IMHO, he's brilliant.

[PugetSound5]

Anyone looking for cogent analyses of the present events would be well advised to visit the National Review web site

I'll second that. A few other excellent places in the same vein:
The New Republic: http://www.thenewrepublic.com/

WorldNet Daily: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/

And for something really, really different... An hindu anti-islamic site. Check out their opinion on the infamous "Oprah Islam 101" TV show (right on the money in my opinion).
http://www.hinduunity.org/