VDH's World

In yet another article for National Review Online -- practically indistinguishable from all his past war-praising, grand sounding rhetoric -- Victor Davis Hanson informs us all that the war in Iraq is part of a larger, global war against radical Islam. Of course no one denies this -- not even the most anti-war of Americans. One would have to be in the deepest denial to not see the multitudinous terrorist incidents taking place throughout the world, and recognize the status of Iraq as a central hub for the development of terrorism. This, of course, does not mean that Iraq was a terrorist hot spot before the invasion in 2003, nor does it mean that fighting in Iraq is necessarily an effective means of waging the global conflict against terrorism.

Then again, Hanson does not persuasively argue that anything of consequence is being accomplished in Iraq, but rather relies on describing the fearful state of affairs that would result from a withdrawal of American forces. What Hanson does argue is that, since extremism existed in Iraq and the Middle East prior to the invasion (the radical mullahs in Iran, Hezbollah, Saudi-funded extremism, etc), American efforts there are somehow necessarily beneficial. Responding to the charge that America's presence is "bringing terrorists to Iraq", Hanson notes that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and other extremists were in Iraq prior to the invasion. This name-dropping does nothing to justify the transformation -- which resulted from the initiation of war in Iraq -- of Zarqawi from a relatively minor extremist figure into a hugely influential terrorist leader responsible for massive slaughter in Iraq. As is usually the case among glorifiers of war like Hanson, the power of war to transform evil people into hugely powerful evil people is totally ignored.

Similarly, Hanson ignores the instability and escalating violence that have wracked the region since the initiation of war by the U.S. -- conditions that serve as catalysts to terrorist growth better than most anything else. The things that the war has brought us -- an increased determination by Iran to secure nuclear weapons, an increase in the number of terrorist attacks worldwide, new hordes of battle-hardened extremists and a perfect extremist 'sandbox' in which methods and technologies of terrorism are constantly perfected -- are hardly worth mentioning to Hanson. After all, these deadly serious consequences are little more than a bump on the road to glorious freedom, democracy, and moderation in the Middle East. One of these days, says Hanson, everything will be gloriously transformed and we will find peace and stability where violence has prevailed.

As the crowning point in his demonstration of the horrors that would follow an American pull-out in Iraq, Hanson says the following:

Should a peace candidate win the American presidency in 2008, prompting the U.S. to pull out of Iraq before the democracy there is stabilized, in the short term we will save lives and money. But as the larger war continues after we withdraw, jihadists will still flock to the Sunni Triangle. Hamas and Hezbollah will still rocket Israel. Syria will still kill Lebanese reformers. Iran will still try to cheat its way to a nuclear bomb. Ayman al- Zawahiri will still broadcast his al Qaeda threats from safety in nuclear Pakistan. The oil-rich, illegitimate Gulf sheikdoms will still make secret concessions and bribe increasingly confident terrorists to leave them alone. And jihadists will still try to sneak into the United States to kill us.

This "nightmare scenario" describes exactly how things are now, and fails to show how fighting it out in Iraq could bring even the most remote chance of righting all these wrongs. As we see here, Hanson's irrational faith that everything will somehow turn out great in Iraq if we just keep feeding it men and money combines with an equally absurd faith that success in Iraq will utterly transform the Middle East for the better, eliminating virtually all our problems in one fell swoop. Even if he took the time to explain how such miraculous things could arise from the establishment of a stable democracy in Iraq, we would likely be left in awe at the vast difference between our world and Hanson's.

In Hanson's world, glorious war is not only the solution to all problems, it blesses the faithful warmonger with a magical power to right all wrongs, with no regard for the complexities of reality. It is from this faith in war that arose the idea that Iraq would be easily democratized, that the Iraqi people would "greet us as liberators", that the war would pay for itself, that the insurgency was in its "last throes", and so on with the parade of laughable claims made by these modern priests of Mars in their glorification of bloodshed. Now, from these same self-styled prophets of progress comes the claim that success in Iraq is attainable and will bring about a glorious new age in the Middle East. Forgive me for my skepticism.