Books & Things

August 28, 2007

I thought the Mission had been Accomplished, that major combat operations have ended, and the U.S. and its allies have prevailed. No WMD. Greeted as liberators. Stuff happens. Insurgency in its last throws. As they stand up, we will stand down. The "Plan for Victory in Iraq," that one is still on the White House website. Guess they are too ashamed to remove it, or maybe Barney the dog is in charge of the White House website. That would make perfect sense given the track record of this administration.

Wait, here is an oldy, but a goody. Remember when Wolfowitz said the Iraqis will pay for the reconstruction, and fairly soon. Thats a good one!

Why, oh why, do all you right wing Bush apologists live in a delusional world. You cannot talk about Iraq, and victory, and all that other nonsense without mentioning that the same people who brought you all those bogus claims are also the same ones who you claim will be bringing us this victory.

I am not sure what War in Iraq you have been watching, but this is the most incompetent group of people ever to run a war in our nations history. I dont know if you have noticed, but we have been making "progress" since 2003.

At long last sir, how can you defend that?

Hanson: The mission against Iraq in 1991 to eject it from Kuwait ended in only partial success, given that Saddam still butchered and stayed in power. Then Iraq II went on with 12 years of no-fly-zones and bombing attacks (5,000 Iraqis claimed killed?) like Operation Desert Fox. Then Iraq III ended with the fall of Saddam and his Baathists. Now we are in Iraq IV, the most ambitious of all the four wars to foster a constitutional replacement for Saddam's genocidal regime. So I'm afraid the war has been going on for 16 years through three administrations.

As far as WMD, the administration erred in privileging that casus belli — since a majority of Senate Democrats voted for 22 others reasons to go to war in Iraq, from violations of the 1991 accords, to genocide, to sponsoring suicide bombing and harboring terrorists. They saw the same intelligence that the administration did. A review of Clinton-Kerry-Feinstein, etc statements concerning WMD do not differ much from those of Bush-Cheney.

So far a majority of Iraqis prefers Iraq of today to that of Saddam's, and still wish us to stay on to help train them to take over. Gen Petraeus's surge is not intended for perpetual occupation, but to provide a window of opportunity for Iraqis to gain the upper hand against the jihadists. We all wish we had avoided errors and mistakes, but I can't remember a war yet in which there were not lapses, most of which cost far more American lives that we have seen in Iraq.

Unfortunately you know nothing of history and so like most on the Left think that your age, your circumstances, your views are always unique and transcend some 231 years of our America past. Do you know anything about the winter of 1776? Or the summer of 1864, or Spring 1917? Or the Pacific in 1944, or the Bulge, or November 1950? There an "incompetent group of people" did not manage a war that lost 3,000, but almost 100,000 dead and wounded alone in 2 months in the Ardennes, or 50,000 casualties in 6 weeks on Okinawa.

We can imagine your sarcastic letters after the hedgerows, or the 1942 B-17 attacks, or Tarawa, or Choisun, but fortunately until this generation yours was always a minority view. Unfortunately wars do not work like your i-Pod.

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April 2, 2007

Dear Mr.Hanson,

Your thesis of freedom inspiring armies has always had a personal resonance with me. I was particularly inspired by your research on Epaminondas, which played a major influence in my college admissions essay and which, in turn, played a role in my admission to Virginia Military Institute in 2006. When the movie The 300 came out I was horrified that the Spartans were being glorified as heroes of democracy in large part because of your excellent work that depicted them as the precursors to totalitarianism and fascism.

If I'm not mistaken, however, you referred to the Spartans in a recent interview as heroic farmers who defended freedom. I was horrified that you were transferring the values of freedom-loving Thebes onto Sparta. Sparta has long enjoyed a strong reputation in the free world. In my opinion however the fact that philosophers enjoying the freedom and democracy of Athens praise Sparta is no different than modern intellectuals who praised the Soviet Union while living in the West. In conclusion, I would like an explanation on why you have recanted the ideas that made you such a powerful historian.

Hanson: I am afraid that you are sorely mistaken on all counts. I did not refer to Spartans as "heroic farmers" who defended freedom, but rather to the Greek defenses as consisting of many Greek city-states, composed of agrarians, fighting for freedom, and helped by the strange oligarchy at Sparta. If you had read carefully what I wrote about The 300, you would note one of my few regrets was the failure to amplify the cause of Thespiae, a small Boeotian town that sent 700 to Thermopylae who all died with Leonidas.

Like most historians, I am impressed with Spartan military prowess and the culture's adherence to the rule of law, and the radial equality of all the some 10,000 Homoioi inside the select circle of Spartiates — but not to the extent of a Plato or Xenophon who did not care much that the entire system was predicated on the exploitation of 250,000 serfs in Messenia, unusual even for a chattel-holding Greece. Remember also, that all of Greece, both democratic and not, gave homage to the 300 whose sacrifice galvanized the Greeks to continue to resist Xerxes. I can give due to the individual soldiers of the Red Army that bled white the murderous Wehrmacht in the mistaken belief that they were fighting only for the survival of Mother Russia without condoning the murderous communist regime of Stalin.

In fact, I have written extensively of my preference for Athens over Sparta, and for 4th-century Democratic Thebes over both of them. That is not changed. I am finishing a novel about the great march of the Theban Epaminondas to free the Spartan helots of Messenia; the only difficulty I'm having as I finish the last few chapters is avoiding the demonization the Spartans too much, which comes natural to me I'm afraid.

Finally, as for as Thermopylae, it was not a matter of a constitutional oligarchy fighting with elected democracies, as was true in the Peloponnesian War. But rather a coalition of constitutional city-states, both democratic and oligarchic, fighting to preserve Greek freedom from the imposition of a foreign autocracy — along the lines of what had stifled and then snuffed out the 6th-century Greek Enlightenment in Ionia across the Aegean.

So, sorry, I didn't find anything of merit in your writ at all.

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March 15, 2007

Once again you miss the point. Gore and Edwards and Pelozzi may be leading the good life, but they earned it the hard way. They worked for it. That is the American Dream. Given the OPPORTUNITY, they have succeeded. The Tom Delays, Duke Cunninghams, Mark Foleys and Ted Haggards used their power to break the law or act in a manner none of us would say they were entitled to. Please do not equate the two.

There's nothing wrong with being successful. Democrats and liberals don't sign on to vows of poverty. They just want to give all Americans the OPPORTUNITY to be similarly successful. They don't fear the success of others and they don't try to stifle others. And yes, sometimes they do the wrong thing or act unethically or immorally, too, but don't compare the ownership of large or even oversized homes with men who prey on children or their followers. They're not even close.

Hanson: No, you missed the point which wasn't about the good life at all, but rather about those who preach about the unfairness of American life, or the wasteful habits of Americans, or some sort of pathology, while themselves living lives of the French royal court. Why can't Al Gore fly first class if he thinks planes heat up the environment, rather than a wasteful, fuel-burning private jet? Or better yet, let him take the train.

Second, the entire point of the essay was to distinguish the two types of hypocrisy, the Left enjoying the good life that they claim is a product of exploitation of some sort, the Right indulging in sordid behavior while posing as moralists. You only confirmed my point that their falsity is different.

And by the way, George Soros, mentioned in the essay, has caused a great deal of harm, from trying to undermine the Bank of England to driving currencies up and down. And I resent the expense of a full-size airliner to fly Pelosi around, and think as well that Edwards does a great deal of damage by preaching a sort of class warfare while living in the largest house in his county.

The American people agree. That is why they rejected Kerryism in the last election: talking blue-collar and living in mansions, or preaching green and riding in private jets and SUVs.

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February13, 2007

The Left — for whatever multicultural and hate-Bush reasons — cannot bring itself to face up to the Islamic challenge and more often than not becomes an apologist for it. So if the Left won't do it then maybe conservatives should be seeking common ground with moderate Muslims (is there not one?). Wasn't this to be the outcome of the Iraq war: to nurture a democratic example in the heart of the Muslim world?

It's not that the radicals and their leaders put forth a coherent case against America. The question is whether there are moderates in the Muslim world who will be lost to the bad guys or won over to our side, which depends on the image of America presented to them. D'Souza lays out very well the Left's radical agenda now being pushed on traditional societies via the U.N. and NGOs and complicity with totalitarian regimes. Is it wrong for conservatives to recognize this and mount their own campaign to seek out allies within the Muslim world by promoting conservative American values? Should we not also decry the trash and insults heaped upon them by our own cultural left?

D'Souza's second point is that this war has two fronts where a huge section of the West's secular left (especially represented in academia and the mainstream media) really does want us to lose — not because they want to live under radical Islam, but because they see George Bush as the number one enemy and because they see Vietnam as their finest hour. Again and again, D'Souza concedes that these people love America — they are not traitors to their America — and they do despise the religious intolerance of Islam. It's just that their vision of America is radically opposed to the traditional vision and they see conservatives as a nearer and greater threat to their America than al Qaeda (which they would consign to police work).

For most of us, real murder and mayhem are obviously "more offensive than rap music or Brokeback Mountain." But as we are telling the Islamic world that we are adamantly opposed to their violence and religious intolerance should we not also say that our violent rap lyrics and celebration of sodomy are not a good reflection of our nation?

Hanson: Yes, of course, we must distance ourselves from the bastardization of our culture and the moral ambiguity of the Left. But that is a very different proposition — despite the qualifiers in the book — from naming prominent Americans, and then, without proof, accusing them of being 'domestic insurgents' and wishing for bin Laden to defeat the United States.

And it is a different proposition as well from qualifying terrorists attacks, such as emphasizing that the USS Cole was a warship, as if the cowardly act of terrorism against its crew was somehow not terrorist in nature, or to suggest that the murder of thousands of Americans in New York and on the planes on 9/11 was somehow incidental, and not the real intent of al-Qaeda. A problem with the entire book is that after saying something outrageous, D'Souza almost automatically on the same page or next backtracks by saying that he is not saying quite what he has just implied or is about to imply. (e.g., "Although 9/11 is routinely described as a terrorist attack, can anyone seriously maintain that the Pentagon was not a military target? versus "So I am not objecting to the characterization of 9/11 as terrorism." or "Yes, there were civilians on the planes but the purpose of hijacking planes was not to kill civilians on board but to use the winged juggernauts as flaming projectiles to destroy the intended symbolic targets." versus "I do not deny that bin Laden wanted to kill noncombatants.")

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February 8, 2007

Hanson needs to realize that the 1950s are gone!! And no amount of lies designed to spur hatred will bring them back!!

I was a marcher, I am NOT illegal. I was born here Hanson, as were both my parents and 3 of my 4 grandparents! Hanson, you don't know what you are talking about or you are deliberately lying to stir up hate — frankly, it seems the latter is more likely! You say the marches provoked a backlash. I seriously doubt that. The people who say this ALREADY hated us from the word go. NOTHING we can do or say will EVER change that, so why bother trying?

On the other hand, the marches brought UNITY and a sense of PURPOSE to our communities! The continued attacks on ALL things Mexican and "Latino" in general, will only serve to unify us!

Hanson and the Buchanan/Tancredo types are upset that whites are losing their majority status in the U. S. so they lash out at us. But, the real culprit for this is the collapse in white birthrates all over the world — whites have birth rates that will soon see them experience more deaths than births which is already happening in Germany. No amount of Mexican bashing will change this!!

As a 28-year-old man witnessing the lies, half-truths, screed and HATRED spewed at us by sophisticated HATE-MONGERS like Hanson, the day when we indeed are the majority in the Southwest will be all the sweeter. Hanson, Buchanan, Tancredo, Dobbs, Brimelow, what you all have in common is that you are all old white curmudgeons! You will ALL be dead and gone within 25 years. God willing!

Meanwhile, we are the YOUTH!! The Washington Post wrote recently that 22 percent of ALL births in the U.S. is now Hispanic!! The day is not far off when our people, united and spurred by the HATRED of the likes of Hanson, will become the Mayors, County Supervisors, Sheriffs, Police, etc! No more hate mongers like Joe Arpaio, a son of dirty immigrants to boot!

Just think Hanson; California alone has 54 Congressional Representatives. How long until the lions share are in OUR hands? There are at least 100 Congressional Representatives in the southwestern states and 14 U.S. Senators, and WHEN we capture the lions share haters like Hanson will be marginalized for good!

Finally, why would anyone listen to Hanson anyway? Hanson is one of the war-mongering CHICKENHAWKS that promised us a "cakewalk" in Iraq. Why should we take you seriously NOW? Especially when you straight out lie — just as you neo-cons did to get your Iraq war! Unlike Hanson, I actually served a stint in the Army!

Hanson, I look forward to reading your obituary. It will signal the end of an era and the start of a new one where brown people like me are no longer scapegoated for things like below replacement white birthrates! And that day is coming...soon...

Hanson: I am sorry you are so angry to the point of incoherence — especially since the essay in this issue of City Journal on a look back at the book Mexifornia was pretty tame and measured. Unlike you, I've never seen myself as a particular race, or defined by a tribal identity. I wrote that I still agreed that many of the 11 million here illegally, once screened for the newly arrived and felons, should be allowed to stay to apply for earned citizenship — in a bargain of sorts for closing the border, returning to a melting-pot approach of assimilation, and sharing a common language.

The tragedy of your outburst is that it only confirms the suspicions of many that Americans like yourself simply do not wish to embrace a legal process that might have the effect of cutting down drastically those coming here illegally to a lawful number that would allow easy integration and assimilation. So what would be the objection?

Presently, there are somewhere between 160,000-200,000 lawful Mexican immigrants admitted which is more than allowed for all other immigrants combined. In contrast, when we talk about immigration reform, we are looking at the one million or so we think are crossing illegally.

And lost in your harangue is any curiosity why in effect so many brave people risk their lives to get as far away from Mexico as possible — what are the economic and political conditions unique to the United States that results in such a vastly more prosperous and stable society, and how could Mexico duplicate them at home to ensure 1 of 10 of its own would not have to flee their homes?

Consequently, the effect of your letter is something like: 'No matter the law or the present legal immigration concessions given Mexico — we demand not only more legal immigrants than all other countries, but a million more in addition outside the law, because our agenda is to change realities on the ground through demography'.

I get many hate-filled letters such as your own that give the game away by always mentioning "brown" and race, suggesting you, not I, do not seek a color-blind society, but instead some sort of mythical Aztlan north, nursed on racialist myths.

With its bombast, infantile capital letters, and the use of a mythical Aztec-name signature, your letter is sad — and sadly not unique.

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January 30, 2007

Dr. Hanson: what you are saying is that a lot of the enemy live among us. Since families of these high ranking Muslim leaders are here, it means others have the excuse of traveling to and from to visit, attend birthday parties, etc. What it sounds like to me is the enemy has plenty of opportunities for espionage. It would seem that while our present "enemy" enjoys our freedoms, liberties and security they wouldn't bat an eye at blowing one of our cities to hell. Even if they did kill some of their own relatives, wouldn't those relatives be guaranteed paradise since they died in jihad?

Hanson: In the column you refer to, I was talking more about the irony of tyrants, autocrats, and extremists, whether Musharraf, Saudi royals, Amal's head in Lebanon, or Assad's minister of information all having their families living here. The assumption is that for all the rhetoric, they would want their loved ones in places other than those under their own control. The list could be expanded to include those educated in the U.S. who are sons and daughters of Iranian theocrats, Gulf mullahs, and other sorted pro-jihadists. To be consistent, they should all willingly not wish their offspring to be exposed to the sins of the Great Satan or the globalized corrupter.

All this is a different question from the more serious matter of jihadists in our midst as we witnessed on September 11. I have no illusions that they would willingly cause mass death for themselves and their kin here, while in the U.S. if it at least came at real hurt to America. So strange, this subtext of American life today: we argue and bicker over Iraq and Bush, but privately all expect something still to happen no matter how much we profess disdain for those who call wolf.

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January 8, 2007

Mr. Hanson. Iraq is and always was lost. Give it up, and admit your mistake like the rest of the neocons who got us into this mess. All that remains is you to blame the Democrats who will finally put an end to the killing.

Hanson: Iraq is not and never was "lost." I hope you were not Commander in Chief on the first day of the Bulge when you would have asked for an armistice when two American divisions were wrecked in 24 hours, or on Okinawa when the killing in 3 weeks exceeded that of 5 years in this war.

I don't think Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, or Powell were neocons or hypnotized by them. Rather as old-time realists, they felt that after 9/11 such cynicism wasn't working anymore and wanted to offer something other than playing one thug off another.

What we are witnessing is a long metamorphosis in this war in Iraq: 1991, Saddam invades Kuwait and is forced back; 1991-2003, twelve years and 350,000 sorties in the no-fly zones; 2003, a 3-week victory over Saddam; 2003-5, a war against Baathists and al Qaedists; 2006-7, Shiite versus Sunni militias. Anytime we washed ourselves from the area, there was trouble, as one would expect with vast oil reserves put at the service of dictatorship.

The final policy of fostering democratic government is the only one that offers a shred of hope in allowing some choice other than dictatorship or theocracy. We are close to achieving that, but won't if we give up now. Let me remind you that a majority of Democratic Senators and Representatives voted to authorize President Bush to remove Saddam in October 2002, following the earlier resolutions for "regime change" sponsored by the Clinton Administration. After the statue fell, such politicians fell all over each other taking credit for the 3-week victory. All that changed is that, over three years later, Iraq has turned messy, and someone's else's three-year occupation ruined their perfect three-week war.

I doubt the Democrats will cut off funds. Why? They know that Iraq is not lost. And they know we have killed thousands of terrorists over there. I doubt too they will close Guantanamo or stop wiretaps, since they fear they have had some positive role in stopping another 9/11.

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December 8, 2006

Mr. Hanson, have you ever written anything positive about Muslims or Islam, or is it always going to be Israel and the U.S. right, Islam always wrong?

Hanson: How odd to suggest that when the now demonized policy, which I supported, of staying on after the removal of Saddam Hussein to allow elections for the Iraqis was most certainly based on the utopian idea that Muslims themselves were quite capable of consensual government as we see in Turkey or Indonesia.

So it is up to Arab Muslims to prove that ideal was also true of the Arab Middle East, and show that Palestine and Iraq can stabilize and conduct democracy under the rule of law.

Another piece of advise to you, as a moderate Muslim in the West: the present U.S. policy was about as good as the Middle East was going to get, this engagement that saw billions spent in Afghanistan and Iraq for democracy, and real American pressure exerted on behalf on the people of Lebanon, Egypt, and the Gulf States to have a say in their governments.

So we are at a great crossroads: when the world's only superpower puts its money and lives behind the idea of consensual government for Arab Muslims, will they tweak and fidget about the infidel's hubris, or use the opening for their own purposes of reform?

And a word of warning as well: if Iraq should fail, and if there should be another 9/11 traced to a terrorist-sponsoring Arab nation, and celebrated once more by the proverbial Arab Street, then for the next half century the United States will write off all notion of reform and liberalization and just deal, as we see with the return of the realists, with the Middle East as it is. And that means tough, obliterating retaliatory strikes to each terrorist provocation, without much concern for illiberal conditions on the ground that so enhance the opportunistic terrorists. It is the Muslim world's call, not ours.

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November 23, 2006

Well, Mr. Hanson, are you happy with Iraq? You wanted it, now you got it. Is there any chance of an apology to the rest of us for all this neoconservative mess?

Hanson: None whatsoever I'm afraid.

Let me be clear. I thought it was a bad idea to take Saddam out before 9/11 as some neoconservatives called for in letters to President Clinton. But after 9/11 in an entirely new climate, and after his refusal to meet U.N. demands or to follow the 1991 accords in a landscape where petrodollar dictators supported terrorists and tried constantly to get their hands on dangerous weapons, I thought it was necessary and am happy that he is gone and that Iraq is free.

While I acknowledge there have been mistakes, I have been consistent in believing that they are not of the magnitude that we saw in past wars and don't imperil the final effort to stabilize Iraq. And most have already been corrected or are in the process of such. I don't believe in the "my perfect three-week war, your lousy three-year peace" school of thought. Once you sign on to support a war, you stick with it. So, once the Congress voted to authorize a war, the President made the decision, and the troops were committed — all correct in my view — then it is incumbent on us to support the effort and achieve victory. That we can still do and must, especially for the sake of tens of thousands in the military who are over there risking their lives each hour. So no, I haven't backed off a bit, am happy Saddam is gone, and confident still that the U.S. military can give the Iraqi republican government enough time to establish a viable republic, the first in the history of the Arab Middle East.

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November 10, 2006

Mr. Hanson, you write of the Dark Ages in the Middle East. But how about Israel's own Dark Ages, marked by killing civilians, bombing homes, and stealing Arab lands? You had no more credibility on the Middle East once you aped the Zionist line.

Hanson: Calm down. Don't fall into moral equivalence. Ask yourself this question in relationship to the latest developments in Gaza.

Palestinian gunmen were using women as human shields, apparently predicated on two suppositions: they really didn't care whether the women were killed, and they expected the Israelis to withhold fire.

Again, that was their supposition, not mine. Imagine the opposite:

Israelis are barricaded in a synagogue and besieged by Hamas gunmen; they ask Israeli women to shield them — and the Palestinians do what?

The truth is that the Israelis would not ask their women to do that; and if they did, Hamas would shoot them instantaneously. I leave it to you to figure out why, and in your answer you might consider the recent Lebanon war in which Israeli rockets were aimed at terrorists enclaves where the targets hid among civilians, while Hezbollah aimed every rocket at Israeli civilians.

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November 1, 2006

Does Hanson really think that Locke or other Enlightenment luminaries would really be cheering on the U.S. in its current, hysterical crusade against the chimera of "global terror"? And does he seriously believe that what the world really needs is an abrasive skepticism in the mold of a Kames or Hume? Moreover, does he think that criticizing the Pope's poorly thought out remarks are tantamount to caving into Islamic extremism? Isn't this merely exercising the same free speech rights as the Pope?

Hanson: Typical is this question of the hysteria that now passes for liberal thought; and despite, its incoherence, I will try to answer as I can. Pace the angry reader, my point in the Tribune essay was not whether the Enlightenment would be cheering on the U.S., but whether its thinkers would approve of Europeans and other Westerners voluntarily restricting their hard-won free expression. Yes, we do need skepticism, and that is why the war has been the subject of free debate and acrimony in the halls of congress, the media, and soon adjudicated through a third national election. Who in contrast elected bin Laden, or any of his autocratic patrons?

I'm referring not to criticizing the Pope's thought, but to the reaction that sent in threats by Islamists worldwide of such a degree that Westerners sought to apologize in all sorts of sad ways for legitimate Papal speculation. Theo van Gogh or the Danish cartoonist or the producers of the Mozart opera in Berlin can of course be criticized freely; but that is most certainly not the core of the issue at stake: it is instead the sanctity of such persons that is the crux. In each case Islamists have issued threats, used or threatened violence, and put bounties on the heads of purported offenders, to such a degree that Europeans seek to preempt such anticipated violence by voluntarily restricting their own free speech.

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October 25, 2006

In no sense is al Qaeda, the Taliban, Hezbollah or Hamas out to conquer the world, the United States or Europe. To equate these terrorist organizations with World War II fascism and Cold War communism is intellectually indefensible. The Islamic terrorists' objective is to rid the Middle East of Israeli and U.S. influence and to replace secular Middle East regimes with fundamentalist Islamic theocracies similar to Iran's. If Israel did not exist, if the U.S. and Europe had no proprietary interests in Middle Eastern oil and if the U.S. and Europe had no military presence in the Middle East, there would be no terrorist threat to Europe and the United States.

Your sycophantic espousal of the G. W. Bush administration's propaganda engenders a suspicion that you have abdicated intellectual objectivity for a paid position on the administration's "American Izvestia."

Hanson: I suggest you read the new Bin Laden Reader that will come out this fall from Doubleday. In fact, bin Laden and Dr Zawahri list all sorts of grievances, well beyond Israel and Iraq, including Kosovo, Bosnia, East Timor, the Philippines, Kashmir. Bin Laden even lists unhappiness with the U.S. failure to enact campaign reform and sign the Kyoto treaty! I am struck by your "if Israel did not exist" which gives away the game. The rest of your Chomsky-like rant doesn't deserve an answer.

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October 15, 2006

Before you take the liberty of calling a people such as the Palestinians whiners, I advise you to visit the West Bank or Gaza if you dare to see for yourself the abominable conditions that millions of innocent Palestinians must endure and do so with more dignity than you can imagine.

Perhaps, if you spent one day with the Palestinians in the occupied territories, you would discover just as all foreigners who are welcomed into Palestinian peoples humble homes that despite the agony they live under, despite the checkpoints installed only to humiliate and frustrate them, despite their hunger, despite the Israeli bombardment of their homes with U.S. supplied war planes, despite all the death and suffering. The adjectives used to describe them are the following: hospitable, generous, kind, steadfast, dignified, determined, and so on.

Regardless of the lies, bias and venom perpetrated on them for the past six decades by the Nazi taught Zionists and the evil spoken about them by so-called scholars like yourself, the Palestinian people are still able to laugh, dance, love, give and forgive. They are determined to fight for the freedom of their land and their autonomy.

Hanson: In fact, I have visited the West Bank. And it is Orwellian, since "refugees" from the 1940s seem to exist only there: not in Germany though 9 million were expelled from Poland and parts of Czechoslovakia; not in Tibet though China annexed the country; not in Japan though millions fled Korea, China, and the surrounding islands. Why? This is curious, especially when there is plenty of land in the West Bank, billions of petrodollars in the region, and very little chance of destroying the state of Israel. The answer surely is that they are cynically-used pawns in the wider Arab world's perpetual list of grievances against the West.

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October 1, 2006

It seems to me that if we pursued energy independence, we would be freed from any self-interest in internecine regional conflicts. We need to be committed to an international forum and process, even when it does not do our bidding, to resolve these problems (if they can be by outside effort!).

We did not invade Russia simply because it had the nuclear capability to cause a holocaust. This continued drumbeat for intervention in Iran's pursuit of nuclear capability is just so much hot air! Why is it acceptable that India can develop nuclear capacity much beyond its peaceful energy needs, and not another nation that does not share our worldview?

Our militaristic foreign policy only begets continued militaristic response. Give it up and quit being a willing foil for an antediluvian view of the world!

Hanson: I agree with your advocacy for energy independence — and have written several columns about that. I don't recall urging an invasion of Iran — unless we have ironclad information that they are on the verge of arming with nuclear weapons. India, unlike Iran, is democratic, and surrounded by nuclear states like Pakistan, China, and Russia that offer deterrent constraints. Iran is not just theocratic but lunatic as well — and its nuclearization will set off a similar reaction throughout the Gulf. A democratic Japan acquiring nuclear weapons would be problematic, but manageable; an autocratic Iran would be a disaster.

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September 25, 2006

Oh for God's sakes. There was no plot to chop off Stephen Harper's head. That was just a bunch of dumb kids mouthing off. Look, Islamic terrorists are never going to come to Canada and kill Canadians. Okay? It isn't going to happen. "Homegrown terrorists"? We don't have any. What we have are policemen who have to frame young Islamists in order to justify their pay checks.

Hanson: Sorry, we've seen too many resident terrorists apprehended in Australia, Britain, Canada, and America that refute your entire premise. But let me ask you a question: why is that thousands of Muslims wish to emigrate from the Middle East to the West — ostensibly because they don't like the political, economic, or cultural landscapes of their birth, and yet after arrival, they don't speak out often against radical Islamists who are trying to destroying their adopted country?

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September 13, 2006

What, Sir, are you recommending? More troops to Iraq? Bomb Iran? If so, please explain where such troops will come from or what bombs you mean. How will either curb Islamist sentiment or make us safer? WWII showed that strategic bombing does not lower morale, halt arms production, or cause regime change — ditto for Vietnam and Lebanon. Massive German losses in Russia were a key contributor to its defeat, and fear of Soviet occupation was a key deterrent to opposition to Allied occupation in the aftermath. It turns out that Japan's decision to surrender was also definitely influenced by the Soviet declaration of war — after the two U.S. atomic strikes. There is no Stalin or Genghis Khan to play this role towards Islam today. Neither are there any huge armies to settle struggles in any sort of conventional battlefield. There are, however, nukes. But do you really think that killing many thousands of Iranians this way will earn us any thanks?

Hanson: Let me answer your incoherent queries in the order you raised them.

1) I never recommended more troops for Iraq, (cf. a Commentary article on why we should not do that), because more would only create dependency, inflate the support footprint, and resemble Saigon circa 1968.

2) I never recommended bombing Iran, but rather letting the U.N. work, the E.U. work, and allow China and Russia to work, the Iranian dissidents to work, the Iraqi Shiias to demonstrate democracy works, do all that and don't bomb anything until it is sure that all that failed and the theocracy is ready to arm nuclear intercontinental missiles.

3) WWII, especially against Japan after March 1945, and in Europe after Spring 1944 with the onset of improved tactics, long-range fighter escorts, more planes and less resistance, in fact does tragically show that bombing really does tax arms production and leads to defeat. The Red Army would have lost WWII had not the Wehrmacht diverted thousands of planes and artillery to protect its cities to the rear from air attack. We are learning that 1st-generation precision weapons brought the Vietnamese to the peace table; and Israel did much more damage than the media let on in Lebanon. Bombing is not the answer in war, but it is sometimes a viable choice in concert with other strategies.

4) Yes, Russia killed two out of three German foot soldiers, but only because it was freed from a submarine campaign, a surface fleet campaign, a strategic air campaign, an Italian campaign, a North Africa campaign, a Western European campaign, a Japanese island campaign, a Pacific Ocean campaign, a supply campaign to help its allies, etc. The allies in nine months from beaches got as far into Germany as the Russians did from Moscow in four years.

5) No one wishes to kill "many thousands" except the Iranian President himself who has promised to "wipe out" Israel and others who have called Israel a "one-bomb state"

In short, your history is faulty, and you display the sad wages of the Left — hysterical allegations that other viewpoints are warmongering, while offering no concrete solutions to dealing with fascists seeking nuclear weapons to reify what they have stated in public.

* * *

September 8, 2006

Have you ever written, Mr. Hanson, anything critical of Israel. Come on, show both sides.

Hanson: Israel, like the U.S., is a democratic republic, so it is an honest reflection of human nature and argumentation, and of course subject to mistakes as is any liberal state. But we are talking of disagreements within definite parameters of lawfulness and transparency. Hamas, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt simply have no liberal institutions. State-run megaphones puppet the party-line. Anti-Semitism is a national creed. There are no human rights as we know them. So it hard to insist on moral equivalence, when in one state Arabs vote and enjoy legal protection, and in another Jews would be hounded and killed or ethnically cleansed. After all, the entire matter is Orwellian: there are no illegal Arab aliens in Syria, for example, but plenty in Israel. So they must know something you do not.

If the Palestinians were to forget about a disputed 10% of land on the West Bank for 10 years, use petromoney from their friends, reform and open the economy and insist on the rule of law, they could craft a humane society that could very easily come to an agreement with Israel. But then, that would require growing up, rejecting easy handouts to militias, renouncing the mystique of terror, questioning patriarchy, gender apartheid, fundamentalism, and autocracy — and being more like Israel than like Syria or Iran. And that apparently is just too much.

* * *

July 27, 2006

Mr. Hanson:

Iraq , Lebanon , and the West Bank are a mess and show the failures of the Bush neocons. Aren't you ashamed of yourself for throwing your lot in with these losers?

Hanson: What a flawed question!

So let me answer at first by just posing a few of my own. Was Saddam's Iraq or Arafat's West Bank, or the last 20 years in Lebanon quiet? Did Clinton 's operation Desert Fox, no-fly-zones, or response to bombings from New York to Yemen make us safer? Was Oslo the answer to the Middle East ? Did you object to an Iraqi elected Prime Minister addressing Congress — preferring instead perhaps Tariq Aziz? And did Hezbollah suddenly arm itself during the Bush administration, or in fact snub its nose at the U.N. and the U.S. for years?

What we have now is at least clarity. We know now after Gaza and Lebanon that the Middle East problem in not about occupied land; we know there is no such thing as a "moderate" wing of Hezbollah or Hamas. We know it does no good to sit on the tarmac in Damascus and beg Syria to be nice. And we know Arabs, if given a chance, for example in Iraq , will risk their lives to fight for their own democracy against terrorism.

Finally, we know that the world knows it is a dangerous thing to attack the United States — unlike the sorry state of affairs from 1979 to 2001. As far as necons — what does that mean now other than a phony slur about Jews? Feith, Perle, Wolfowitz, etc. are the new bogeymen along with the resurrection of the old slur that we are fighting Israel 's battles. In fact, Israel is more likely fighting our cause against Islamists. And what does "neocon" mean, other than "new conservative," or in the realm of foreign policy, offering something a little bit more sincere than the old realpolitik?

* * *

July 12, 2006

Explain this if you can: Long ago you wrote of corporate greed in Fields Without Dreams. But now you signed onto the Bush-Cheney-Halliburton team, so what happened to you? Were you just brainwashed by Iraq ?

Hanson: How does supporting the removal of a madman contradict writing about the lamentable end of an agrarian way of life? So wait a minute — I criticized agricultural subsidies for corporate farmers in 1995 in that Fields Without Dreams, and eleven years later have written columns to that exact same effect-so where is the contradiction? And there was plenty of criticism of trendy PC assumptions then in both Fields Without Dreams and The Land Was Everything, as I write all the time now.

Perhaps your point is that I wrote about the end of the family farming from the point of view of the little guy and now you think I support the privileged? Hardly. The true conservatives of this country are those in small towns and rural areas who get up every morning and go to work in a system by which they will never be enriched, but believe deeply in, and are appreciative for, since it guarantees their freedom and opportunity.

And another thing: as you might have mentioned about earlier farm books: I made the connection between trendy left-wing politics (the boutique organic food genre) and affluence — and that paradox is even more true today than 10 years ago. Most who work for the New York Times, or intone on NPR, or teach at Princeton, or are the kingpins of the Democratic Party — a John Kerry, John Edwards, Ted Kennedy — or offer strident leftist rhetoric — a George Soros or Arianna Huffington — live lives indistinguishably from the so-called right-wing capitalists that they dub greedy pigs at the trough.

I'd prefer an upfront affluent tire-store owner, or car salesman, who has no apologies for his zeal at making money to a John Kerry who marries into it, enjoys the appurtenances that come with having billions, and then voices all this pseudo-populism about a world that is completely foreign to him. Wind-surfing, lavish hunting get-up, tanning-booth/Botox youthfulness, skiing — all that phony photo-op imagery helped to sink his campaign, since the Democrats always lose when they suffer the additional wage of hypocrisy: talking up the common man and living the uncommon life.

FDR or JFK might have been able to pull it off — but not a toothy ambulance chaser like John Edwards or a dissolute Teddy Kennedy. Tell me that a Diane Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi, or Barbara Boxer lives a life that in any way resembles her rhetoric about the underclass. All three are more at home in Napa than Fresno, which is fine — except we still get the silly rhetoric about the pernicious privilege of elites, who by the way surely manage their portfolios, and do their legal deals.

* * *

June 26, 2006

Yes, we do seem to have short memories. Today's youth may have a difficulty relating to the Civil War or even the Korean War. But their parents can vividly remember the Vietnam War which is conveniently omitted from your historical tours. Some even remember the arrogance exhibited by Richard Nixon and so draw parallels with many of the events of today.

Hanson: Actually I have written about Vietnam — including this week’s NRO column — so much that I have been told by readers to cool it. The only thing similar to Vietnam about Iraq is the anti-war movement. George Bush has neither created a government enemies list nor lied under oath, which got both Nixon and Clinton respectively impeached. I remember 1973-4 when after a decade of sacrifice, we had a peace treaty, a viable South, and no U.S. ground troops in country — and then cut-offs by the U.S. Senate that ended aid to the South and ensured a communist take-over, which led to 2 million in boats, jailed, or executed — and a holocaust in Cambodia .

So, yes, I am very afraid of a Vietnam mentality in Iraq , especially when I see the same cast of characters in their graying years trying to replicate the damage of their youth. If John Kerry once told Congress that like Genghis Khan Americans were committing atrocities in Vietnam , now he tells Tim Russert that we are once again terrorizing the civilian population of Iraq . How sad that this pathology is almost Pavlovian and cannot be cured by evidence; this exaggeration and caricature of the military surely must serve some psychological need among our privileged elite since it is not empirical.

* * *

June 12, 2006

Why do you claim Iraq is becoming a democracy when the U.S. has introduced legislation into Iraq’s constitution that makes Sharia law its main source? Moreover, what democracy or western values are present when Islamic militias from neighboring Iran virtually run the show?

In fact, female students in Basra are forced to wear black veils; in Baghdad, liquor stores are blown up, barbers and even men wearing shorts killed. If you think Iraq will become western or the Iraqi people will prosper under Sharia law and religious audit, think again! After all, you say western tradition includes free speech, no religious audit, etc. Where is that in Iraq? Iraq under Saddam was closer to the West — at least Baghdad had nightlife and there were liquor stores open.

Now you bastards have turned Iraq into a wasteland run by gangs of militant Islamic thugs.

Hanson: Please, under Saddam Iraq was a fascist thugocracy that killed a million of its own. Your rant reads like “At least under Hitler the trains ran on time”.

“Bastards?” Iraq is emerging from the chaos of 30 years of barbarity, and three elections and the trial of Saddam are amazing developments. You should read your own history — the decade long evolution of America from 1775, or better, the 600,000 lost in our Civil War. In the summer of 1865 you would have written, “Now, you bastards have turned the United States into a wasteland run by generals destroying the country.”

When Sistani begins to impose theocracy, then we should quit; but so far the religious head of the majority in Iraq has stated that religion will guide but be separate from government. The war now in Iraq is AGAINST theocrats like al Qaeda. Where, please, do you see anyone in the Middle East daily risking their lives to stop religious nuts — only in Iraq and Afghanistan. You need to ask — why?

* * *

June 7, 2006

Why do you stubbornly dodge the question of the coming Eurabia? Is it because acknowledging that Islam and modernity seem to grow ever further apart right in the heart of the West undermines the whole premise of the bold venture to implant democracy in the Middle East?

Can you account for polls — for example found in While Europe Slept by Bruce Bawer — that suggest that roughly half of British Muslims want to live under Shar’ia law? Show us the evidence that European Muslims begin to fully embrace Western values, not move away from them! Address Robert Spencer's assertion that while there may be moderate Muslims, there is no moderate Islam — convincing given that the most celebrated voice of "moderate" Islam in Europe, Tariq Ramadan who is Buddy of Castro and Chavez, linked to multiple terror groups, and Islamic apologist supreme?

So far you have made an unconvincing case and provide superficial answers to this thorny, difficult question of Eurabia. Is there an intellectually honest way to tackle the seeming rift between our Middle East strategy and the reality on the ground in Europe?

Hanson: You deserve a clear answer. As to implanting democracy, we support democracy, but do not have to support those who get elected. This accomplishes a number of things:

1) We are no longer accused of hypocrisy, of enjoying voting at home but subsidizing autocrats abroad.

2) It puts the onus on the Middle East to live with what they vote for, and no longer whine and hide behind the excuse that there is a “militant wing” of terrorists, or that a U.S. backed thug hampers their progress. Look at the West Bank; now Hamas is elected and fights Fatah while Israel watches. There is clarity at least as the Palestinians can decide to vote in terrorists and then live under terrorist protocols without blaming others or expecting to get cash as in the past under the faker Arafat.

3) There is no reason why democracy cannot eventually evolve into a working government as in Indonesia or Turkey or parts of Islamic India. We probably won’t like the result, but those countries cause us far less trouble than autocratic regimes. Do you think Afghanistan would be better under a dictator? Can you imagine our Left had we installed a Shah-like strongman in Kabul?

There is a great illness in the Middle East; a tumor that must be dealt with and excised. And in Iraq, Lebanon, and the West Bank elections are the incisions that expose it. There really does need to be a civil war of sorts, where the world sees whether radical Islam is the choice of the people, or whether there are enough brave patriots to go out on the streets of Beirut or in the Sunni Triangle to stop it. We let them decide and then we deal with the result. This war needs clarity and an end to the Middle East dishonesty that “they made us into what we are,” or “they won’t let us vote,” etc. Let us see who “they” really are, and then either fight or parley with them, depending on the result.

As for Europe, first, there is high unemployment, no growth, shrinking populations, protectionism, and unsupportable entitlements, all a prescription for disaster that only accentuates the Muslim problem. And from what I’ve seen there of Muslims vis a vis places like Libya, Egypt, Turkey, Kuwait, etc., it seems that they are even more radicalized than at home, adopting a victimization cult.

It works like this: they come, are impressed by European freedom and wealth, soon get embarrassed that their appetites for both have drawn them from Islam. Then they learn they are to work but not assimilate; quickly develop a hyper-religious identity in opposition to “corrupt” Europeans, and then once Balkanized, create this Fantasyland condition: they hate the culture and the people they won’t leave; the Europeans hate the immigrants they once professed to love and won’t expel.

In the U.S. we have the same pathologies, but we have fewer Muslims, more assimilation, less class rigidity and snobbery, and very little PC tolerance for radical Islam. So we are both more willing to marry Muslims and make them into full citizens, and yet at the same time would not tolerate an imam promising our destruction in a New York mosque as is true in London or Amsterdam. As is commonly said, we are one more 9/11 away from some scary things, and that oddly provides a sort of deterrence against the nonsense we see in Europe.

* * *

May 28, 2006

I am puzzled by the following idea from your recent article on illegal immigration:

"...inasmuch as our costs, regulations, and labor problems make it hard to compete with a Turkey, South Africa, Chile, or almost anywhere else where a similar climate allows identical fruit production."

To be sure cost competition between First- and Third-World producers of agricultural commodities is rarely, if ever, resolved in favor of the higher-cost society. In other words, we have priced ourselves out of some of the more labor-intensive segments of the global agribusiness market just as thoroughly as the French have priced themselves out of their domestic labor market.

This truth brings me to your next statement:

"Next year the U.S. will probably become a net importer of food, which I find scary in a variety of ways."

Scary? Why? Should we really fear the benefits of gearing our economy toward our competitive and comparative advantages, and investing capital accordingly? Should we really want, in the 21^st century, to be better and cheaper grape growers than the Turks?

Hanson: I think yes, in fact, we do want to have such superior grape growers. Why? Because food is a little different from oil, in that once ingested it is the essence of life. As someone who grew crops from childhood and remembers everything from Parathion to DBCP laced Nemagon to a carcinogen like Captan, I think it is reassuring to know that what we eat fits certain standards of safety and reliability.

I have visited farms abroad, and I can assure you that the poisons they use and the protocols they employ are not allowed here, and do enhance the risk of contamination. Why would we, for example, supply bathrooms with wash facilities to ensure that packers of soft fruit do not transmit bacteria? Many other countries do not do that. When I travel in the Middle East, I often try to note the pesticide containers and sacks I see tossed in olive orchards or in empty fields, and usually note most would be outlawed here.

In general, you are, of course, right in your confidence that the market adjudicates such issues, and that protectionism, if that is what you imply, only creates higher costs and erodes innovation. But again, I think it is wise for the U.S. to remain competitive in food production so that our present expertise is not completely lost. Oddly, the evaporation of cheap farm labor will force even greater mechanization and offer some hope that our farms can prove competitive through greater skill in management and use of labor-saving machines in production.

* * *

May 24, 2006

Many years ago I read Barbara Tuchman’s The March of Folly. Should the Bush administration and their objectives in Iraq be added as the latest chapter in this book? In other words, should we have simply gone in, destroyed the military capacities, searched for WMDs and got out to fight another day? All the money and loss of life — because we want to avoid being seen as barbarous — makes no sense to me. War and brutality are linked, and Arabs are perhaps as horrific at it as anyone. Since this Middle East episode has gone on for a long time, do you think Iran is saber rattling because it knows we will not respond?

Hanson: You raise important issues. The “more rubble, less trouble” argument is used more and more these days by realists — understandable as we witness 2400 lost in Iraq. But remember we did that for years — shelling the coast of Lebanon, hitting and leaving Mogadishu, bombing Saddam in the no-fly zones or during Desert Fox, cruise missiles sent across the globe. They were all short-term remedies and did not prevent 3,000 lost on September 11, an attack that happened in part as a perception (to use bin Laden’s own argument) that we couldn’t fight the jihadists in any sustained way on the ground.

Moreover, Iran doesn’t know what we will do, whether Bush’ s low polls mean he is impotent to act or empowered to do what he wishes in his second term. Iraq may prove to be the only peaceful way to destabilize in Iran — that’s why Teheran is so bent on stopping the democracy there. You forget our successes in your understandable concern with our losses — Pakistan has changed and given up nuclear exportation; Libya has come clean; Syria is out of Lebanon; the Taliban and Saddam are gone; the Saudis are feeling pressured to dry up terrorist subsidies.

So the world of the Middle East, in fact, is improving even as we feel sorely the costs that made it so. But I agree that in the future we will return to a more hammer-and-tongs approach of just sending off a cruise missile to where we think the problem arises, and not worrying too much about where it hits or why — and that is a mistake.

* * *

May 13, 2006

Although I greatly respect your thought-provoking essays, today I discovered that you are fallible after all: your suggestion of a "one-time exemption.” Didn't that already happen under President Reagan? A five-year illegal immigrant is allowed to butt in at the head of citizenship line, which, perhaps more importantly, encouraged and even increased illegal immigration along a border we can neither protect nor defend.

Your article also ignores a key reality — illegal immigrants are flooding our country not because they want to swaddle themselves in Old Glory; they keep coming because they can make more money here — significantly more money than they can in countries such as Mexico. Congresses and administrations have fumbled this issue for decades, causing the problem to not simply fester but to metastasize throughout the country.

You had it exactly right last November ("The Meaning of the French Riots"). I am at a loss to reconcile these two pieces and question the intellectual integrity. Will the real Victor Davis Hanson please stand up?

Hanson: In both articles you reference, I was in fact consistent. Go back and read my suggestion in both the Tribune and Claremont Review article that we should close the borders, build a wall, enforce laws, do not allow a guest worker program, insist on assimilation and the melting pot, and then in exchange allow many of those already here — the number can be adjudicated by years of residence, willingness to learn English, lack of a criminal record — to begin applying for citizenship. I don’t know a feasible way of deporting 11 million, many of whom are aged or very young and will not automatically be found piecemeal through employer sanctions. It would be a public relations nightmare.

One of the things one learns by teaching 20 years at a place like CSU Fresno is that some of your best students who speak good English are illegal, while in some cases those who do not speak English well are in fact legal. I know this sounds naive, but in some cases I have met illegal aliens who are indistinguishable from citizens in their language facility and so-called Americanness, and desperately love this country.

I don’t think we want blanket deportation; how do you send an 80-year back to Oaxaca after 40 years of absence? We too were culpable in creating this mess, and must bear some of the responsibility for our failure. So to end the pool of illegal aliens, simply do not let any more in; do not create a helot system of guest workers; make those here assimilate as fast as possible; and avoid the public relations disaster of hunting down 11 million.

* * *

May 7, 2006

While you complain about American journalist's reporting on Iraq, could you also address the article on the Haditha massacre by U.S. Marine as reported in Time? Just wondering if everyone else is lying and the only truth comes from Georgie, Sean Hannity and you? The fact remains, according to our President's low-balled numbers, our war in Iraq has resulted in 30,000 Iraqi dead. I suppose you think our killing of women and children is justified by Saddam's killing of women and children — a moral equivalence with a dictator that I have never heard of from the Moral Majority on America's Right.

Hanson: Again, more hysteria in lieu of reason. Once Saddam took power, his removal, like Hitler’s or Tojo’s, or in the case of the careers of Milosevic, Mao, or Stalin, was always a question of bad (many dying in a war of liberation and subsequent strife) and worse (yearly mass murders unchecked, which in Saddam’s case numbered tens of thousands a year). From Abu Ghraib to Guantanamo the U.S. military operates under constant global scrutiny, and when it errs, the world knows instantly — unlike what the Chinese do in Tibet or the Russians in Chechnya or the French in the Ivory Coast or even the exact circumstances of how a Milosevic drops dead in The Hague.

I know of no documented instance, despite your charges, that U.S. troops deliberately targeted what they knew were woman and children civilians. I do know of countless instances where insurgents killed American soldiers from mosques and schools, and used women and children to plant bombs, carry suicide vests, or transmit information leading to the murder of Americans.

Again, we see “Moral Majority,” “Georgie,” “Sean Hannity” and all the other meaningless buzz-words instead of a simple adult argument. Once one thinks that the world offers utopian solutions, then, of course, he is going to become unhinged at any who disabuse him of that fantasy. I supported Bill Clinton’s removal of Milosevic in print in the Wall Street Journal at a time when many thought the effort had failed and we should cease the bombing, but, unlike you, did not rant that he waited a decade while 250,000 perished, killed 3,500 civilians through collateral damage, avoided the U.N., and did not even ask Congress for permission to wage war. Such are the bad choices in war.

* * *

May 3, 2006

What I love is that, as Gen. Anthony Zinni, Lt. Gen. William Odom, Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, Col. Pat Lang, Col. John Murtha — 37 years in the Marine Corps, he must really hate America — and others who have spent decades in the uniform of their country all criticize the conduct of the war, and in some cases criticize the decision to go to war with Iraq in the first place, you nevertheless manage, over and over again, to paint those views as anti-military and elitist, while declining to acknowledge that those views are shared by military professionals. A significant number of military professionals disagree with your view of the war in Iraq, but you persistently misrepresent the nature of that disagreement and continue to sell it in public as being radical, unbalanced, and wholly invented by people who despise the American military.

Are you a conscious liar, or are you merely ignorant? When will you closely and honestly engage, say, William Lind's exceptionally sharp criticisms of the conduct of the war, and acknowledge that he is a respected conservative and a highly regarded military analyst?

Hanson: I respect all views. “Over and over again” apparently refers to one column I wrote questioning the wisdom of the generals’ revolt. Would you please explain what “a significant number” actually means in a million plus military — ten, twenty, thirty officers, 500, 1000?

But there is a hallowed tradition, sanctified especially on the Left, that military officers at a time of war voice their concerns to their civilian overseers, hope their views prevail, and then if still angry either follow orders or resign or are relieved. Once they are retired, they are free to voice their opinions as civilians or as politicians, but not to be taken seriously really as gifted “insiders” who speak for supposedly silenced officers who need their privileged conduit.

That is a very dangerous precedent of having former officers use their military fides to speak for a supposedly dissident, but unnamed group of officers. Examine the recent book Cobra II, and discover in the footnotes just how often sources are cited as “officer” or “official” without any name, date of interview, or source. Do we really want a dialogue in which self-appointed officers swear to the American people that they have the “real” story of what is going on, without naming who their own sources of discontent are?

So far we have heard from about a half-dozen of thousands of retired generals and admirals; do you think that is a scientific sampling of dissent? And while Gen. Zinni is quick to criticize now, most of us were silent when his shuttles in the Middle East with Arafat proved futile and often counterproductive, as did Operation Desert Fox in defanging Saddam, although thousands were said to have died in the bombing. No need to raise the controversy about Gen. Clark in the Balkans and his thwarted drive to rile the Russians. The point is that in each case, officers did not come forward to complain that a Clark or Zinni proved inept, since they understood both were following general orders and that in war things are often difficult and sorted out later when the shooting stops.

And for each supposedly insightful correction, there is just as credible a refutation—400,000 troops might have made things far worse in a sensitive Islamic society, and surely would have proven harder to downsize, as well as retarding Iraqi autonomy by over reliance on our own forces, as well in addition as shorting assets elsewhere in dangerous places like Korea, Taiwan, or the general Middle East.

You suggest I am arrogant, but repeatedly I have called for some humility in understanding that in war, whether in the summer of 1864, in Okinawa in 1945, or at the Yalu in 1950, the unforeseen happens and is corrected only with resolve not self-incrimination. If you review American history, I think you will see the context in which a Grant, even after Cold Harbor, proved wiser than the loud McClellan or a calm Ridgeway even during the chaos of retreat was more sober than a hypercritical and publicly furious MacArthur.

There are other issues you ignore. Almost all critics are former ground commanders, not Air Force officers or admirals. Why is that? The last four years have witnessed intense debate over shifts to lighter forces that privilege air and sea at the expense of artillery and armor. So at least grant there are political questions involving the number of army officers needed in a new radically reconstructed military. I speak and have spoken with a great number of military officers, both privately and publicly, and hear from them daily, both here and from Iraq. There are those who are critical of Iraq, but the vast majority of them feel that they are winning and can deal a lethal blow to terrorism over there rather than here. They do not think self-appointed retired officers necessarily should or do speak for themselves. What I do hear is that they are tired of the shrill invective as evidence by your letter that evokes the same smears like “liar,” or “hate America.”

There is currently a great illness in this country, but it is mostly on the hysterical left that cannot stand any support for the effort in Iraq that it equates not with idealism or support for democracy, but with either ignorance or arrogance. Yet, grant that if we are successful, in five years people like yourself will look back and think the democratization of Iraq following the removal of a mass-murderer was a good thing, with all its attendant ripples from Lebanon to Libya. So get a grip, tone down the slurs, and learn to reason rather than vent.

* * *

April 15, 2006

The heart breaking moment that revealed the hopelessness of Iraq was the unveiling of the new Iraqi constitution. It imposed Sharia law on women. Do you not understand that imposing Sharia law on women is totally repugnant to all Americans — Democrat, Republican, or otherwise? If this is all that we achieve from the sacrifices of our military and our diplomats, then the war was a total mistake.

President Bush told us that Iraqi culture is sophisticated. He implied that they supported ideals that we could recognize, if only the dictator would permit expression of those ideals. And the best they can do is imposing Sharia law on women. Bush lied or was deluded. Iraqis, even those supported by American military might, show as much sophistication as any group of savages.

Hanson: Sharia Law is not being imposed on Iraqi women. Where terrorists imposed it in enclaves, the people were repulsed by it. The Iraqi constitution is not like a Western government, but it is the most enlightened in the Middle East — and that is precisely why the jihadists who really do wish to impose Sharia law are trying to destroy Iraqi democracy.

Of course, Muslims are going to proclaim Islamic chauvinism to non-Muslims in their country; but a close reading of the Iraqi constitution does not suggest the Sharia. I saw women in Kirkuk participating in politics and you see Iraqi women publicly in a way not true of Saudi Arabia. Somehow "Bush lied" finds its way into every rant, and for all your lectures about "sophistication" you seem to show a lack of such yourself.

* * *

April 12, 2006

I will limit my critique of your most recent pro-Iraq-War piece to a single quote of yours.

And had we reported Okinawa minute-by-minute as we do Iraq, we might have lost that close-run encounter.

Uh, let's see . . . Okinawa was about 3 months of intense, high-casualty, in-your-face warfare, right? Victory was never in doubt. The Japanese were surrounded and had no means of escape or re-supply. It was a classic "fight until the last man" kind of battle. The only real questions were "how long" and "at what cost" would it take for a U.S. victory, a victory defined as sole and undisputed possession of the island.

To review the current war: we have been in Iraq 3 years and counting, with no end in sight. Nobody on the other side is wearing uniforms, or organized into military units, let alone fighting set-piece battles. Probably the only useful similarity at all is that both sides favor the tactic of suicide troops. Given how much fun armies through the ages have had with defending against that tactic, it's not an encouraging thought.

Hanson: You are absolutely wrong about Okinawa, whose fate really was in doubt, as some officers pondered pulling troops from the island. During the battle, FDR died; the European theater closed; and there was some rumors of Japanese willingness to negotiate an armistice that would have precluded abject defeat. The Navy was entirely stunned by 5,000 deaths and perhaps as many as 4-7,000 Kamikaze attacks and considered a pullback away from the island. The newly formed 6th Marine Division was essentially ruined by Okinawa and rendered non-operational. Arguments during the battle broke out whether amphibious landings to the rear were required to save the operation. A Lt. General Simon B. Buckner was killed in action, the highest ranking fatality in the Pacific War. Gen. MacArthur thought Okinawa was a disaster, and fretted whether it presaged worse to come on the Japanese mainland.

You cannot compare a battle that took 12,000 American lives in just 3 months with a war that has cost 2,300 in three years. So far there have been a few hundred suicide bombers, not several thousand; and we learned finally how to deal with Kamikazes as we are learning to in Iraq, where fewer Americans are dying the last three months and more Iraqis are fighting on our side. There were not 400,000 Okinawaians fighting on our side for a newly formed democratic government. Nor are we free to use the type of force employed on Okinawa to bring things to an end. So your points seem to me incoherent — with all due respect.

* * *

April 2, 2006

"Take away 2,300 American fatalities and envision a stable government in two or three months in Baghdad, and we would hear very few meas magnas culpas." Yes, and take away 57,000 American combat deaths, and the Vietnam War would have been popular too. What is the point of such an absurd contrary to fact? We do have 2,300 American fatalities, and we're going to have more, and we aren't going to have a stable government in Baghdad in two or three months. The Bush Administration promised a quick, easy war, with American troop levels reduced to 30,000 in a few months. Paul Wolfowitz estimated the cost at $10-$100 billion. We have spend more than twice that already; we are spending $6 billion a month, and there's no end in sight. (And if there is an end in sight, why won't the Bush Administration say so?) You and your warrior friends have over-promised and under-performed, and there is a political price to be paid for such things.

Hanson: The political price, I agree is already come due: many of the President's initiatives have been blocked due to poor poll ratings, and the Congressional elections this year might erode his capital further. But let me address your attacks in the order you raise them:

First, 2,300 is not 57,000, and Iraq is not Vietnam for a variety of reasons that I have previously listed ad nauseam.

Second, what is the point? Simply to note that the media and public want instantaneous results and expect that all wars will cost no more than Panama, Grenada, the Balkans, or Gulf War I — and that is both unrealistic and dangerous.

There have been 4 wars with Iraq: Operation Desert Storm (1990-91); the 12 year no-fly zone war, punctuated by bombing and cruise missiles (1991-2003); the three-week war of 2003; and the war to stabilize a democracy and put down an insurrection (2003-present). They were all costly in different ways; the last alone promises hope of ending them for good. The President today said there would probably be troops in Iraq when he left office — but then we have had them in the Balkans for 7 years. If you look back at prewar estimated scenarios of millions of refugees, oil fields burning, 3-5000 American fatalities, then Iraq is not a disaster.

The ultimate cost/benefit analysis will depend on the fate of Iraq: if it devolves into Lebanon, then it was a terrible defeat; if it emerges as the region's first democracy, and we see even more positive effects from Lebanon to Libya, then it will be a success and brilliantly and bravely accomplished. But passing judgment now is like saying that in June 1864 the Civil War was Lincoln's greatest blunder or that Truman should have been impeached given the landscape of Korea in November 1950.

"You and your warrior friends" means what? After 9/11 the United States was faced with bad choices (trying to go into the Middle East and end the pathology of dictators supporting terrorism directed against the West) and worse choices (simply removing al Qaeda from Afghanistan and hoping that Islamic fascism and its dictatorial supporters would then cease their terror attacks). We took the harder road that alone promises ultimate victory by undermining radical Islam — and only by offering the Middle East an alternative other than theocracy and authoritarianism, and ending the terror that started with Iran in 1979 and more or less went unchecked until 9/11.

* * *

March 25, 2006

My son is in Iraq, back for his second tour, having been in the initial invasion along with his older brother. I am beginning to believe that this war does not warrant our being there.

To what purpose are we in Iraq? The morale of the American fighting soldier is low, bad food, terrible living conditions and the kind of leadership all too reminiscent of that in Vietnam, at its worse. One of my son’s closest friends over there shot himself after a skill saw accident trying to build a door to keep the elements out of their tent. The Army apparently gave a different version of what happened, did you know that? Remember the incident with Pat Tillman and that cover up? No Mr. Hanson, I do not agree with your take on what is happening over there. And, for the record, I voted for this administration.

Hanson: I can understand your anguish. But everything that is written about food over in Iraq remarks on the American ability to offer safe, plentiful and relatively tasty meals, at least inside fortified bases, in a very inhospitable environment, something I can attest from my visit as well. Accidents are another story; over the past two decades about 1200 U.S. military personnel have died on average each year to accidents. And even in the present war, more American soldiers died through accidents from 2001-2006 than in Afghanistan and Iraq. Young men, stress, weapons, and isolation can often lead to tragic accidents as anyone knows who has raised teen-aged sons.

I think the Tillman tragedy reflected very poorly on the military, and I think finally we will get the whole story, no matter how embarrassing to all involved. I disagree, however, with your criticism of U.S. military leadership; from the Captain to Colonel level it seems superb; I know a number of officers; speak often at the academies and war colleges, and keep in contact with officers in Iraq. They are uniformly excellent and represent the best of this country.

As for the war itself: we will have to wait until it ends for final judgments. Obviously if we leave now, and it becomes Lebanon, then it was a tragedy; if we stay and it becomes the first stable democracy in the history of the Arab Middle East, then it will be a victory comparable to the Fall of the Berlin Wall. Time will tell — as well as our own nerve. Had we given up at the Bulge in December 1944, or on Okinawa in May 1945, or in Korea in December 1950, then all would have gone down in history like Vietnam. Things change weekly: fewer Americans are dying; more Iraqis are fighting with us; even as more American think the very opposite is occurring.

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March 19, 2006

Your writings are missing a proposed solution to current problems. For example, how do we solve the threat of extremist Muslims who demand that Western publications print nothing offensive to Islam? If Muslims at less than 10 percent of Europe’s population can shape Western behavior through threats and violence when they are only a small fraction of the population, what can we expect at 25 or 50 percent?

The solution seems to be that Muslims should leave the West and return to their nations of origin. They can act as reformists there and help to shape a different Muslim world. It seems apparent that Islam and its culture are fundamentally incompatible with our Western values. And given the current demographic trends, Muslim takeover of Europe is guaranteed unless the West excludes Muslims.

Do you feel the West is not ready yet to hear this? Do you believe that it would conflict too deeply with Western belief in the equality of all faiths? Are you afraid of a charge of racism? Or have you not yet come to this conclusion? And if not, can you write a column explaining why simply maintaining the status quo — i.e., insisting on freedom of speech — would be enough in the face of an exploding Muslim demographic in the West?

Hanson: In fact, I have offered ad nauseam suggested solutions; google the word "appeasement" and you will see I have written too much on the topic.

The Muslims, or rather radical Muslims, in Europe hold power for three reasons: worries over future demographic realities; the utopian pacifism and multiculturalism of Europe; and the lunacy factor that any one nut can end the good life of any reasonable European with relative ease and impunity.

I have not written along your suggestions because I have seen too many Muslims in both Europe and the U.S. who have reconciled themselves to a secular state, and like Christians, Jews, and atheists, not pushed their views into the body politic. That said, I think the European position is, in polite terms, approaching your goal, though in a somewhat different fashion. First, examine the radical change in immigration policy going on in the Netherlands, France, and Germany. I think the idea is to limit severely the number of Muslims coming into Europe, and then, as the numbers grow more static, to discard the salad bowl and insist on the melting pot, hoping without constant infusions of fresh immigrants the present population can be assimilated.

But I am not sure whether the tipping point has already past, and by that I mean no one knows whether particularism and sectarianism are so far advanced that the current Muslim population simply will resist secularization and integration, and is already self-expanding due to birth rates without fresh immigration. Not spoken in the entire debate is the status of women. The key to changing radical Islam inside the West is to insist that Muslim women in the West enjoy exactly the same protections as all others, and by that I mean an absolute end to de facto polygamy, circumcision, gender apartheid, and imposition of sharia law. Once women are empowered and equal, we know from experience that the birth rate falls. We need to break the pernicious cycle of segregated women simply staying home in European ghettos raising five or more children and imbuing them with their own frustrations and victimization brought on in part due to the bleak outlook for employment and equality.

* * *

March 11, 2006

My one complaint about your ideas in "Three Pillars of Wisdom" is that you give George W. Bush a complete pass in an article wherein the overall point is that we Americans are spoiled by the ease with which we get and use foreign oil.

Why criticize Bush? In his latest State of the Union, the temporarily former oilman was noted for saying, "America is addicted to oil," and that the U.S. must dramatically cut its oil imports. Yet less than 24 hours later, he apologized to Saudi Arabia publicly and his aides explained that President Bush "...didn't mean it literally."

I appreciate the delicate nature of international diplomacy. But if you can criticize comments by Clinton — who is practicing international diplomacy — surely you should also point out that even conservatives don't benefit from a leader who repeatedly speaks out of both sides of his mouth about an issue as important as energy independence.

Unfortunately, I have given up on honesty in politicians. However, you do your readers a disservice, Mr. Hanson, by allowing them to think that Mr. Bush helps his own credibility or that of fellow conservatives, when he again uses such a two-faced approach.

Hanson: I don't know what your reference to my criticism of Clinton is about, so I will go right to your comments about the Saudis and Mr. Bush. I was disappointed, and you are right to call for my reaction. Although the President cannot gratuitously insult one of the world's largest oil producers that at last is sort of fighting terrorists only now, there was no need to reassure the Saudis that our own oil independence policies are not intended to hurt their feelings. Their money to al Qaeda for over a decade is a matter of record. Embargoes and cartels are their past history with us, and we owe them nothing; they pump at $5 a barrel and sell at $60, so it is incumbent on us to curb our appetites to lower demand and the world price. Currently, the extra $300-500 billion that is pouring into the Gulf States due to the outrageous prices of the last two years will only distort their economies and eventually lead to reaction and depression when the speculation and inflation eventually cool.

If you have read my columns about conservation, drilling in Anwar, nuclear power, tougher mandatory average mileage standards, government help for ethanol and methanol production, etc., you will know that such views are not shared in toto by the administration. The key is for liberals to compromise on more drilling and nuclear power, and conservatives to relent on stronger mandatory conservation and subsidies for alternative fuel production and distribution. This is an American crisis, not a political one. I snooze when a liberal claims Anwar must be pristine (and Siberia pumped dry by the Russians for the world's consumption?), while a conservative claims Hummers are nobody's business. Both carry enormous symbolic weight if nothing else.

* * *

February 26, 2006

Please remember that it was you who opened up the subject to the ghost of Hitler. Apparently, you mean to suggest that the attempt to appease Hitler is tantamount to naive policies that amount to surrender to whichever "bully" you can scare the public with today. Only YOUR position is wise. Those who may think otherwise must be foolish. Possibly, you will support a rush to war as our best defense.

May I remind you that Hitler rose to power using the same tactic of building on fear of the Communists as we see the present administration using today against a supposed threat of some possibly overblown "axis of evil." Some in the Western Powers may have allowed Hitler to grow in power and even supported him because he was seen as a defense against another more scary threat. Then Hitler became the monster and destroyed the freedoms the same people who thought he was going to protect them. Will we in the United States allow our freedoms to be eroded and create our own monster, thus becoming victims to our fears?

Hanson: This is so silly and pompous. I have cited appeasement to Philip II, Hitler, and Stalin among others, the common theme being that authoritarians respect only deterrence and interpret magnanimity as weakness.

Scare the public? An Iranian President who promises to wipe Israel off the map and seeks the weapons to do it is not scary? Rush to war? We allowed Saddam 12 years of 350,000 no-fly-zone flights, and in 2002 six months of debate, including past U.S. Congressional resolutions in addition to three months dealing with the U.N.

Is this a serious or crank question? "Overblown ‘axis of evil’”? A nuclear Iran or North Korea is an overblown threat? Over a million people have been starved to death in North Korea and thousands butchered. The Iranians, if they get the bomb, are even more likely than a Pakistan (no India to deter them) to use it. Are you a deity that offers clear-cut good and bad choices, when in the real world one must deal with a mass-murdering Stalin or a mass-murdering Hitler, a fascist killer like Saddam Hussein or a theocratic murderous state like Khomeini's Iran? Who exactly besides the isolationist Right ever trusted Hitler? Consult the record of general American distrust of him dating from 1933. And please cite evidence for your freedoms being eroded: have you lost habeas corpus due to a Lincoln? Been interned thanks to F.D.R? Been wiretapped on the orders of Bobby Kennedy? Or had your newspaper censored on orders from Woodrow Wilson? You lack any sense of history, and so your evocation of the past becomes unintended parody.

* * *

February 12, 2006

Professor Hanson,

Reading your New York Times review of a biography of Frank Norris, I was stunned to find you describe Norris as a man of "decency and sobriety," someone who "[a]gainst the prejudices of the day . . . was at times sensitive to racial discrimination," who (quoting his biographer)"modeled human nature at its best." Such a characterization rings hollow in the face of the following passage from Norris's novel McTeague: "Zerkow was a Polish Jew . . . . He had the thin, eager, cat-like lips of the covetous; eyes that had grown keen as those of a lynx from long searching amidst muck and debris; and claw-like, prehensile fingers — the fingers of a man who accumulates, but never disburses. It was impossible to look at Zerkow and not know instantly that greed — inordinate, insatiable greed — was the dominant passion of the man."

Can such rank anti-Semitism, perpetuating the most abhorrent (albeit well-established) stereotypes be reconciled with you description of Norris as a shining example of human decency, or did I miss something?

Hanson: You make a good point, since there are a number of passages in McTeague and also The Octopus that reflect the racist mentality that was common in the 19th century that rightly bothers readers like yourself. The authors of this new wonderful biography, however, McElrath and Crisler, do not deny that Norris echoed these sentiments, but their point in defending Norris is that such expressions were balanced, or rather outweighed, by other descriptions in his journalism and fiction that expressed a real empathy for those who were non-white or non-Christian, and that such sensitivity was unusual for the times. And his general interest in the poor and the dispossessed also by needs entailed sympathy for others outside his class and race — rare for someone who was born into relative wealth and sheltered from the rougher side of 19th-century America.

I suggest you read Frank Norris. A Life, since the authors do not attempt to whitewash Norris at all, but judge him in part on the landscape of the times. He is an enigmatic figure, perhaps because he died so young, and so tragically when all his earlier toil and failure had at last led to success on the eve of his appendicitis attack. I came away from the biography, struck both by authors' hard work and scholarship, and also a real sense of sadness, in part because Norris seems to have been an especially kind and mature person by general acclaim. These issues are not unique to Norris but surround personalities as diverse as Lincoln and Twain, who, we know, were sympathetic to the plight of blacks, but said or wrote things that by today's standards would be seen as insensitive or outright racist.

* * *

February 5, 2006

Why do you and others at National Review absolutely refuse either to educate yourselves about Islam or to admit that Islam itself is the problem. And regardless of how many "democracies" we set up in the Middle East, we will still lose the war against Islam and its terror masters as long as we continue to allow Muslims to settle in the West and Islam to exist in the West?

We may temporarily win some battles, but in 50, 100, or 200 years, we will ultimately lose as Muslims continue to settle in the West and to propagate Islam — an ideology of war and conquest, one that at its very core is evil and oppressive.

Every civilization that has played with the fire that is Islam has been burnt badly. I am baffled by the position National Review takes on this. I don't know whether it is due to ignorance of the tenants of Islam, of the contents of the Koran and the Hadith, or that National Review staff and its writers have invested too much of their time and reputation to admit that they have had a great blind spot, missing the elephant in the room by failing to properly study or understand the very religion that dominates the whole of the Middle East.

Which is it?

Hanson: I will address your several questions in the order you presented them.

1. I can only speak for myself, not for unnamed others at National Review.

2. I do try to educate myself about Islam, both by reading Islamic literature, speaking with Muslims, and visiting countries of the Muslim Middle East.

3. I don't think that I ever suggested that our policy in and of itself of promoting democracy as a third alternative to either Middle East autocracy or fundamentalism was alone going to solve our problems.

4. How odd to mention the neglect of immigration as a complaint, when I wrote a lengthy essay in 2005 in City Journal precisely about the dangers of unrestricted immigration of Middle Eastern Muslims into the United States, using the paradigm of the Cold War when we were very wary of allowing Eastern Europeans or Russians unfettered access into our country for obvious reasons.

5. I wager that, if the numbers of immigrants remain reasonable, Muslims in the United States are more likely to become secularized than Americans to become Islamicized. Europe, of course, is an entirely different story, given its feeble demographics and failure to adopt the American-style melting pot.

6. Again, given the lack of specifics, I don't know which NR author or essays you refer to. But in my experience no one there is naive about Islam, especially the propensity for radical versions of it to threaten the global peace in a way not true of fundamentalist Hinduism or Christianity. There is nothing in the Koran comparable to the “Sermon on the Mount,” nor in the history of Islam anything like our Reformation, counter-Reformation, or Western Enlightenment.

7. If you think that we are naive about Islam, perhaps it is because there are examples of Muslim democracies such as Turkey or Indonesia or Malaysia or the large minorities who vote in India, and of course the experiments in Afghanistan and Iraq. We really in the United States don't care what religion the people of the Middle East chose to practice; Islam only becomes an issue when it seems to drive and fuel fanatics who wish to slam our airplanes into our buildings in the name of their god. Once that happens, then we tend to question a religion that can abused in such a manner and are no longer so receptive to the bogus arguments that "even Christianity has extremists" — as if we are in fifteenth-century Europe, or present-day Christians routinely murder thousands in places like Bali, Nigeria, Turkey, Britain, Spain, and the United States. Remember the truism: not all Muslims are terrorists, but increasingly almost all global terrorists are Muslims.

* * *

January 26, 2006

[Note: The following Angry Reader’s letter appeared in the Fresno Bee on January 23, 2006.]

The only good thing about Victor Davis Hanson's column is that each week we can see the pathology of this man. His Jan. 15 column was hypocritical, racist, and imperialistic. He is feeding on America's pain from rising gasoline prices to stir hatred for oil-rich countries around the world. His points are obviously to justify the neocons' goal of controlling the world's power, policies, economics, and commerce.

If we continue to go down this absolutely insane path, we can fully expect to further fuel the forces leading to another world war.

He insults and ridicules half the countries in the world — from Russia, to Iran, to the Arab countries, to most of Latin America. He acts as if America has never been dependent on the sale of our oil to foreign countries for our own economic welfare.

He neglects the fact that if we had not been so oil-greedy and had adopted a sound policy for conservation and use of alternative fuels, the whole world would still have abundant supplies of oil. Instead of alternative energy for conservation and ecology, he touts alternative energy to starve all those evil oil-rich countries that don't like us.

Hanson: This is one of strangest Angry Readers I have ever seen, since it seems to suggest that the shared American desire not to empower a Saudi Arabia or Iran with petrodollars is somehow racist — a view that I find hard to believe is really serious, even for an ossified or embittered 60s-type utopian-in-exile. Are we "racist" for worrying about the petrodollar influence in apparently "white" Russia, as it takes a hard and dangerous authoritarian turn to the right under Putin?

The writer apparently refers to the recent Tribune Media Services column on the dangers of American dependence on foreign oil, and why that is also harmful in emboldening dictatorial regimes such as the Iranians, Venezuelans, and Saudis, whose economies, due to petrodollars, will never embrace market-driven and political reforms, but will of course continue to buy dangerous weapons and encourage subversion.

Let me address this very sad rant:

1.) "Hypocritical, racist, and imperialistic" is a tired triad, but oddly used here, since the point of my essay was precisely that we win American autonomy, and free our nation from the influence of these foreign regimes, the very opposite of imperialistic — unless the writer now defines imperialism as sending billions of dollars abroad to buy oil at $70 that is often pumped at $5. Avoiding the sending of such massive outlay now may in fact be the only way of preventing a future Middle East arms race of nuclear proportions.

2.) "Neocon" or "new conservative" is a convenient liberal slur today, though why, I am not sure, since to a leftist it should be no more bothersome than paleocon or realist, and, in fact, less so, since other branches of conservatism most surely do not favor sponsoring democracy abroad. The American Conservative magazine, for example, recently published an attack on me by a "writer" (most likely a staffer for the Moscow-based eXile magazine) who had previously praised the 9/11 attack on the twin towers (e.g., "It was like a two-course dessert. . .there was the towers falling down in slo-mo, over and over, Which was really beautiful…. That was the first time an office building ever got beautiful in the history of the world."), and suggested I meet the firing squad, while dreaming of burning down my farm. So the hard Right seems to be as angry as the hard Left at the idea of supporting our country's efforts to remove Saddam Hussein and staying on to foster democratic reform in Iraq.

If "neocon" implies prior hard Left or even youthful neo-Marxist credentials that have given way to new Right, I cannot plead guilty to that, since I am more or less what I have always been — a conservative Democrat, who increasingly finds that once prominent wing of the party (perhaps emblematic nowadays in a Joe Lieberman) completely obliterated, especially in matters of national security. But there was a time when Democratic and conservatism were synonymous, especially in places like rural central California, where farmers distrusted displays of ostentatious wealth, breakneck development, and the excesses of popular culture, and tried to retain rural values from one generation to the next, oblivious to the radicalism of both Wall Street and Hollywood.

But more to the point, my interest — in controlling our borders, curbing the use of cheap and illegal foreign labor, ending agricultural subsidies, balancing the budget, and using government incentives, rather than the free market alone, to encourage the greater production of fermented ethanol or coal-based methanol to wean us off imported oil — is hardly neoconservative, at least as I understand the neoconservative positions, which are sometimes libertarian in matters economic.

3.) I do plead guilty to having no trust in Putin's Russia, the Iranian theocracy, the Saudi royal family, or Hugo Chavez's Venezuela (though I did not gratuitously insult them.).

4.) Now the Angry Reader becomes absolutely unhinged in his contradictory argumentation. We are supposed to sympathize with the price-gouging of the OPEC countries because in some mythical past the U.S. economy was likewise dependent on sales abroad of its own petroleum? Yes, for a period in the 1930s the U.S. did sell oil to Japan. But can the Angry Reader please state when and to what degree the U.S. economy was ever dependent on petrodollar foreign exchange? And is there no difference between us, an elected democracy, and a theocracy, monarchy, or dictatorship, or have we sunk that low in matters of moral equivalence?

5.) The Tribune essay championed conservation, and listed national security beside environmental and financial benefits, therein. But the Angry Reader apparently sees this as terrible — as if it were virtuous that we should continue to be vulnerable to oil exporters. If only we could starve out an Iran; but of course that is impossible; and whether we are a huge importer or not, the rise of a capitalist India and China (2 billion consumers combined) will ensure that oil for the immediate future is in short supply and the price thus high. My worry is not that countries "don't like us," but rather that, like Iran, they will have the wealth and influence gained through petroleum to acquire nuclear weapons to fulfill their own promises to wipe out another nation, as we see in the case of Iranian threats against Israel.

6.) I’m always amused by the avalanche of angry letters to the newspaper closest to my residence in rural California, and so often wonder why it even continues to carry the bothersome column. Indeed, I think the Fresno Bee publishes more hostile letters than all the other papers that syndicate my Tribune column combined — which always makes for an interesting time when I venture up to Fresno. I usually get confronted by two types in various restaurants and stores. One group is made up of outraged readers (usually retirees in the Sierra Nevada, junior college instructors or college professors from the local campuses, or high school teachers), who seem to enjoy the blood sport of publishing slurs like "pathology of this man," "racist," and "imperialistic" in lieu of a coherent counter-argument. The second are usually in agreement and often say their own letters they send of support are never published in the paper at all, despite the general conservative nature of rural and central California.

* * *

January 13, 2006

There are a number of views on the March 2004 Spanish general election, when the socialists displaced the conservatives, and yours is certainly the received version. Others say the center-right Popular Party government lost the election because of its knee-jerk reaction in blaming ETA for the Madrid train bombings, a belief it refused to recant as the evidence for jihadist responsibility piled up. To use a modern expression, they were not very cool and could have done with a Rudy Giuliani.

You will be horrified to hear that we no longer call it the British Commonwealth with its colonial connotations. You are in danger of being dragged before the Peoples' Court in Berkeley and sent to the re-education camp known as the New York Times! It is now simply the Commonwealth and we Brits are just equal partners. How the mighty are fallen. Mind you, with Mozambique now a member, the whole basis must be questioned; many people think that when QEII goes to the great republic in the sky, the Commonwealth will rot in the ground with her.

Hanson: What a nice angry reader for a change. Well, I know of the inept response of the Aznar government to the bombing, but the reality is that a majority of Spaniards probably supported the socialist position anyway, which, remember, was not just antithetical to the U.S. in Iraq, but radically so, as Spain went from an ally to a near belligerent overnight. Even sadder, it is now the near official European position that the Spanish did not appease, and that those who allege so are in fact rabid and ignorant Americans. In the case of Munich, it took A.J.P. Taylor years to concoct the revisionist fantasy that there were grounds to work with Hitler; in our case, the fantasy starts almost immediately, so paranoid are the proud Europeans about their lack of principle and strength. Yes, they could have used Rudy, except Aznar is a very good man, and I doubt that had David Dinkins been mayor of New York and Al Gore president on September 11, the American public would have caved and given in to al Qaeda's demands.

Yes, I know the Commonwealth is the politically correct term, but the only thing that unites whatever it is, is Britishness, so it seems disingenuous not to admit that up front. After all, why the prefix "Common" at all, since there are no ties other than the legacy of England's laws, customs, and language? Your point, though, is well taken: decline is not caused by environmental degradation, barbarians at the gates, or sudden climatic change, but rather far more often by spiritual decline and decay. When a culture no longer believes in itself to the point of denying its very essence, what is there left to save or defend?

* * *

January 6, 2006

Ambassador Wilson was asked by some part of the current Bush Administration to go to Niger and either to refute or corroborate French reports that Saddam’s government was trying to obtain yellowcake uranium for their nuclear enrichment program. French intelligence reports, shared with our government, had already declared this claim untrue — and as the companies involved with the Niger uranium mining are French, I would assume they knew of what they were speaking. Wilson came home, found that his report (which confirmed the French report) was ignored, and heard the president publicly proclaim the opposite of what he had found to be true on the ground in Niger. It is not a “loose-cannon renegade” that then steps forward and tells the public that he disagrees with that statement and explains why.

With our nation then poised on the brink of the unilateral invasion of Iraq, we surely could have used more “loose-cannon renegades” to counter the false claims of the administration. Wilson had nothing to lose (although his wife did, as was proven true) and nothing to gain by going public, and came forward with what he believed to be the truth. We need more people like him, on both sides of the political chasm created by Bush…and less name-calling.

Hanson: Let me address your points in the order you raise them, since, to the degree they are understandable, they are unfortunately all false.

1. “Was asked by some part of the Bush Administration” is completely disingenuous. Ambassador Wilson's name came up in a meeting of CIA officials, a meeting his wife attended. We know now that she most likely put forth her own husband's name — a fact later omitted by Mr. Wilson, but proven by a memo to that effect and a subsequent admission by the New York Times’s Nicholas Kristof that, in fact, the office of Dick Cheney did not recommend Mr. Wilson for the mission, as Wilson had apparently implied to reporters.

2. “I would assume they know of what they were speaking.” In fact, no, the French did not know of what they were speaking. At roughly the same time, French Foreign Minister Villepin was doing his best to subvert U.S. policy toward Iraq — to such a degree that (according to a source at a ministers' meeting) he characterized intelligence reports suggesting that the U.S. would easily take out Saddam Hussein as disastrous for French policy. In contrast, to this day, British intelligence, according to the Butler Commission, maintained that at the time of Mr. Wilson's mission, there was good reason to believe that Saddam had in fact sought to obtain yellowcake from Niger, as evidenced by a 1999 visit to Niger by Iraqi officials.

3. “Then steps forward and tells the public that he disagrees with that statement and explains why.” That is not an accurate assessment of what Wilson in fact did. He wrote a New York Times op-ed piece listing several charges against the current administration, many of them subsequently proven false. He did not consult, as he stated, the documents that turned out to be forgeries. He was not selected for the mission by the Office of the Vice President. He did plant several stories with New York Times and Washington Post reporters that proved not fully accurate. Read the Senate Intelligence Committee Report and make your own assessment of the character of Joe Wilson.

4. “Wilson had nothing to lose” is also inaccurate. A better assessment would be “He had everything to gain” as subsequent media appearances, a lucrative book deal, and a booked lecture circuit attest. Prior to his public op-eds and press appearances, he had neither written a body of work nor achieved a diplomatic career that would have otherwise earned him such public attention. And he took on a role as a consultant to the Kerry presidential campaign precisely because he knew he was useful as a partisan to embarrass the president.

5. Note that, despite several investigations, no one (not even Scooter Libby) has been indicted for revealing the covert status of Mr. Wilson's CIA-employed wife, since in fact she was probably not even a covert operative at the time. Had Wilson been less flamboyant, there were plenty of ways of keeping his wife's employment secret and in sober tones making his points.

6. As for “name-calling,” try some of these from Mr. Wilson himself:

“If that was determined to have been a crime, I would love to see them frog-marched out of the White House.”

Or:

“I find him [Libby] really a slimeball.”

Or:

“Now, I find Bob Novak to be a despicable character, but I leave the description of him to my good friend Jon Stewart, who runs The Daily Show. I tell my friends at Fox News...that if I’m going to do fake news, I won’t do Fox News. I will do The Daily Show. I no longer say that Jon Stewart refers to Bob Novak as a ‘douche bag.’ I just don’t say it anymore, my wife [Valerie Plame] wouldn’t like it.”

Or:

“Bob Novak, in my judgment, is a pawn in someone else’s game. He's a tool...a despicable tool….”

* * *

December 23, 2005

As a Stanford alumni, I am outraged, and more than a little depressed, to read the propaganda put out by Victor Davis Hanson. From the outset, it has been clear that Hanson is a political hack whose every word is gauged not to find truth but to advance the right-wing agenda. Ok, it's a free society. But, when a writer such as Hanson deliberately misleads and distorts the truth, his treachery needs to be exposed.

In today's column Hanson refers to the 1960's "when we encouraged racial separatism as a means of rectifying past discrimination." Is he kidding? Or is he gambling that most of your readers are too young to remember that era? I was born in 1951. In 1960, in many parts of this country, blacks were still stuck in segregated schools, could not eat at many restaurants, check into many hotels, could not register to vote without great difficulty, were barred from country clubs, civic groups and all other manner of organizations. They were almost entirely absent from the upper echelons of corporate and academic America.

Then those evil "liberals", with the support of some Republicans passed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, the Fair Housing and Employment Act and actually began to enforce their prohibitions against discrimination. Now, forty years later, while far from perfect, the races in America are far less "separate" than ever before. Affirmative action, which Hanson decries, did not gain steam until much later, and is far less significant either way than these major events.

Mr. Hanson is obviously very intelligent and well educated. That he uses his gifts to mislead the public is particularly pathetic. I don't want Hanson's views to be censored or suppressed. I just want them exposed as the blatant and deliberate lies they are.

Hanson: I am sorry you are "outraged" and even sorry that you are "depressed." Perhaps "Stanford alumni" feel that way when the world does not appreciate their singular geniuses.

In an earlier response I addressed the phenomenon of the left-wing self-important aristocrat. By that I meant that so many of my angry readers' letters come with this same type of pompous throat-clearing-titles, degrees, Stanford pedigrees, etc. One of the problems with the Left, as this letter shows, is this strange attraction to privilege and status, and thus outrage that anyone else who was educated would dare disagree. That explains the writer's descent into the same old slurs ("hack", "treachery," "lies") and, of course, the tired qualifier "I don't want Hanson's views to be censored or suppressed", which usually implies something like "if only I could."

My second point: can you read or did you not learn English at Stanford?

Here's what I wrote, and what you quoted (italics added):

"When we encouraged racial separatism as a means of rectifying past discrimination."

In response to that sentence, the angry reader goes on to show that in fact there was "past discrimination" precisely as I wrote-as if I didn't first write that?

And, of course, the AR ignores the point of the entire sentence: "When we encouraged racial separatism;" i.e., Hate-filled groups like the Black Panthers or the Brown Berets and Mecha ("A brown state for a brown people") forgot the message of Martin Luther King, and were largely given a pass by white liberals guilty over, yes, "past discrimination." But two wrongs, even if asymmetrical in magnitude, don't make a right. And so instead of more assimilation and integration, we got everything from Black English, La Raza ("the race"), and all sorts of multicultural extremism, but not full integration or parity. I suggest you go to the apartheid communities of central Los Angeles or the San Joaquin Valley and see some of the wages of the liberal appeasement of racial separatism, which with de facto economic inequality, has led to entirely Balkanized communities — none more flagrant that East Palo Alto that sits a few miles from your beloved Stanford.

P.S. RE: "As a Stanford alumni"”: In fact, I think you are more likely either a Stanford alumna or alumnus unless you are some-sort of multiheaded hydra.

* * *

December 16, 2005

Dear Dr. Hanson,

”Vietnamization between 1971 and 1975 finally was working.” That's what you
wrote in your recent article. Interesting. I was there and that was not my sense at all. I love how egg-headed cowards like you pontificate from your studies on 'what was happening' in Vietnam. What are your facts? Who are your witnesses? Where is your evidence? You hide behind your 'professor' cloak and think the world should give you an audience because you've read Thucydides and Caesar. I wonder what those writers would have thought of you, a man with no military experience yet who speaks with authority on military matters. But like everything else in modern-day America, you're just a money-making comedy show. I probably should laugh instead of become irritated when I read your columns. I guess I’m just old-fashioned.

Hanson: My statement was simply a synthesis of recent historical studies of Vietnam, that all have come to the same conclusion that Vietnamization was working and that after Tet the United States became far more effective and was sustaining a viable South. But why argue over facts? Look instead at tables of U.S. ground troop deployments: after 1971 they plummeted, and by 1973 were almost nonexistent. Yet the South Vietnamese government was viable for another 3 years until mid-1975. How could that have happened if that was not your sense?

Many Vietnam veterans contradict your own empirical conclusions. I suggest you also start with Lewis Sorley, A Better War, or Don Oberdorfer, Tet!, both of which would refute your conclusions. Thucydides and Caesar both had military experience, but Herodotus, Tacitus, and Livy probably did not: are their descriptions of battle therefore flawed? By your logic John Keegan is a poor military historian due to his lack of first-hand military experience. If you have read my columns, then you know I write not of troops in the field but of larger historical and strategic precedents that might make sense of what we are trying to do since September 11.

According to your flawed logic no one can write of Iwo Jima or perhaps Waterloo, who was not there, or maybe even Cannae. You, for example, should never comment on farming or agricultural policy or the safety of what your children eat, since you yourself have never farmed or worked on a tractor — I alone can comment on that? How silly!

And if you have not taught children in the classroom or university, then of course, please be quiet about your children's schools. We can extend your puerile argument to flying in airplanes to surgery. Autopsy is important, but it is not the only criterion that is useful to judge the validity of an argument.

Like most others in 1972, I had registered for the draft, got my number, and waited — until an all-volunteer force ended the draft at about the same time — when there was essentially no more ground combat in Vietnam involving U.S. troops. If you will go to Kingsburg, California and visit the small park there, you will see an inscription to my family's involvement in U.S. wars; we don't need lectures from you on comparative sacrifice. You apparently agree with Howard Dean because he said Vietnamization was not working; but is then he an "egg-headed coward" because he got out of the earlier draft when there really was a war going on — or does he earn a pass because his anti-war position just happens to dovetail with your own?

I don't hide behind any professor's cloak, but in fact for my entire career as a professor I also ran a family farm and lived far from both the city and university. I am sorry you are so angry at what you consider an alien culture (e.g., "like everyone else in modern-day America"), and resort to slurs ("egg-headed cowards"), but a good way to relax and lower your blood pressure would be to cease activity like "read [ing] your columns." It would do you good just not to read them, and turn to Maureen Dowd or Paul Krugmann for more balance and even-tempered sobriety.

Nor do I think you are old fashioned at all; old fashioned describes the sort of mannered rural people I grew up and live with, who had some sort of comportment and avoided the paranoid, self-pitying style you exhibit. So sad.

* * *

December 9, 2005

Regarding: “Symposium on Iraq: Why Our New Idealism is enlightened Jacksonianism”

While much of what you say in this essay is persuasive, I think you're being disingenuous when you obliquely call the Iraq war an act of "preemption." It was clearly a preventive war on its surface, even at the time the decision was made to wage it; in retrospect its preventive nature has become painfully clearer. As you know, associating the word "preemption" with the invasion and ongoing counterinsurgency operations lends them a patina of legitimacy in discourse about the war. I doubt you are unfamiliar with the stipulative jargon associated with just-war theory, so I assume you know from whence you speak in implying the war was preemptive. You are not making a semantic error like so many of the talking heads have done since the beginning. So I also have to assume that you know using that word in this case is highly misleading. Don't you think you are being a tad hypocritical since you ethically support the ongoing military action, calling it muscular idealism, and at the same time you are intellectually trying to hide behind a morally misleading word? Why don't you just defend the war calling it what it was at its onset, a blatant war of prevention? Defending it that way, I think, you would be more credible or at least more consistent.

I have to tell you, though, many of us in the Army totally disagree with your assessment. We have to bear the burden of having lost the strategically all important moral high ground when the dice were cast back in 2003. The way the administration handled the march to war in Iraq was a horrendous strategic error. Given the moral clout we had after the invasion of Afghanistan, one can only imagine the hubris contributing to logic of the Iraq expedition. We can only hope your optimism for long term good turns out to be right and that Iraq does not turn into the moral equivalent of the siege of Syracuse.

Hanson: Why the invective, when you could just make your point without all the throat-clearing and self-serving slurs? I don’t need lectures on the differences between preventive war — in which one sees the long-term dangers and believes in a determinist gloomy scenario unless one attacks even without immediate threats, of the type the Kaiser waged against France in 1914 or Hitler against Stalin in 1941 or the Japanese against us also in 1941 — and a preemptive war of the sort Israel launched in 1967, and we did in 1998 (Operation Desert Fox) or more muscularly in 2003, when the threat was right on the horizon and the immediate future would lead to the same sort of dangerous events as in the immediate past.

We had been at war with Saddam since 1991, whether over Kuwait or in the no-fly zones. He had tried to kill a former president and made a mockery of the 1991 peace accords and the U.N. mandates. Even if our intelligence was flawed about current stockpiles of WMD, given his petro-reserves, scandals in oil-for-food, weariness by the Americans to maintain our constant vigilance, and double-dealing by the Russians and French, it was only a matter of time before Baathist Iraq would have rearmed and did what it always did when it felt superior to its neighbors: attack someone.

But I have a question for you: if we were not in Iraq, squandering, as you claim, the good will accrued after Afghanistan (I suggest you go back and read what elites here and abroad were saying about our “moral clout” in Afghanistan), where in fact would we be fighting an al-Zarqawi and his jihadists? Would we simply have quit after Afghanistan and considered the war over, on hold, or won, and the enemy neutered? As a man of arms, what would you have done — simply allowed Iraq, Syria, and Iran to continue their subsidies for terrorists of the type that harmed the U.S. on September 11, or pressed the issue as we are doing now by removing Saddam, ostracizing Syria, and rounding up world support for containing Iran? It is hard to see any progress at all in Lebanon, Libya, or the Gulf States if Saddam were still in power.

I do in fact know a number of army officers, from both talking informally with them and lecturing at places like the Army War College. None of them share your self-pitying pessimism (“we have to bear the burden…”); in contrast, most are optimistic that Iraq will work and that the jihadists have lost thousands and are much weaker than in 2003 as is the cause of radical Islam itself, as we saw recently in Lebanon and Jordan of all places. Oh, one final piece of advice: go back and read carefully what Thucydides said about the folly of Syracuse and ponder his baffling exegesis: civil discord at home, not the impracticality of the mission per se, is what doomed the enterprise.

* * *

November 27, 2005

Dear Sir:

I haven't yet read your book but did read your article. From what you've written it seems that you bemoan the fate of the Athenian Empire. How unfortunate.

First, you talk of the high level of culture under the Athenian Empire, as if the movements of the mind that lead to Plato, Aristotle, etc. were only begotten with the founding of the Delian League and ended with Antipater's occupation. This shows a simple bias in your position, one bred of idealistic prejudice towards Athens, which can hardly be lauded for its imperial crimes.

You seem to mitigate those crimes committed by Athens under its non-consensual empire. True, when the Delian League was formed it was an open-ended commitment and Athens was assumed to be the leader. Yet, after Eurymedon and the Peace of Callias, neither Athens nor the allies were under any illusions that the driving motive behind the league - a defensive alliance against Persia - didn't exist any longer. Not even Ionia feared Persia the way they once had. Naturally, crises developed in the league as Athens continued collecting tribute and enforced stricter discipline. Athens slowly turned consensual league to empire. Thus followed the revolt of Euboa, the crushing of Thasos, and the brutal seige of Samos, just to name a few crimes.

Finally, you attack subsequent rule by Sparta and Philip II. Yet attacking them glosses over the issues of how this point was reached. Athenian lust for expansion and conquest — as demonstrated by their own ruthless treatment of their allies and even worse their enemies — was feared by other Greeks, and it wasn't long before their reckless launching of expedition after expedition ensnared them with Sparta. Their thirst for self-destruction just wouldn't be sated. They had no one to blame but themselves for the end of the beautiful dream that was the Delian League. Men like Pericles and Cleon destroyed the good will and noble vision built by Cimon. The Athenians were punished for their hubris. Thucydides was right.

Hanson: The operative phrase of your diatribe was "I haven't yet read your book."

I never "bemoaned" the fate of the Athenian Empire, but simply noted that its implosion had an effect on the culture it once subsidized. I think you first must brush up on the basics of Greek history: neither Plato nor Aristotle wrote during the 5th-century Empire. The Delian League de facto was over by the late 450s, the Empire by 404. All of Plato's and Aristotle's work belongs to the fourth century; both were very skeptical of both democracy and empire. Instead we associate Socrates, Pericles, Sophocles, and Euripides with the zenith of imperial Athens. I once wrote a book The Other Greeks that tried to bring appreciation to the world outside the Greek city and outside of Athens in particular, and thus concentrated in general on the countryside and on Thebes — a city-state that I returned to in both The Soul of Battle and Ripples of Battle. So I think you are mistaken in both your views of Greek history and what I have written in the past.

As to your other points, they are equally in error. We don't really know anything much about the popularity of the empire. It was the belief of the great historian G.E.M. de Ste. Croix that Athens was in fact popular among its subject states, for its protection both of the poor and of democracy abroad. As for your points about the evolution from a defense league to an empire, you merely recite the judgment of Thucydides in Book 1 of his history when he reviews the "50 years" from 479 to 431 B.C. Nothing new here.

Men like Cimon (and Aristides) in fact were imperialists themselves and built the system of tribute-paying alliances that formed the basis of the empire. Sparta failed as a hegemon in the Aegean not out of principled distaste for imperialism, but simply because most found its leadership heavy-handed and worse than Athens — as it learned again between 403-371 B.C. when it high profile again proved distasteful to most Greek city-states. As far as Athens per se, its problems with Sparta, Corinth, Aegina, etc. were manifest even during the Persian Wars. Technically the Peloponnesian War started when Sparta preempted and crossed the borders of Attica — according to Thucydides out of "fear" of Athenian "power," not due to any particular legitimate grievance, since in fact Athens had not done anything overtly bellicose to Sparta itself that would have justified a breaking of the peace. Yes, preemption is a theme in Thucydides, but mostly in the context of Sparta's allies begging her to attack Athens first before it became too strong.

As for Philip II, I think you need seriously to go back and read the speeches of Aeschines and Demosthenes, the relevant books of Diodorus, or some key lives of Plutarch; nowhere in any of these sources will you find much to support the notion that Athenian expansion provoked Macedon. Even Philip's apologists don't go that far, but argue mostly that he brought a much needed sense of order to an eroding system of self-destructive city-states — a view that I do not hold myself.

Again, you reflect all the biases of the utopian. In fact, 2,400 years ago there was not a choice between a good power and a bad one, but in modern terms mostly something self-interested and something far more self-interested. And by that measure the democracy at Athens was in fact different from the monarchy at Macedon, both in its own internal rule and its fourth-century attitude of mostly seeking bilateral alliances rather than coercive imperial rule of the past.

You again misread Thucydides. It was his judgement that while often Athens made strategic blunders, it still could have won the war had it not descended into internal dissension brought on by a lesser group of leaders following Pericles' death — an imperialist that he admired greatly. I think you may be confusing him with Euripides who first created the notion of imperial hubris getting its just rewards. If anything, Thucydides would characterize your cynicism and distaste for your own wartime elected president as emblematic of the sort of Athenian stasis during the war that fatally weakened public support and helped to lose the war.

November 18, 2005

Mr. Hanson,

Your article seems to have a logical glitch. You conclude:

If our enemies similarly believed in the obsolescence of war that so heartlessly has taken 2,000 of our best young men and women, then we could find solace in our growing intolerance of any battlefield losses. But until the nature of man himself changes, there will be wars that take our youth, and we will be increasingly vexed to explain why we should let them.

But isn't that the President's whole goal in fighting this war? To change the nature of our enemies? To bring freedom — political freedom, personal freedom, even the free flow of information we enjoy in the United States and which you, in this article, seem to lament — to those who do not have it? (Are our troops not fighting so that Iraq can some day have Ted Koppels and even, [shudder], Geraldo Riveras of its own?) So if "the nature of man" is as immutable as you make it out to be, then by your own lights this war
is a fool's errand — and we have even more reason to cut our losses now.

The premise of your article seems to miss a crucial point that military commanders have been making this week: every life is important. Every soldier is an individual. My boyfriend, fighting in Tikrit at the moment, loves Chinese food, snow, and Sponge Bob Square Pants. You can think of that if you ever see the name ___ in the paper.

The lives lost in a war of choice can never be compared with the lives lost in a war of necessity. Apples and oranges.

Hanson: Man's nature is fixed, but we know that culture, specifically democracy and human rights, can create parameters in which people can operate peacefully and settle differences through courts and in accordance with the law. Outside the zones of civilization — and that's where Saddam's Iraq was — human nature, not culture, thrives at its lowest denominator. So if the coalition is successful, the Iraqis can live under the rule of law and with countries like Afghanistan, Turkey, Israel and other democracies settle regional differences peacefully in a way that is not possible with autocracies.

Of course every life is critical, but given the nature of the Saddam's Iraq and the post-9/11 Middle East, there were no good choices anymore. The appeasement of the past led to September 11, and so we were faced with a bad and worse alternative. If you believed that al Qaeda had to be stopped, and if you believed — as the U.S. Senate voted, as Clinton's federal prosecutors alleged in their 1998 indictment of bin Laden, and as we saw in the case of various terrorists who tried to topple the World Trade Center in 1993 and fought us in Afghanistan, and then fled to Saddam's Iraq — that al Qaeda had an unholy alliance with Saddam Hussein, then it was critical to remove that government and try to offer 26 million people something better in his place. There were more lives lost on 9/11 than on Pearl Harbor — but no American civilian lives lost since, once we went on the offensive in Iraq and Afghanistan and killed thousands of terrorists and removed two governments that worked hand in glove with them.

I have not a shred of hope that I could ever convince you of any of that, and will not try, but you should concede that your opponents hate war as much as you, also hate the loss of the life as much as you, and believe the present course of action in the long view will save lives and make the United States more secure. Just as most opponents of the war are not treasonous, so too most supporters are not blood-crazed and unbalanced.

* * *

November 9, 2005

Dear Mr. Hanson;

You want President Bush to go for broke? What do you think he's been doing so far? He is spending money at the rate of a billion dollars a week, and refuses to raise taxes to pay the bill. He is using up the Army's resources faster than they can be renewed. He has spent his credibility by lying about the evidence that supported the speculation that Iraq had WMDs. He is broke.

Time is running out. Your theory is that, sometime soon, the insurgents will get discouraged and quit. They can't quit and they can't go home to somewhere else, because they're home already. If they're not afraid of fighting the U.S. military, why would they be afraid of fighting the Shi'ites? Make sense, or concede the argument.

Hanson: You have confused several issues. By having the President return to core beliefs of those who elected him, obviously he would not continue to raise non-discretionary domestic spending by 9% as in the first term. Revenue is not really the problem, since adjusted for inflation federal income is higher now than it was before the tax cuts. The economy is growing twice and sometime three times as fast as is true in Europe and generating billions in new revenue. The deficit is mostly a result of radical increases in entitlement spending, far higher than during the Clinton years, which could only be sustained by higher taxes or cuts in military and security spending. 9/11, Afghanistan, and Iraq, as well as Katrina, added to the costs.

He is not "using up the Army's resources faster than they can be renewed." After the Balkans and Afghanistan, critics were clamoring that the army was idle and no longer all that necessary in postmodern warfare, so why listen to the latest criticism of the day? The problem is that 9/11 events and the fascism of the Middle East challenge a military that was slashed by 1/3 during the 1990s, while its commitments increased. It will grow in recognition of the past folly of cutting it to the bone, even as the growth of local security forces in Iraq will allow reductions in our presence. And in a year from now the latest hysteria of a ruined Army will be history.

Can't you get beyond "Bush lied"? Or at least say "77 Senators lied," "Tony Blair lied," "John Kerry lied" and all the others who made speeches warning that Iraq's WMD was a real threat and demanded responses, perhaps the most famous being Sen. Jay Rockefeller who somehow now is a critic of the WMD threat. I was critical at the time that the administration privileged WMD over the other 22 writs of action passed by the Senate, which, as the Democratic majority noted, provided a proper casus belli. But they no doubt feared that the opposition would accuse them of adducing too many reasons to remove Saddam.

You need to use precision in language: "lying about the evidence that supported the speculation that Iraq had WMDs" makes no sense. No, Bush voiced support for the many speculations from the intelligence community that Iraq had WMD, as did most others. "Lying about the evidence that supported the speculation" would mean that Bush would have said something like "Don't believe the CIA, I know for a fact that their evidnece for speculations about WMD are false" when he had no such evidence that it was.

You don't seem to understand the dynamic of insurgencies, and so think they will win in some us-versus-them fight on their soil. How naive! In fact, the insurgents are up against an elected government not just American infidels.

True, they exist due to help within their community, but the sequence of elections is eroding Sunni support for them, since the Sunnis understand that they have much to lose staying out with no oil, a minority population, and a checkered past, but more to gain by participating.

Iraq is in the greatest upheaval in recent Middle East history, as the formerly despised Kurds and Shiites gain equality. Does that bother you? Or do you think such radical reform is easy?

The insurgents are not afraid of fighting the Shiites, especially when the Shiites so far have not fought back all that much in expectation that their security is found in a new elected government rather than a civil war. In fact, the insurgents are terrified, as the letters from Zarqawi show, of fighting a national government of unity that includes Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis, since without cash and bases in Sunni neighborhoods they could not operate. They are up against U.S. military power, a growing Iraqi security force, a political evolution that they must destroy, and changes in the Middle East that question the assumptions of radical Islam. So we are in a race: will the IED and suicide bomber so dishearten Americans that they withdraw even as the fragile constitutional government starts to gain strength?

We at home are up against glib critics like yourself, who can always dash off a cynical line or two of studied outrage and braggadacio, but not offer anything much other than the necessary things we are currently doing — unless you wish to return to the pre-9/11 appeasement whose logic led to September 11.

November 3, 2005

Below are a series of questions asked and answer in turn by VDH.

1.) Should we not have invaded Saudi Arabia first and foremost, and if so,
2.) Is the "Right," by defending the invasion of Iraq, merely making the best of what everyone can objectively agree might have been better put farther down the "to do" list?

Hanson: No, we should not have invaded the kingdom. No one has been more critical of Wahhabi Saudi Arabia for its support of terrorism than I. But it had no prior history of war with the U.S. (cf. 1991-2003 of hot fighting and no-fly zones in Iraq), did not exterminate its own people, did not try to kill a former President, and in general did not do the sort of things outlined in the U.S. Senate's October 2002 resolution calling for war against Saddam. I cannot imagine the war against terrorism could be won with Saddam still in power. Look at the recent nefarious activity of Syria — after Saddam was removed — and it is a poor and insignificant player compared to Iraq. So for good or evil, all the marbles are up for grabs in Iraq; its transition to a constitutional government will alter the region for the good and deflate the impetus for terror, or its descent into chaos will make Lebanon or Vietnam look minor.

3.)Why can't I shake the feeling that otherwise intelligent people are suffering from desperate denial that we have, at best, a "guileless fool" and at worst a "village idiot" in the White House? Or doesn't it really matter in the "big picture"?

Hanson: I think you measure leadership largely by rhetorical skills and most of us do not. True, Clinton was a brilliant ad hoc debater, and his oratory even without preparation was impressive. He had a keen political mind, and almost instantaneously could fathom political factions.

But? He was often paralyzed in wishing to be continually liked by all sides which led to inaction and temporizing — sending Americans to Somalia but without tanks in hopes of not antagonizing anyone, shooting cruise missiles into terrorist compounds but not at hours when the occupants might be there, bombing Saddam's facilities but then ceasing before Ramadan, and so on. That pattern of the 1990s led to a sense of passivity and contributed to 9/11 when al Qaeda was assured that there would be very few consequences to bombing New York and Washington.

In contrast, we acted after 9/11 and freed 50 million in removing the two worst governments on the planet, despite almost universal criticism of the type that the U.K. endured in 1940 when it was alone. We have not had another 9/11-type attack and in this brutal war have lost 2/3s so far in Iraq that we lost on the first day of the conflict. I don't think a village idiot could do that. Part of the Left's problem is this insistence that intelligence is measured by glibness, when it is often not. John Kerry learned that in the debates when his impressive command of facts and language did not matter much when he came across as indecisive and contradictory, however glib in the process.

True, Mr. Bush's problem is his failing to sound like Tony Blair or Winston Churchill — often critical in a war of this type. But in your 'big picture' the ability to make tough decisions and stick with them in the face of opportunistic criticism trumps deft speech, however valuable the latter is.

4.) Is your view of warfare any different than the conventional fascist view of civilization's Highest Achievement?

Hanson: I think, if you have read anything I have written, the theme is that the true amorality is going to war and allowing troops in the field to be killed without a rational plan on how to win, end the war and solve the political objectives that started it. Even worse is a bellum interruptum that costs lives but leaves the problem unsolved and for another generation to repeat the bloodletting.

Was it a high achievement to allow 50 million to vote, or to allow the Taliban to keep butchering innocents and use Afghanistan to plan more attacks on thousands of civilians? Or perhaps you could out-debate those who gassed the Kurds? What was the high achievement of Mao and Stalin, who without going to a "fascist' war, butchered between them 100 million in "peace"? Or I suppose the Southern Planationists could have been persuaded to give up millions in slavery over tea? To your silly question, I answer ask those at Dachau, or Nanking, or today in Darfur. Wars are prevented by having credible defenses to convince lunatics like Hitler or Osama bin Laden not to try something foolish, and when such deterrence is lost, then things get very dangerous. How such thinking is "fascist" only someone of your smugness could determine.

I have recently finished The Sling and the Stone by Thomas X. Hammes. To a former officer in Vietnam, who was trained as a counter-insurgency specialist and then frustrated in a variety of ways by his own side, Col. Hammes arguments have a ring of plausibility, at least.

But what is most frightening is that, having made a most compelling argument for the existence of fourth generation (4G) warfare in general — which was apparent to practically all of us under the rank of 0-5 in Vietnam — and its recent appearance in Iraq, he then discusses all of the reasons why our "brilliant military" is going to go right on being a third generation (3G) military. And while it seems to be the mightiest 3G military the world has ever seen, it might in the end become "also irrelevant", as the North Vietnamese colonel opined when advised that we had never lost a battle in Vietnam.

Why do political-insiders and opinion-makers like yourself — who do not want us necessarily to "bug out" of Iraq — refuse to raise the question of why our Department of Defense and National Security Council is allowed to avoid the challenge of facing up to the future 4G warfare? Col Hammes' discussion of the entrenched interests in the military-industrial complex, which could never favor a true re-direction of the military to give it a significant 4G or even 5G capability, is just sickening. "Patriotism is fine but must not be allowed to disrupt the bottom line or threaten our careers" seems to be the problem.

In your own books, you chronicle the shift of emphasis on battle tactics in the ancient world, and you specifically point out how Philip and Alexander developed a whole new type of army. Col Hammes seems to be suggesting the same thing, only the direction is away from massed formations designed to win battles and toward a focus on changing political will.

It strikes me that only you and other friends of the Department of Defense can bring the kind of pressure that will be necessary to foment serious change before our brilliant military does become irrelevant.

But I think the changes you suggest may be already taking place. Afghanistan was a different war — few traditional troops, special forces with GPS bombing to supply firepower in lieu of artillery and tanks, and soldiers indistinguishable from native contingents. And in Iraq, most know that the war cannot be won with traditional assault and use of heavy armor. The model seems to be classical counter-insurgency — incorporation of indigenous troops, use of lighter specialized commandos, instant air support, all concurrent with political reform and hearts-and-minds-type material aid — buttressed by new technologies such as predator drones and computer guided ballistics.

One can argue we came to this late, but no one is now talking about a conventional war in Iraq of the type we saw in March/April 2003. All of which brings up a second point: there will be occasions when conventional forces are necessary, should the North Koreans cross into the south or China land on Taiwan. Granted we need greater ratios of specialized light counter-terrorism forces, but it would be foolhardy to think warfare is static or that conventional armor and artillery will be obsolete soon.

You make a good point about the military revolution in fourth-century Greece; but remember it was also the great age, the last hurrah of sorts, of reactionary hoplite battle, as Nemea, Koroneia, Leuktra, and Mantineia attest. Alexander understood that and thus was able to fight a dirty war in Afghanistan and yet win pitched battles like Guagamela and at the Hydaspes.

A greater dilemma is that in a postmodern globalized world killing the enemy can be seen as bad as suffering losses. As instant imagery is televised across the globe without context, an Iraq prisoner in a Klan-type robe, hands stretched out, can do more damage to the American war effort than an enemy division. So well apart from tactics, we must realize that our own conventional power is problematic, inasmuch as the world's elite often look for ways to embarrass the United States for both its successes and failures.

I have met and talked with Col. Hammes at a Marine Corps symposium where his views were given respect and considered extremely valuable; and I think his advocacy is valuable and having results. The notion of an ossified, monolithic Pentagon is standard, but within its vast complexes there are plenty of unconventional thinkers who come to the fore in a war like Iraq.

With regard to your essay on the media's coverage of Hurricane Katrina, am I to conclude:

2. That the television transmissions of the havoc must have been somehow electronically compromised and the reporters were lying about what I was seeing?

3. That the utterly fluid, broken and chaotic flow of changing information was somehow scripted by unallied men and women involved in a massive deception of the public.

4. That the $60 billion in relief appropriated by the Congress was a "catastrophic" mistake based on these contrived reports?

5. That the tens of thousands of volunteers — and Federal, state and local employees — now working across the Gulf Coast have been sent to the region under false pretenses?

6. That the contribution I and hundreds of thousands of others made through religious and service organizations probably will be misdirected to the pockets of politicians, churches and other unscrupulous con artists?

7. That the Hoover Institution is described as a "think tank," but in your case is a misnomer?

Hanson: You need to read before you write. Do you recall the back-to-back editorials where I discussed in detail our worst national disaster, and explained the confluence of a city below sea level, a turbulent coast, a delta of a massive river, and a lake sitting above the city — and the human compounding of that mess through the legacy of Louisiana politics?

As you know, the point of the last op-ed was not to downplay the natural havoc, only to say that reports of 25,000 body bags and 10,000 dead were sensationalized reporting, as was the furor over Iraq, the environment, and race, as so many in the media used the disaster shamelessly as a means to further their own agenda, which did not concern the suffering on the ground. Note Sharpton, Jackson, and Cindy Sheehan all following the cameras down there for free coverage, sounding off on their own particular gripes and then leaving.

That millions of Americans, unlike yourself, could fathom this cynicism was because of the multiplicity of information-talk radio, the blogosphere, cable news, and live footage that went out to contradict often the instant analysis. Your letter is almost unhinged: cf. your number 5, when you seem to be making my point that the government reaction was enormous, and compared to other disasters that I noted in France and Iran, the resulting death toll was thus minimized.

I was criticizing in my two op-eds the media-generated story that government had underplayed the disaster and was ignoring the suffering; to prove me wrong, you strangely cite heroic efforts on the part of government that did not ignore the suffering and thus reinforce my case. With critics, in tone and logic, such as yourself, no one needs supporters.

Eyes on the Prize

It's time for sycophants like Victor Davis Hanson to admit that Islam is not the enemy. Blatant scapegoating and incipient racism are unnecessary. Rewriting history is dishonest and ethnocentrism is not a viable perspective for a study of the conflict in Iraq. Studied misrepresentation of this war and the misconstruction of the various forces at play does a grave disservice to this nation and hurts our troops in the field.

Apologists for the multiple errors and incompetence of the Bush administration are counterproductive and their efforts are ignoble. Bush's fatal and selfish arrogance has undermined this nation, bankrupted our people, ruined our reputation, and damaged our credibility.  Bush, Cheney, Rove, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, et. al. have undermined our security, damaged our military readiness, and lost the trust of our allies.  We have effectively surrendered our country and priorities to the highest bidder. This is treason by any other name.

History will not be kind to Bush or his apologists. The conflation of the Saudi Arabian 9/11 attacks, World War Two, terrorism, and Osama, with a corporate invasion and ransacking of the natural resources of Iraq...is duplicitous and patently false. The use of our military as mercenaries in crass adventurism is cynical and cruel. We deserve better.

One would think a responsible media would call these bluffs. Instead, the fourth estate acquiesced in this Rovian fantasy…and in this surrender they took their eyes off the prize. We have sacrificed essential freedom to a corporate bottom line. A vigorous and vigilant press in America once helped protect us from fascism and tyranny. Now the media serves at the discretion of those who own, control, and censor. Our freedom of the press is locked in a jail cell, while this administration enforces corporate contracts on Iraq.

It's a sad day in America when Hanson's capitulation to these thugs is applauded, rather than exposed. Unending war, munitions sales, and machinations of the transnational oil cartels are not viable foundations for framing national and international economic policies. Abdicating to voodoo economics, trickle-down dogma, exploding deficits, eroding infrastructure, and jobless recovery has been our undoing. We must stop this downward spiral.

Eisenhower warned us about the threat inherent in corporate, military, and industrial synergy. Rather than countering this transnational force, we have tried to appease the enemy. This has been our undoing. Now delicate balances of power which once protected us have been undone. We have turned the executive and legislative branches of our government over to corporate CEO's. Our judiciary is now at risk. Ike must be turning over in his grave. When will America stand up and confront the enemy at home, instead of surrendering our interests to those who care little for America, or for her people? When indeed.

Hanson: You may be a writer, teacher, and union activist, but almost everything you alleged is demonstrably false, and you sound like a preacher that peddles faith rather than an empiricist who looks at evidence. Consider:

1. There are more people working than at any other period in American history, and this is the second largest economic recovery in our history. The jobless rate hovers around 5%, far lower than most periods in American history.

2. Our polls abroad are going up, Osama's down. Ask Lebanese or Egyptian reformers if they appreciate American support for reform or wish the same old realpolitik of the 1980s and 1990s. I don't remember Bill Clinton taking any troops out of Saudi Arabia or telling Mr. Assad to get out of Lebanon.

3. You may be furious at your own country, but hundreds of millions of Indians, Australians, Japanese, and Eastern Europeans are not, but more Pro-American than ever — as well apparently as nearly 60% of the Mexican citizenry who recently polled that they would like to leave their country and come here.

4. The deficits — too large and a result of annual domestic spending that increased by almost 9% in the first Bush term — are going down, not "exploding"

5. Such drama! Who precisely is your "enemy"? The corporate billionaire and money speculator George Soros, who funded moveon.org or Ted Turner, one of the largest landowners in the United States who gives lavishly to liberal causes from his cut-throat corporate largess?

6. I never said "Islam is the enemy" but rather Islamicism. Did Buddhist fundamentalists attack the World Trade Center, the USS Cole, the East Africa embassies, or the Marines in Lebanon? I suggest you read Osama's various fatwas — there is nothing in there about union protection, allowing writers to vent like this, or teaching secular studies.

It is factually incorrect to claim that "Palestinians are getting their wish of independence in Gaza", as I suspect you are amply aware. Without control of their borders they will have nothing even approaching independence.

I agree that "tribalism, corruption, religious fanaticism and intolerance" exist in Palestinian society (as they do to a greater or lesser degree in most other societies) and that they must be addressed by the Palestinians (as they should other societies). I would put it to you, however, that to a large extent they are the by-product of the none-too-benign occupation by Israel over the past 38 years.

An independent Palestinian state within pre-1967 borders may not become a model democracy in next five years or possibly 50 but that is not a reason to refuse to grant the Palestinians what is their due. If, after the establishment of an internationally recognized Palestinian state, groups such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade persist in being rejectionist of a two-state solution, they will lose much of their raison d'être and become irrelevant and marginalized. Those who demonize the Palestinians have a tendency to conveniently overlook the fact that in the eyes of those who support the radical hard men it is the occupation from which they derive their legitimacy.

Iran and N. Korea are worrying problems, but surely for those capable of learning from mistakes the outcome of the war in Iraq demonstrates the notion that the U.S. can, on its own, "fix" problems like the "axis of evil" is as fatuous as the concept of such an axis in itself.

Hanson: Again, read what I wrote. I said "are getting" — the present progressive tense that denotes an ongoing process that we are witnessing that began with the withdrawal from Gaza. Almost everyone supports a two-state solution on lines that reflect the old Green Line, with adjustments for Israeli security. But you are naive to think Palestinian hatred will diminish after Israeli withdrawal, since the West Bank was not the question when "Palestinians" joined in the effort to destroy Israel in 1947, 1956, and 1967; that mantra of hatred was thus logically voiced by all sorts of Palestinians when Jews left Gaza.

I would not wish to be a Bosnian in 1996 and read your aristocratic, throat-clearing platitude, "fatuous," much less be a Kurd in Saddam's Iraq or an Afghan under the Taliban while you lectured over the semantics of "axis."

Hamas et. al. are not mere "rejectionist(s)", but employ suicide murderers for a political purpose, and promise unending jihad that ends only when the "Jews are in the Sea" and "Israel is no more." Are you worried that Palestinians murdered a security official, tried to terrorize a Christian town, or had a major bomb factory blow up just in a week — all having nothing to do with Israel?

An independent Palestinian state within pre-1967 borders may not become a model democracy in next five years or possibly 50 but that is not a reason to refuse to grant the Palestinians what is their due. If, after the establishment of an internationally recognized Palestinian state, groups such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade persist in being rejectionist (i.e., of a two-state solution), they will lose much of their raison d'être and become irrelevant and marginalized. Those who demonize the Palestinians have a tendency to conveniently overlook the fact that in the eyes of those who support the radical hard men it is the occupation from which they derive their legitimacy.

Iran and N. Korea are worrying propositions, but surely for those capable of learning from mistakes the outcome of the war in Iraq demonstrates the notion that the U.S. can, on its own, "fix" problems like the "axis of evil" is as fatuous as the concept of such an axis in itself.

Whenever you 'neocon' folk start (in the style of David Frum) mish-mashing together unrelated personalities such as Gene Callahan, David Duke, Michael Jackson and Charles Manson (did I get too many names in there?) it's pretty silly stuff and quite apparent for what it is — a smear job. You and I both know the smears begin when the substance has run out.

In dutifully supporting the official government version of Hiroshima/Nagasaki, you are forgetting that this is the Information Age. Anyone can now click around and within minutes discover that Japan had offered to surrender before the dropping of the bomb. Their one request about the Emperor was conceded thus making the bombs a tragic and unnecessary mistake...and probably something far worse: A cynical and evil calculation (in regards to the Soviets).

At the very least there is raging debate on this point, since the documentation for the revised version of events has been routinely available on the Internet. Callahan treats your viewpoint seriously and debates it carefully. You try to treat his viewpoint dismissively, as though it is automatically ridiculous.

I'm a guy who voted for Ronald 'don't-trust-BigBrother' Reagan twice, so I don't understand 'conservatives' like yourself who seem to routinely give a great big 'free pass' to dim-bulb bureaucrats who over the years have been churning out their ridiculous "official version" cover stories on all of their disastrous shenanigans.

Hanson: I'll ignore the first paragraph since it is odd with your protestations about treating viewpoints seriously.

Japan not only did not accept the terms of surrender offered by the United States before Hiroshima but not afterwards either — and that is in the historical record well before "routinely being available on the internet."

There was great worry at the time not that there had been a misunderstanding and Japan wanted to surrender before August 6, but rather that even in late August and early September die-hard militarists would either kidnap the emperor or stage a coup to resume the war.

Callahan, like all who write for that magazine, rarely treats anything seriously or fairly, as a brief perusal on anything concerning Lincoln, FDR, or Rudy Guiliani would show. It is a fair generalization that the group in question is pro-Confederate, radically opposed to the American entry into WW II and almost pathologically anti-Israel. The only legitimate criticism of the article I wrote is that by mentioning them at all, one gives attention to ideas that have not earned much readership or serious attention.

You last paragraph is unfortunately incoherent, but voting for Ronald Reagan is hardly proof of conservatism, since many of the 60% who did voted for Clinton twice as well. Note that in the NRO article I simply quoted what others wrote. Callahan, not I, compared the U.S. strategy against Japan to bin Laden's against us on September 11.

You obviously did not read the article in question, since I had hardly gotten a free pass, but was called a war-monger by a socialist, anarchist, racialist, and paleocon, on the basis of supporting the removal of Saddam Hussein and the creation of constitutional government in his place.

That article was really intended to show the nature — like a bar scene from Star Wars with its incoherent cadre of space characters — of the current opposition in its collection of quite disparate and disturbing characters who have become unhinged by the war.

It seems that you are consistently driven to criticize your perceived opponents’ logic with logic that is equally flawed. In today's editorial you make the point that Dick Durbin invoking Nazi concentration camps is a gross misreading of history. Good point. But then you go on to suggest that Mr. Bush's blunders are minor compared to Grant's at Shiloh, Kimmel's at Pearl Harbor, and Eisenhower's at the Battle of the Bulge. Such comparisons deserve a closer examination.

Grant was to his discredit surprised at Shiloh — but he responded immediately, and forced the enemy to retreat from the field. If Bush is Grant-less in his commitment to "stay the course," Grant knew that staying the course was silly when it was the wrong course.

Kimmel and the entire U.S. government were surprised at Pearl Harbor because we believed in our own superiority. It was our first great lesson in not underestimating the enemy. We learned that lesson again in Vietnam. (And before you jump down my throat for making a reference to Vietnam, read what follows and think about it). The lesson is — don't underestimate the enemy. The only valid comparison between Iraq and Vietnam is that we made the same failure that Kimmel and the leadership in 1941 made — we thought we were better.

Finally, we have Eisenhower at the Battle of the Bulge. Yes this was a great blunder, and the response was weak. Eisenhower surrendered control of the north flank of the Bulge to Montgomery who promptly announced that it would be months before he could counterattack. In the same meeting, Patton told the gathered generals that he could attack in 24 hours, along a line that would trap the majority of the German soldiers. Eisenhower allowed Patton to relieve Bastogne, but then followed a strategy that pushed the Germans back instead of cutting them off. In this case, Bush is Eisenhower — a politician parading as a general.

You have invoked history in a highly inaccurate way, you have become what you have beheld.

Hanson: I am sorry you are addicted — and more sorry that you are in error once again on all points.

Grant in fact did stay the course at Shiloh, when dozens of Union officers in panic suggested they withdraw to the other side of the Tennessee. He realized that despite the carnage of the first day, the Union could still survive with riverboat bombardment and reinforcements from Lew Wallace and Gen. Buell, and scoffed at the naysayers: "Lick 'em tomorrow, though." And so they stayed on, did not panic, and won the battle. He was essentially made irrelevant for a time after the battle, though, and Gen. Halleck arrived to take operational command, and summarily botched the pursuit. The moral? Don't weaken in the heat of battle and listen to second-guessers, and don't relieve a General in the middle of the campaign whose talents are unfairly denigrated by the nit-pickers. We have plenty of Hallecks today who if in command would be a disaster.

Gen. Kimmel was surprised through an intelligence failure; had he known of the Japanese attack, there is no reason to believe that the Americans would not have acquitted themselves as well as they did a few months later at Coral Sea and Midway — even with their prewar model carriers and planes. I don't think we underestimated the Japanese at all — our generals had warned for years about their excellence in carrier operations — but rather, burned by WWI and the Depression, were in the midst of an isolationist movement, plagued by a socialist vocal minority, and an array of American Firsters and Leftists, who in their unholy alliance, castigated a strong defense posture and were happy to see the prewar U.S. not fully armed and withdrawn from the world — sound familiar?

Vietnam? No, I won't jump down your throat, but will remind you that the defeat was accomplished by a conventional attack down a major highway southward — and would have been annihilated by U.S. air power had not the U.S. Congress cut off funds for air support. By 1973 all U.S. goals were essentially met: a peace accord, a South-Korea like autonomous government in the south, and the destruction of the Viet Cong as a viable insurgency. But Watergate and the cut-off of all U.S. direct aid and most supplies to the South Vietnamese made a communist conventional victory possible, replete with thousands of Chinese and Russian advisors. I hope that doesn't sound familiar.

I don't follow your third analogy which is incoherent. Wasn't Eisenhower a general parading as a politician in his efforts to satisfy all and thus none? And your example proves the opposite of what you intend: you suggest Eisenhower's timidity resulted in thousands of casualties in early 1945 through the mistaken tactic of pushing the bulge back rather than slicing it off. But no one accuses Bush of timidity, rather just the opposite — that he is swaggering and Patton-like in everything from invading Iraq to taking Fallujah, and then staying on in the face of opportunistic criticism. In general, I think your example of Bastogne has little if any relevance to Iraq.

"You have become what you have beheld" says it all: again, a tiny bit of learning is a dangerous thing.

In Victor Hanson’s San Francisco Chronicle article (July 29, 2005) “The past as politics,” he criticized Arianna Huffington’s Syracuse analogy recommending that she “carefully re-read” Thucydides. I am not a fan of Ms. Huffington but I believe his criticism is unfair.

Mr. Hanson states that the “Athenians attacked a democracy larger than their own.” Syracuse was founded by the Spartans and governed in an authoritarian manner. When it fell to the Romans, it was ruled by a “tyrant" and relative of Archimedes.

Mr. Hanson states that “Thucydides implies that Athens still could have taken Syracuse had its generals and people back home not bickered among themselves.” The Athenians enthusiastically supported the expedition to Syracuse sending a second army when the first was in difficulty.

The problem was not lack of support, but poor intelligence. The Athenians believed the Sicilians would welcome them and join the war against Syracuse. Like the weapons of mass destruction, the welcome proved illusionary.

By the time of the Roman conquest of 212 B.C., it had gone through nearly two-centuries of dictatorial and oligarchic rule well after its democratic government of the late 5^th century.

It was not I, but Thucydides who characterized Syracuse as democratic, and the speeches of “Book Six” of his history show such a government in action, confirmed by Diodorus’s account excerpted from Ephorus.

You did not understand what I wrote, which was “Yet Thucydides implies that Athens still could have taken Syracuse had its generals and the people back home not bickered amongst themselves.” That was the historian’s assessment not mine (which I disagree with), and spelled out explicitly in “Book Two”, perhaps in regard to the recall of Alcibiades. The tragic indecision between Lamachus, Nicias, and Alcibiades is highlighted as well by Thucydides who seems to think it accounts for the initial and fatal indecision.

The problem was not anything comparable to WMD. When the Athenians were winning, as was true by the concluding chapters of “Book Six”, the Sicilians allies were joining the effort against Syracuse; when Athens began to lose and Sparta intervened, the Sicilians decided to go with the apparent winners. The intervention of Gylippus was critical, since the Athenian walls on Epipolae were almost finished and Syracuse itself almost doomed.

It would be fair to conclude that Thucydides thought the expedition was unnecessary, but once it was undertaken, could have worked if not due to poor command and politics back home.

Hello

I am a new reader and I know a fair bit about WWII. I think that your article "How the 'Cowboys' of the West Defeated the Nazis" is, quite frankly, crap. Your blind and idiotic patriotism has led you to believe that in the face of all evidence indicating otherwise, the Americans won the war. You yourself admitted that two out of three German soldiers were killed by Soviet soldiers.

You also seem to associate every Russian soldier with Stalin. The Red Army defeated the Germans in Operation Uranus; in spite of Stalin's purges and inability to lead a military force, and the German's technological superiority, the Red Army still managed to defeat the German forces. For every sacrifice the Americans made, whether it be the loss of planes or loss of troops in futile infantry charges, the Russians made 5.

The Russian determination and sacrifice greatly outweighed that of the Americans. Read Barbarossa by Alan Clark and you might learn something. If you can say that D-Day was a monumental victory, then why not call the Battle of Berlin a monumental victory? Is it because the Russians didn’t have the overwhelming number of troops that ran up the beaches of Normandy?

The Soviets won the war, but you — so-called "historians" (I use the term very loosely) and typically idiotic American — refuse to give the Soviets their due, just because of the Cold War; years later, you have erased them from the history books and made yourselves the heroes.

Hanson: Try to offer less heat and more light, since most of what you say is emotion rather than reason. So here it goes:

2. You must learn to read carefully, instead of writing before digesting thoughts. I did not write "the Americans won the war," if by that you mean America alone. Thus cf. what I wrote: "Credit for victory was not ours alone. Our British and Soviet allies had fought longer and killed far more Germans. Hitler's follies — the invasion of the Soviet Union, the belated mobilization of the German economy, the misapplication of his frightening new weaponry, and his sometimes lunatic intrusion into military decision-making — all helped."

3. Please cite where I wrote "associate every Russian soldier with Stalin". Instead, I wrote that it was tragic that those who defeated Hitler were either themselves enslaved or used for causes that aided totalitarianism:

"For all the horror of Hitler's culture of death, to end it we were put in the morally ambiguous position of aiding Stalin, who had killed millions more of his own Russians than the Nazis ever did. An ironic dividend of the wreckage of war was that tens of millions who had once chafed under the paternalism of the aristocratic Victorian imperialists were now for the next half-century to be enslaved under the savage socialist emissaries of the Soviet Union. "

4. Relative contributions are tragically not just measured by soldiers killed and lost. Had you read the piece rather than vented, you would have seen consideration given to theaters in Italy, North Africa, Japan, strategic bombing, submarine and surface warfare, convoys, aid, etc. — all outside the sphere of the Red Army. The Red Army did more than any other force to destroy the German army, but unfortunately the Wehrmacht was more than the German army, and that larger task more often fell to the allies.

5. It is a depressing sign of our times, that far too many readers such as yourself, get livid, misquote what others wrote, dash off a few thoughts, and then turn to ad hominem shots. I praised the contributions of the Red Army, but noted the irony of their sacrifice and the multifaceted efforts of the Anglo-Americans.

If you were to receive a monetary violation fee for every lie you told in your most recent article it would certainly be one that breaks any record. We will start with the single and first lie: Israelies invented and developed terrorism as a modern campaign to build and construct Israel. They then commit terrorism daily, and are terrorists, thriving on terror. Therefore, your remaining premises cannot hold-up by any stretch of the imagination. Your arguments are all false and you make such a valiant effort to sound like an expert. When was the last time you visited these places of the world and witnessed with your own eyes the level of terror these people live with daily? You call Arafat a terrorist — perhaps he was. But what is Sharon — the king of terror? By any definition terror is immoral and cannot be defended, but certainly your proclamation of lies does not help!!!

Hanson: I always enjoy the rhetorical trick in which the speaker lists "every lie" or untold number of which and then cites just 2 or 3 in the interest of economy. But here this weary answer goes.

Try reading Thucydides or Caesar or Plutarch and learn about Corcyra or Gaul or Pontus, say 2500-2000 years ago.

No, I think you got it backwards; every day across the world from the U.K. to Thailand to Spain to the U.S. to Darfur to Iraq to Pakistan some Muslim is terrorizing or killing some innocent under some such specious grievance. Ask yourself why impoverished African animists, or Costa Rican Christians or poor Bulgarians are not blowing people up. "Occupied Land"? Ask the Tibetans.

Note that when a genuine Israeli terrorist kills four innocents, Israel condemns him and Palestinians lynch him; when a Palestinian terrorist is caught, he is praised by his brethren and taken in custody by the Israelis alive and headed for a trial. If you could answer why that is — there would be peace in the Middle East.

Lie #3 I was in Palestine 2 years ago, and nothing I saw on the West Bank changed my previous opinion nor the Palestinians I talked to: had they simply ignored Israelis, crafted a civil democratic society and engaged in nonviolent peaceful protest, they would have their state and the world's support. But now, as the reader's hysteria shows, the entire world from Russia and India to the West has sickened of Islamic fascism, and the question is not will they react, but how far will they go. Thanks to the terrorists and letters like this one, an increasing number in the West are grasping that there are millions on our shores in Europe and the U.S. who are apologists for terror (1 out of 5 Muslims in the U.K. polls show) and parasitical on Western values.

How sad, try to destroy Western values — until the moment you are caught, then demand "I have rights" and do anything possible to stay in the hated West. In all candor, I never understood the fury over the Israeli fence that so far has pretty much followed the pre-1967 border: polls suggest Palestinians hate Israel, the fence symbolizes that venom, so why the anger of not being able to enter the Zionist entity?

Lie #4. No, I didn't call Arafat a terrorist, he was a terrorist — as well as dishonest and a master extortionist. Read the latest expose in the Atlantic Monthly and the kleptocracy he created thanks to the Oslo tragedy. Arafat had one staged election one time; Sharon faced many and is in the arena of the free press. Sharon's "terrorism" was aired in a free press and the subject of judicial inquiry; had any on the West Bank tried that with Arafat they would be with him now in Paradise.

In short, your letter is indicative of many that I receive who don't yet get it: that the world is exhausted with radical Islam and Arab terrorism, and it will have tragic consequences for everyone involved, as we can see from the new laws in the U.K., Holland, France, etc. — all a direct result of views like this. Take a deep breath, get a life, and try to do something other than blame Jews and Westerners for all the self-inflicted misery that are the logical wages of Middle East autocracy, theocracy, polygamy, gender apartheid, religious intolerance, tribalism, and suppression of free thought. All that leads to poverty and misery; if you do not wish to join the world, then let it alone and don't go to the West, buy its products, or become so obsessed by its success.

I endorse your critique of the Left. However, within the framework of your analytic principles (with which I mostly agree), why Iraq? Compare pre-invasion Iraq to Iran. In Iran there was a clear, present, and immediate danger that nuclear weapons would be developed. In Iraq, we had a greatly weakened despot who represented a danger mostly to his own people. Yes, he had some ties to Bin Laden, so what? They clearly were not integrally related or critical to al Qaeda operation. While we have invested virtually all of our discretionary military resources in Iraq, the madrassas continue to turn out hate-filled Islamicists whose numbers will, eventually, reach critical mass and the so-called moderate Islamicists will be as powerless, in fact, as they have acted.

Frankly, I am not at all interested in saving pre-enlightenment Muslims from themselves. Why bother? Oil? In a country with 200 years of coal reserves just waiting to become an economically viable energy source and the technological expertise to develop all manner of alternative energy sources, exactly why should we invest so much in a set of oil reserves that are rapidly being depleted? Or, is it Israel? One thing that Israel has understood since 1948 is that it must take care of itself. It is more than up to the job, especially, if we would help a little by keeping the Middle East from becoming a nuclear region. People have a right to live the way they want to as long as it doesn't harm others. That includes Muslims, however conservative.

With all due respect, and in my estimation much is due, I believe you have mistaken the weakness and utter irrelevance of the Left as prima fascia evidence that our effort in Iraq is sound. I think this is fallacious. The Left is so out of touch with the realities of our world that the words 'mass psychosis' come to mind. Unfortunately, when considering the war in Iraq the words 'wish fulfillment' come to mind. We have an enemy, a clever, brutal and evil enemy and it is not clear how to fight him. So, we invented an entire mythos around Iraq: we will fight them there so we don't have to here. Deconstruct that and you end up in thin air.

Hanson: There are several flaws in your argument and I will address them in the order they appear.

(1) On Iran. Obviously we cannot attack all the illegitimate regimes that deserve removal. In the case of Iran, we were not in the middle of a 12-year-old war patrolling two-thirds of their skies. There was no apparent dissident population in Iraq that, as in the case of Iran, might change the regime without our use of force. Even Iran did not attack Saddam, who attacked not only Iran, but Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Israel, as well as his own Shiite and Kurdish populations. While Iran is trying to get nuclear weapons, Saddam already had the facilities nearly finished when Israel struck, and U.N. inspectors were in his country for years. Iran may well become Iraq in its quest for conquest and nuclear weapons, and when it does, we have a proven method of dealing with it.

(2) Yes, Iraq requires a good portion of our now reduced military. But if successful, the rewards will be great. Note that Iraqis are fighting the terrorists as are Afghans, in a way the Saudis or Egyptians are not. Stopping the madrassas is more a problem of dealing with the money (the Saudis), the sanctuaries (Pakistan), and the intellectual central nervous system (Egypt). Oddly Iraq is bringing things to the fore, and these surrounding countries are increasingly forced to choose sides rather than triangulating against us with the terrorists. What is going on in Lebanon would be impossible with Saddam in power; his removal was the proverbial unleashed current, and the cleansing of the Middle East Augean Stables will be as odorous as it is necessary.

(3) My distrust of the Left has nothing to do with support for Iraq. Offering a third way between fascism and Islamicism is the best way to deflate the appeal of the terrorists. That seems to be behind the furor of the jihadists who berate other Muslims for joining the U.S. in the current war. Again, we don't have to like the Muslims of Turkey or India — or more recently democratic Afghanistan and Iraq — to see that they are rarely producing global jihadists. Other Muslims in their midst under democratic auspices take responsibility for local governance rather than blaming the U.S. and a corrupt dictatorship. Had we been backing the current corrupt leaders in the Philippines, then it too would be damning the U.S. as in the Marcos days; instead, democratic societies have no one to blame but themselves, as U.S. credibility is enhanced. The present course is messy, disheartening, frustrating — and the only solution in an era of only bad and worse dilemmas.

(4) Right now about the only place in the world — not in Egypt, Pakistan, or Saudi Arabia — where large number of Muslim fanatics and terrorists are being killed is in Afghanistan and, yes, Iraq. I am not of the persuasion that D-Con trays create, rather than merely draw out, rats, although the results are often messy and smelly, and reveal a seemingly endless supply of such pests that we scarcely knew were deep within our walls.

(5) In fact, we do know how to fight the enemy and the strategy is comprehensive and three-pronged: increase domestic security (deportation of the peddlers of hate in the mosques and madrassas of the West is long overdue); kill terrorists and jihadists abroad; and offer an alternative to the Middle East other than dictatorship and terrorism. Contrary to caricature, we don't care whether the Middle East likes us or not, only that its landscape does not produce jihadists that try to murder Westerners in mass.

(6) Israel's nuclear weapons are not the problem, as France's and the U.K.'s are not either. Nuclear weaponry is serious, but disastrous only when combined with autocracy, hence our concerns with the non-democratic Middle East. After the Holocaust, Israel was seen as the only place in the world where Jews might live in peace. And what we've since 1945 seems to bear that fear out — whether being attacked by its neighbors, threatened by a nuclear Soviet Union, or turned on by Europe. Its arsenal may have prevented the Soviets in the various Middle East wars from joining the Arab cause, and keeps Arab dictatorships from attacking it, as well as warning the world there will be no second Holocaust. Pakistan is nuclear and the most hate-filled sanctuary for jihadists in the world. But so far they don't send a missile into Israel; you can speculate why, and what the Middle East would be like had Israel not had nuclear weapons, when a Pakistan or, next, Iran did.

(7) I entirely agree that our dependence on Middle Eastern oil is bad in every way: our petrodollars are like giving grenades to a child; our financial health is imperiled as we distort tribal societies with newfound wealth; and our foreign policy (cf. especially our attitude to the primordial clique in Saudi Arabia) is warped by concerns for the next morning's commute.

No, Plato didn't think much of actors — or the arts in general: especially poets. And his Republic was an authoritarian model not to be emulated. You didn't have to go back to Vietnam; the operative word there is “ignorant." A country so misled it never did catch on to a policy that sent working-class guys to "do or die" while the college/career class could enjoy those infamous "other options." (And some to live to be today's "chickenhawks.")

Your example of entertainers who ran for office and endured a campaign and cross-examination seems quite specious when, with hindsight, I think we can say those men attained office more on their show-biz persona than the usual requirements of some knowledge and understanding.

I know it is increasingly difficult to support the diversionary (to be distinguished from the needed war on terrorism) war in Iraq, and at the Hoover you probably have plenty of support, but history — with parallels aplenty from Athens and Rome — will condemn this war of serial and dubious motives.

Quote Plato, but wouldn't a more apt question be: what would Socrates do? (Or, more to the point, would he engage in dialogue?)

Hanson: Your letter is unfortunately in error in all of its points. I did not suggest that we emulate Plato's authoritarian utopia in either the Laws or the Republic; hence I never suggested that artists be banished from the polis. But within his dialogues there is real brilliance on a range of other issues, and the point of Ion and other dialogues is to stress that artistic brilliance is never necessarily associated with knowledge or insight — although such naturally endowed gifts often confuse us to the contrary. You did not read what I wrote.

Second, polls of Vietnam veterans and those who served reveal not anger at U.S. policy of defending the south, however sometimes unfair, as you state, the tactics were that put them there (since by 1971 their skill and bravery had achieved a viable South Vietnamese government). Rather far more often they were furious at the protestors back home whose opposition was not content at principled demonstration, but extended to personal attacks on our own troops — from the Jane Fonda left who trekked to Hanoi to demands to cut off all aid for Vietnam after 1972, when air power alone was preserving the accomplishment achieved by the sacrifice of skilled and brave American soldiers.

Such revisionism you advance(!), when the majority of the Vietnam veterans do not blame those who supported the war, but rather the anti-war leftists that now post facto takes it upon themselves to justify their opposition by claiming moral allegiance with those they once opposed. And you conveniently ignore the results — the one million boat people, the half million killed and jailed by the communists, and the Cambodian holocaust. I would not raise the class issue, since the demonstrators on the campuses were of a different class by and large as well from the soldiers who fought.

Does the nomenclature "chickenhawk" mean that no one can discuss, much less support military action, unless they themselves were in the military? By such logic, those who don't drive a tractor for 12 hrs a day can't comment on food safety, or neighborhood watch groups cannot audit, support, or reject police action without themselves serving on the beat. So far this war has no fronts, as we saw in London and Madrid. The first day of the conflict on 9/11 saw more fatalities among our civilians than all military losses to date. So be careful went you loosely employ the old boilerplate rhetoric in lieu of an argument.

It is not specious to contrast those actors who use their fame for cheap pronouncements (a Sean Penn), and those who wish to express political views running for office (Arnold Schwarznegger) where they can be scrutinized and cross-examined in the public arena, and must have positive agendas rather than easy slurs. I don't listen to Warren Beatty's rants, but if he chooses to use his celebrity to jump start a political career, then more power to him, and he can succeed or fail by the success which he punches and counters in open debate. Reagan the actor did more to end the Soviet Empire and its legacy of 30 million butchered than all the pros in the State Department of the 1960s and 70s.

Iraq is not diversionary. Before March 2003, generic terrorists were there from Abu Nidal to Abu Abbas. Al-Zarqawi flocked there from Afghanistan, as well as the organizer of the first World Trade Center bombing, and al Qaedists were in Kurdistan. Currently tens of thousands of Iraqis are braving terrorists to craft a democratic government and are killing terrorists as we speak. Ripples from Lebanon to Egypt to the Gulf are already questioning the old either/or of Islamicists and dictators.

You know little of the Hoover Institution since two or three of the most prominent critics of the Iraqi war reside there. If you think there are parallels from Greece and Rome, then please adduce them; those who cite Sicily, 415-13 BC, err as well, since the proper analogy to the Athenian attack on a neutral, larger, and democratic Syracuse would be something like America attacking democratic India and losing. Thucydides, wrongly in my view, of course blamed the loss of the Sicily campaign on bickering back home at Athens.

My God, do you know anything of Socrates at all? Aside from his service in dubious battles of Athenian imperialism such as Potidaia and Amphipolis, the entire point of the Apology and Crito is what does the good citizen do when his government that he supports seems to him wrong?

From Plato's rendition of what Socrates said, we can imagine him perhaps saying something like "I don't agree with the Iraqi war, but as a citizen of the United States, I accept that the U.S. Senate voted for it on 23 counts by a vast margin, the President ran successfully for reelection as a referendum on it in 2004, and so far has had it funded by a popularly elected Congress and found constitutional by the Supreme Court. Hence the good citizen supports the efforts of the government." Read the speech of the personified Nomoi in the Crito and what the laws say to the detained Socrates.

Remember this was a philosopher that drank the hemlock when (a) he knew the capital charge was trumped up and political, and (b) he had every opportunity to escape confinement with tacit help from his jailers. His argument, again recall, is that the citizen in a constitutional government does not pick and chose which policies he supports, but rather once his state has come to a democratically-sanctioned decision, accepts that verdict and then follows it. Bill Clinton did not go to the UN and did not, unlike George Bush, even go to the Senate to bomb Serbia. But as an elected president, with apparent support from the Congress, he seemed to have the right to do so, and as a citizen I supported his efforts to preempt and end the murderous Milosevic regime, and wrote public op-eds to that effect. I thought Republicans who opposed him as our planes were in harm's way made a grave mistake.

Your letter is an example of the old adage of a little bit of learning being a dangerous thing.

In your article “Real Lesson of Vietnam,” you seem to forget that the consequences of an American withdrawal from Iraq you foretell — attacks here at home, terrorists killing with impunity in the Middle East, an end to the wave of democratization that has begun to sweep the region — are the very things the liberals want. They hate America enough, that they don't care how horrific the consequences will be for American servicemen or civilians, so long as their messianic ideology is somehow proven right. These people are fair-weather patriots at best and a fifth column for the terrorists at worst. Therefore, your attempt to get these people to see reason will probably fail, just as every such attempt has failed in the past.

Hanson: Perhaps, but all of us must try to support our three-pronged strategy of hunting down the terrorists abroad, pressuring for democratic reform in the Middle East, and ensuring that jihadists don't operate on our shores. I can't imagine anything worse than an American premature withdrawal from Iraq — something that would make the earlier flight from Lebanon or Mogadishu look like child's play in its deleterious effects on American security.

You wrote: “Bin Laden has so far only made one mistake: He took down the entire World Trade Center rather than the top floors, and had the misfortune of having George Bush as president. Thus he lost Afghanistan and ended up with democratic reform from Iraq and Lebanon to the Gulf and Egypt.”

Your statement misunderstands of the aims of al-Qaeda. What bin Laden wants is precisely what Bush is giving him—a war between Muslims and non-Muslims. Instead of finding bin Laden, Bush attacks the wrong country, thereby emboldening bin Laden and winning him converts. Thus has Bush played into the hands of bin Laden.

As for democratic reform, Iraq is now crawling with terrorists, a situation that did not exist before we invaded. Don’t forget that Bush walks around holding hands with Saudi royalty and is a buddy of the military dictator of Pakistan.

Hanson: First, Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan are fighting each other. Thousands battle against Taliban remnants and the hardcore of the Sunni Triangle. But an Islamicist might echo your charges: “That damn George Bush and his democracy have made us fight each other.”

We have taken apart two-thirds of al-Qaeda and forced it to spend its youth and treasure in Iraq, not here. At the same time, al-Qaeda finds itself in the unenviable position of fighting Iraqi Muslims to stop democracy. Who accomplished that? The diabolic George Bush?

As for the wrong country, had you been alive in 1943, would you have railed that we were attacking North Africa or Sicily rather than the Japanese mainland, the only country, after all, that attacked us?

Genocide existed before we invaded Saddam’s Iraq, a regime without any chance of reform. Now terrorists like moths to a searing flame are flocking there and in most cases being incinerated. They show their true colors in trying to destroy a government voted in by the people. When rats flock to a tray of D-Con, few say that the poison created rats out of thin air and made the problem worse.

I wrote about the need to distance ourselves from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt in a recent Commentary article posted on our website. So we at least agree on the point of supporting democratic reformers and the aspirations of Arab people who have had enough. But remember neither Warren Christopher nor Madeleine Albright gave a speech like Secretary Rice’s June 20^th address at the American University in Cairo—a clear call for democratic reform inside Egypt. Since you don’t mention that, or the total withdrawal of U.S. troops from Saudi Arabia (something never envisioned by Clinton in eight years), I conclude your angst is not one based on principle but the same old furor at George Bush who can do no right.

I find the point of your article “Hitler, Hitler, Everywhere” to be misdirected. You are attacking the symptom not the root cause. As a liberal I cringe every time I hear some Democrat use the Hitler analogy against this administration. It is like comparing a neighborhood petty thief to the mafia. Hyperbole at its
most hysterical.

However, the problem does not lie in the use of the language but in the inability, on either side of the political spectrum, to argue a point without resorting to pejorative idiocy. In the case of this administration, there is every reason to make the case that they are engaged in policies that are classically fascist. The scapegoating of a group of people (gays), excessive nationalism used to solidify political aims, wars of aggression, an oligarchy of business and military interests, an eroding of civil liberties.... These are all topics that should be up for debate and we should not shy away from the word fascist.

The problem is that no one seems to be able to successfully use the political philosophy of fascism in a paragraph without equating someone with a Nazi, a sadist or a thug. The end result is that political debate ends up in the gutter with both sides name calling and demanding apologies. The best response to anyone using these phrases is one that my high school history teacher used with brutal efficiency. " You may have a point, but your words show lazy and sloppy thinking."

Hanson: I agree with much of what you say, but ultimately your analysis is flawed. During the 1990s I was often critical of the right for its strange fixation with Clinton, when it seems his annihilation rather than opposition to his policies became the goal. But now at this moment in time, you are disingenuous if you think the Hitlerian slurs and hysteria about Nazis don't for the most part originate from an angry reactionary Left.

So why now? It is frustrated that the near 50/50 split in the electorate has not resulted in any real political power, such as majorities in the House or Senate or control of the Supreme Court or presidency. So frustration at a near miss has led to unhinged fury, in hopes that a minor Bush lapse, with the right hype and hysteria, can be elevated into a scandal and a scandal into a few million more voters, that in turn can be the tipping point for just enough clout to win back the congress, presidency, or courts.

Second, you yourself almost inadvertently descend into a wounded-fawn, weepy caricature — "excessive nationalism," "wars of aggression", "scapegoating gays", "eroding civil liberties". Recall that the Patriot Act was voted in by a strong bipartisan majority in the Congress, and it is hard to find evidence that many Americans have lost their liberties, especially in the context of past wars when a Lincoln or FDR (not exactly reactionaries) employed suspension of habeas corpus and forced internment. Being opposed to gay marriage, for example, is not “scapegoating” gays, nor is a “war of aggression” quite right for deposing a dangerous fascist and trying to jumpstart democracy while being price-gouged by nearby oil exporters. Even "excessive nationalism" is silly: this is a country that recently witnessed “Fahrenheit 911”, an Alfred Knopf novel about shooting George Bush, and a U.S. Senator on the floor associating the U.S. with Nazi and Stalinist death camps.

So come on, in movies, literature, and politics Americans easily and freely not merely critique the U.S. but demonize it. I see no climate of "excessive nationalism" but rather a dangerous malady of Pavlovian "blame America first" that is neither rational nor empirical. So why I agree with you about the dangers of invective, I think it incumbent to identify a preponderance of responsibility rather than your squishy "we all do it" cop-out.

Senator Durbin was correct. The FBI report described treatment of prisoners that was exactly what one might have expected in Auschwitz or a Siberian gulag. His only fault was the implication that the U.S. military in Guantanamo was responsible for these outrages. The fault lies much higher.

And, don't forget Rush Limbaugh's "femi-nazis." He has never, and never will, apologize.

Hanson: You miss the point of Senator Durbin's inept simile. The content of the FBI private email is exactly what one would NOT expect in Auschwitz: Here is what you would apparently imagine instead there: Red Cross visits to see the Jewish inmates; not a single death at the camp (rather than 10,000 a day); Torahs supplied to every inmate, with special Kosher food given; all the while Nazi camp guards would write members of the Reichstag to complain about the heat or cold in the inmates' cells. That you would not see through this silly comparison is not merely perplexing but amoral, inasmuch as the Holocaust is thus reduced to loud music, occasional shackles, and periodic oppressive heat, and not a single death. Nazi doctors used the inmates as human subjects, rather than gave them x-rays, heart monitors, and sophisticated medical care.

If they closed Guantanamo, and released terrorists entered the US and let off a nuke in Chicago, you might be the first to demonize Bush and Co. as "incompetent" and "inept." It is no accident — cf. the 20th foiled hijacker who is currently detained there — that we have not had another 9-11 strike in the last four years.

Ostensibly you make a good point about the use of "Femi-Nazis; " such a comparison, if it was meant seriously rather than radio-talk entertainment, I think is really wrong; as was Senator Santorum's quip as well. But if you review the references they fall pretty heavily on the Left, and include politicians like Rangel and Durbin who one expects should be more responsible than a Linda Ronstedt or Michael Moore.

I have read a couple of your articles and am truly amazed that somone who obviously attended good schools, and appears to have graduated, can actually be so ignorant. You tout Bush as some visionary who intervened to stop a dictator in Iran instead of the bumbling, indecisive, children's book reader he is.

He invaded a sovereign nation, he has set up companies for friends of Dick Cheney to make millions if not billions off of dead thousands, not hundreds of U.S. servicemen as you purport. He twisted information and sold it to the religious right that we have a moral obligation to free these people from their ideologies.

Guantanamo is holding people without the military tribunals as promised and who is to know if any have died? Have you been given access to question any there? Have you sought out any released and spoken to them? I believe you sit in your ivory tower, locked in the past with no concept of the current. So to quote our very eloquent vice-president, "go f*** yourself."

(2) That caricature surrounding Bush reading a children's book came out of Michael Moore's mythodrama, and Bush's supposed ignorance was a subtext of the most recent presidential campaign, although recently released records show that John Kerry's GPA at Yale was not quite as high as was George Bush's.

(3) The dead so far in combat in the present war in Iraq numbers about 1700, not "thousands."

(4) Don't know the significance of the "sold it to the religious right," which is just another conspiracy theory to file along side the "Jews" and the "Neoconservatives" who are "really" behind the war. Many of the palaeoright, among them a number of Christians, were opposed to this war from the beginning.

(5) If you are referring to Haliburton in Iraq, I don't know of very many companies who wish to do business in such a climate. From what we know most of the documented corruption has been among Iraqi companies.

(6) A group of congressmen, among whom were many Democrats, recently returned from Guantanamo and were pleasantly surprised at the humane conditions, given the rhetoric that it was some sort of Nazi-era death camp. If we hear of false stories about flushed Korans, then surely we would know of true stories of deaths. Few camps that I am aware employ CT scans, heart monitors, and radiologists on call to treat prisoners.

(7). I have not spoken to the released, but have read of a number of former inmates who went directly back to Afghanistan, rejoined the jihadists, and are once again trying to kill Americans.

(8) I work at the Hoover Institution three days a week; the rest of the time I reside in rural southwestern Fresno County on a farm, which is not exactly ivory anything.

I read your critique of the liberal media in the Chicago Tribune May 27. Why do conservative commentators in the news media have to plow the same ground? Why is Michael Isikoff a yellow journalist today when a few years ago commentators of your ilk thought his reporting about Clinton and Lewinsky was Pulitzer-quality material? How can you ignore John Fund and R. Foster Winans of the Wall Street Journal?

But your column misses the bigger issue. Reporting errors are reprehensible. And maybe the mea culpas from news organizations were not as sincere as they should have been. More importantly, though, as a nation we are being lied to by the president and his appointees. Not about sex but war. Why did we invade Iraq? Where are the WMD? When is Bush going to apologize for leading us on a mission whose end is not in sight and that has led to thousands of Americans and Iraqis being killed or wounded?

These questions are too important to ignore. Will the bloggers light the way for us? I doubt it. We need more reporters like Seymour Hersh and not right-wing defenders of an administration that is darkening the image of America.

Hanson: Again, please read what I wrote — not what you insinuate that I wrote. Nowhere did I say Michael Isikoff was a yellow journalist. I've met him, done an interview with him, and liked him.

What I wrote was that his story was based on one anonymous source — that practice is already under review by Newsweek and others — and confirmed a readiness to go with a shaky story line that appeared to many as consistent with a general bias in the media.

As I recall Mr. Isikoff had his Clintonian investigations held up by Newsweek editors, which tends to confirm what we all suspect — editorial diligence and reticence given a possible embarrassing disclosure about a prominent liberal, rashness when it is a matter of the military or conservatives.

I think any disinterested observers could make the argument that the recent scandals at the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, USA Today, CBS, CNN, etc. represent the mainstream media's consistent pattern of slanting the news. I'm not saying necessarily that conservatives are inherently more balanced, only that they gravitate more to the opinion and alternate media, since our stand-bys — CBS, New York Times, NPR, PBS, etc. — are predominantly liberal even in mainstream otherwise non-political reporting. Fox News is an exception, of course, and its popularity suggests a new era when mainstream news, not opinion, will now have left/right takes on everyday reporting. But Fox is a reaction to years of bias, and its enormous popularity suggests that millions believe it is the only daily antidote to the majority of other organizations.

We invaded Iraq, as the Senate vote disclosed, for 23 reasons. The administration erred in focusing so much on WMD, in preference to the other 22 writs; if they lied, it was due to bad intelligence, and your charge applies equally well to most of the U.S. Senate and governments abroad — if you go back and read the transcripts of what Ms. Clinton, John Kerry, and others said in October 2002. I don't think Seymour Hersh is someone you wish to advance as a solid source, given his own record of misstatements, politicized reporting, confessions of fudging the truth, and retractions.

Finally I am far more confident than you of the ripples from Iraq. Millions there are not under Saddam's slave state; an elected government is fighting terrorism; and from Egypt to the Gulf to Lebanon, democracy is in the air, the only solution to both terrorism and the threat of WMD.

To the editor:
Victor Davis Hanson’s attack on tenure (op-ed, May 13) contains so many mistakes that a page full of letters could not correct them. Apart from the purely factual errors (tenure does not prevent professors from being fired for misconduct; tenure was developed in the early 20th century, not the 1960s, to protect academic freedom), Hanson’s general smears against higher education are untrue: in reality, American universities have more diverse expression of ideas than any institution in society (including newspaper op-ed pages). Hanson often contradicts himself: he libels Ward Churchill and complains because Churchill can’t be fired for expressing his political views; and then Hanson dismisses the idea that, without tenure, professors will be fired for their political views. Perhaps if Hanson and his allied were not seeking to purge controversial faculty, we would not need tenure so much.

It is true that the growth of non-tenure-track instructors endangers the tenure system and academic freedom. But getting rid of tenure will accelerate this problem, not solve it. Hanson is right about one thing: no corporation has a system as meticulous as university tenure, where competent employees of a stable business are carefully scrutinized after working for 6 years and then fired if they fail to meet the highest standards. Sitting in his plush think-tank office where he gets paid well to sneer at all the faculty doing the hard work of real teaching, Hanson ought to stop attacking universities and start urging greater public investment in them.

Hanson: I received a number of outraged letters from unsigned academics concerning the Tribune op-ed I wrote about replacing tenure with periodic contracts that were renewable — but far more mail from non-university employees who agreed entirely. In any case, this frenzied cry of the heart, which was signed, is as good as any to address and I will answer his objections in the order he raised them.

1. There are no factual errors. The angry reader misquotes what I wrote, which was just about the opposite of what he implied. And since he does that at the very beginning of his correspondence, he gives away the game of pure emotion in lieu of reason.

I actually wrote the "equivalent of life-long employment," which allows for the perhaps 1% or so of tenured professors that are fired for misconduct. Yes, misconduct can get one fired, but the key is defining what is "misconduct" — surely not fabricating a resume, plagiarism, stealing the work of others, lying, or other sins, or we would have seen high-profile firings of tenured professors where such cases have occurred from the U.S. Naval Academy to Harvard to Colorado.

If Ward Churchill had stolen the work of others on the op-ed pages, or had a major journalist confessed to creating an entire ethnic identity, or had an artist been caught appropriating the work of others, he would have been long gone. Churchill will probably be "bought out"; that is because he cannot be easily fired and is close to retirement. Colorado will offer money because they realize how tenure prevents normal procedures to address problems like Churchill — though let us hope the price is less than the millions his lawyer once snickered was the blackmail price of reversing Churchill's tenure.

2. Go back and read the piece again. Nowhere did I write that tenure was created in the 1960s. How silly. Instead I said that I thought that it was in the 1960s that its existence had the effect of promoting and reinforcing the new ideological culture of the campus ("Tenure became part of protecting this strange culture in which the ends justified the means: Bias in the classroom was passed off as "balance" to an inherently prejudiced society.") Note the grammar: an existing tenure "became" part of something other than intended, i.e. now protecting this strange culture.

3. "American universities have more diverse expression of ideas than any institution in society (including newspaper op-ed pages)." This is laughable. Take any controversial political issue of the times — the war, race-based admissions, gender issues, gay marriage — and then research faculty senate votes and compare them with popular opinion or op-eds. There is now a cottage industry of surveying faculty for their political views, and they are as one-sided as they are extreme, especially in the arts and humanities.

4. How did I "libel" Ward Churchill? Once more, go back and read what I wrote about him and explain what is untrue. I lament he cannot be fired — not for his silly rants — but because of his lying and dishonesty (e.g. "We discovered that he did not have a Ph.D., created a Native-American identity, and appropriated the intellectual property of others — but was promoted to a tenured full professorship, protected by a lifetime contract."). We only discovered Churchill from his public slander of the 3,000 murdered ("little Eichmanns"), which suggests that tenure only reinforces the problems of peer review and faculty governance; both apparently can result in such guarantees to those without credentials and a history of fabrication.

5. The angry reader met my diagnosis. He wrote this: "Perhaps if Hanson and his allied (sic) were not seeking to purge controversial faculty, we would not need tenure so much." I wrote this in the op-ed : "McCarthyism is evoked as the only bleak alternative to tenure. " This psycho-drama "purge" and "controversial faculty" is so tired at this late date that the public laughs at it. "Controversial"? Maybe there are such professors, especially when a few faculty members' rantings are aired in public, like a Chomsky's or Churchill's.

But in most cases, the race/class/gender mantra goes on unchallenged, since it has become the campus secular religion, especially among administrators, who grasp how to be promoted and retained.

Again, nowhere did I say Churchill should be fired for his odious views, but that he could not easily be terminated for a myriad of offenses that would have earned anyone else outside the campus immediate severance. And please make the distinction: a faculty member who rants about U.S. fascism, hegemony, etc. is brave when he does it on the street corner in Kansas City, or writes an op-ed for a daily in Salt Lake City, but when he goes off topic in class he is simply a medieval clergyman chanting in his enclave the approved liturgy. This strange tendency to reinvent carefully orchestrated orthodoxy into the on-the-barricades courage is one of the most depressing things that has grown up in the post-1960s campus.

6. Note the bizarre logic about part-timers; they multiply because there are not enough tenured professors? If the logic of the angry reader were true, then nearly half the faculty now on some campuses would be paralyzed in fear of ideological retribution since they are part-timers without tenure. But perhaps he has hit on something. Many part-timers are fearful, not of administrators, but of politically-correct, tenured faculty — because they understand the tenured entrenched class who hires them and enjoys perks that they will not extend to others can surely fire them if they deviate from the campus creed. Thus my call for 5 year contracts — much longer than what most part-timers now get, far less than what tenured mandarins enjoy — would both offer them clarity and parity with their peers they teach alongside.

7. Is this following statement in light of the Churchill episode serious? — "Hanson is right about one thing: no corporation has a system as meticulous as university tenure, where competent employees of a stable business are carefully scrutinized after working for 6 years and then fired if they fail to meet the highest standards."

Not having a PhD, faking a Native-American identity, and plagarizing constitute "highest standards?" Indeed, what the public is furious about is not only that it will cost tens of thousands to get rid of this "carefully scrutinized" professor, but under what conceivable system was this character hired, tenured, promoted, and ended up as a full professor and department chair. Anyone who knows the ideological nature of the campus can readily answer: because he reinvented himself not as a white male academic with a M.A. that he was, but as an oppressed minority who had a tendency to go ballistic when challenged about his ultra radical views or credentials, thus bullying timid academics even as he played on their guilt and shared their politics, albeit in an especially extreme fashion.

8. "Sitting in his plush think-tank office where he gets paid well to sneer at all the faculty doing the hard work of real teaching, Hanson ought to stop attacking universities and start urging greater public investment in them."

For the record, I taught for 20 years, "real" teaching with an 8-course load, found it about right, and enjoyed it immensely, and then retired as an emeritus professor.

The Hoover Institution does not grant tenure, and as a senior fellow there I can be let go anytime that it is determined by the administration or board of the Institution that my work no longer meets the expectations and the conditions under which I was hired.

How sad to think I am "attacking universities" when I have spent my entire life in them, and want them to evolve and improve. Instead, the big losers on campus are not tenured professors, but:

9. From the identification provided with the letter, this query appears to be written by a perfect graduate student who will go far in the academy, since at an early stage he has learned how to protect the system that has created him, and embrace the ideology of the wounded fawn, who is always worried about the "purge" and lectures about the "highest standards" that alone prevent it. I wish he would have saved his zeal for the poor part-time teachers who need his support far more than his nodding advisors and tenured mentors.

In a March answer to a reader, you wrote on your website that "race studies,” queer studies, gender studies, etc." have become "the establishment" on university campuses, resulting in the destruction of the "old liberal arts curriculum." A New York Times story on April 24, 2005 reports on the most common and least common majors on contemporary campuses. At the University of California at San Diego, for example, 3,368 students are majoring in biology; 1,787 are majoring in economics; and a whopping 23 are majoring in critical gender studies.

Isn't it possible that you've overstated the significance of "studies" programs? I apologize for challenging your declensionist worldview with actual facts.

Hanson: Concerning my two points about the curriculum and the establishment on university campuses — your citations prove, not reject, the point I was making and hardly justify your closing puerile banter; clearly, you are not a veteran faculty member of hiring, GE, or curriculum committees, who has witnessed these political issues first-hand over the years. All these 'studies' programs have no popular appeal to students at all, who rarely major in them, or take more than one (required) course. But their influence is nevertheless enormous and hardly to be measured simply by official majors.

First, most campuses now have some sort of requirement in the General Education curriculum for an ethnic or gender studies class; and these courses, unlike most others, thus reach most of the student body. To serve this captive constituency, a campus like UC Santa Barbara has far more courses in Chicano something or other listed in its general catalog than in the Civil War.

Second, the class/race/gender fixation insidiously transcends these titled courses proper; thus former Revolutionary war classes might now be in fact studies of the 'other' during colonial times; a class nominally on some of Shakespeare's plays turns out to be deconstructing gender, or a history of Latin America often becomes a melodrama about European pathology and culpability. Titles are often deceptive and used as a hook for students who otherwise would not enroll in a class if the real content was reflected in the official rubric.

Third, courses are not the entire story, as I suggested through the use of the word establishment. Faculty understand the agenda and adjust their research, publications, and discourse accordingly. Take the most recent three college presidents who were in the news: Larry Summers learned he could not discuss gender and faculty representation in the sciences in any other way than what was approved as male or societal culpability and bias; Elizabeth Hoffman at Colorado was forced to explain how Ward Churchill — no PhD at a research university, no authentic Native American identity as professed, and appropriation of others' intellectual property — was retained, tenured, and promoted. That paradox was only explicable by his sly reinvention of himself as an oppressed minority and a strident anti-American polemicist that had apparently given him life-long cover — until it was blown by his silly post 9-11 harangues.

And at UC Berkeley, the first crisis Robert Birgeneau, the Canadian physicist, addressed on his arrival as the newly appointed Chancellor was the racial and ethnic make-up of the campus, as he decried Prop 209 (passed by a sizable majority of California voters), and suggested that something should be done to ensure Mexican-Americans and African-Americans (he was silent about whites who are also "underrepresented" at Berkeley) enroll at rates proportionate to their numbers in the general population — even though that racially obsessed agenda would mean Asians (about 10-12% of the population/about 45% of UCB student population) in some manner would have to be discouraged from enrolling under the present merit-based selection process — but of course he did not mention who would not be welcome, only those who would be, as if the UCB enrollment process were not a zero-sum game.

Fourth, the politically-correct emphasis on race/class/gender studies puts enormous pressure on untenured faculty to publish in these areas and upon graduate students to steer their research in this direction — and to serve obsequiously those faculty who, they sense, have gravitated in these directions and thus will have greater clout when it comes time to parcel out fellowships, teaching assignments, and recommendations for jobs. Perusal of the Modern Language Association's, American Historical Association's, or American Philological Association's lists of PhD dissertation titles or annual convention talks bears out this over-concentration — and is often the butt of jokes in the popular media and has encouraged alternative organizations and societies to spring up. Anyone who has reviewed university press manuscripts or knows anything about the politics of publishing in those venues understands the politically correct pressures that are entailed.

In other words, classes and area studies that hold little appeal to either the public or students themselves are the anchors for faculty and programs that do not reflect either their value or intrinsic interest. If these "studies" classes were not by fiat put into the General Education menu, few would take them (as is clear by your reference to the dearth of majors) and the programs would dry up — and this is why GE committees that adjudicate this system of enrollment-driven spoils are the most contentious on campus. Your own reference, then, only helps to support the case I was making!

Dr. Hanson, I am curious about your criticism of Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel. The book claims to explain the broad pattern of history, looking at prehistoric events such as the development of food production and methods of transportation. I did not think that it claimed to explain why the U.S. became the preeminent power in the world, why the English defeated the Spanish Armada, why Rome created a worldwide empire, but why certain regions of the world were able to develop agriculture and eventually industrialized specialized societies, and have such an easy time subjugating those who did not. In that respect, Diamond was very convincing to me.

Could one really argue with him that sub-Saharan Africans could not domesticate zebras and antelope because their culture was inferior to that the Mesopotamians, when to this day with all our resources we have not been able to domesticate them. Did Cortes' defeat of the Aztecs have nothing to do with the diseases they gave the natives as well as European overwhelming superiority in technology? Could the U.S. today conquer a nation with similar technology but a vastly inferior culture, say France, with a battalion? [Editor's note: It is unclear why this reader describes a western France as having a “vastly inferior” culture.]

Hanson: You misinterpret both what I wrote and what Diamond argued. All of the beneficiaries of his thesis about natural resources or germs were supposedly Westerners. He states explicitly that indigenous people in New Guinea have superior brain wiring, a racialist thesis excusable only when the obvious targets are so-called Westerners.

To show you the reverse argument — what are the worst problems we have in the West today? How about cocaine addiction, sugar that destroys our teeth, coffee and tea that addict us to caffeine, tobacco that ruins our lungs, syphilis that has caused such misery — all were imported to Europe by contact with indigenous people. But how silly would it be to suggest culpability of the non-West for those maladies that did not plague Europe until contact with non-Europeans.

So history is not a simple morality tale where we choose bad and good guys, but tragedy when cultures collide. Cortés’ men also suffered tropical diseases, and his allies were decimated as much as the Aztecs, perhaps more so given the high altitudes and location of Tenochtitlan that gave some of the Mexicas some initial isolation from the invaders. What doomed the Aztecs was their lack of cannon, crossbows, sophisticated logistics and maritime supply, muskets, steel swords and body armor, horses, as well as decentralized command and a military tradition that put emphasis on the destruction — rather than the capture of hostages for human sacrifice — of the enemy.

In two months, the Spanish built more sophisticated warships on the lake surrounding Mexico City than the native Aztecs had in 300 years — not because of genes, climate, or germs, but because they, not the Aztecs, had inherited a method of shipbuilding from long centuries of Western experimentation dating back to Roman times.

We should remember that human sacrifice in the years before Cortés’ arrival on some days approached the 24-hour tally of genocide at Auschwitz. And of course, Montezeuma had no knowledge of the world beyond his shores and so had no tradition that might have allowed him to sail to Barcelona and attack the conquistadores in their homeland. And these advantages had nothing to do with the Spanish coastline, its resources, or particular microclimates, but everything to do with a particular Western culture that gave the hidalgos advantages not explicable by the small size and population of Spain.

Indeed, what explains Western lethality is almost the irrelevance of the natural environment, the exact opposite of Diamond's thesis: Westerners crafted particular cultural protocols that allowed them to trump natural obstacles, and to colonize or conquer in the most unfavorable circumstances once they had types of social organization, technology, and military practices that transcended particular locales.

Your characterization of the ills facing the U.N. is generally accurate but when you blithely label all U.N. Peacekeeping Forces members of sex rings, rapists, and rent-a-cops, it borders on extreme hypocrisy. I can't speak for other countries, but Nepalese soldiers have played an important role with the U.N., fulfilling their duties to the best of their capabilities and the mandate handed down to them by the U.N.

Yes, like Abu Ghraib shows, constant monitoring is required to ensure that professional soldiers do not partake in criminal behavior. Towards this end, Nepalese soldiers in general are receiving more human rights training and the Army is aggressively pursuing cases of criminal conduct by its soldiers and implementing procedures to prevent any soldiers convicted of human-rights violations from getting into the U.N. system. I am sure the U.S. had to also get back to basics after Abu Ghraib. Also, cases in Okinawa, Japan, and Korea also show that rapes and other abuses aren't the sole monopoly of non-U.S. forces. And, to add to that, wherever there are duty stations (I served in the Navy, though not the Nepalese navy), you are going to find prostitution. Surely, this has occurred since the classic times.

In many cases, soldiers from wealthier countries do not want to serve in Cambodia, the Congo, Lebanon and so on and Nepalese soldiers have willingly filled that role. Peacekeeping also fills a social role. Many of the soldiers returning home bring back a small fortune (in relative terms) to buy cows, land, etc., and use this capital to start businesses. Finally, it was the Nepalese soldiers that led the counter-attack in the Congo against the warlord that originally set the ambush that killed nine Bangladeshis.

I am sure under a reformed U.N., the Nepalese soldiers will adapt to whatever the resultant U.N. system becomes.

In many of your articles, you correctly point out the role of Americans in helping to defeat Germany and Japan and for that most people remain grateful and respect the American people that laid down their lives. But please also note that Gurkhas served in both the European and Pacific theaters and helped the West to defeat these countries too.

Hanson: I don't think there is anything comparable between U.N. soldiers and the U.S. military. A few miscreants at Abu Ghraib were investigated, put on trial, and punished; so far we've heard nothing about trials for the hundreds of U.N. soldiers who engaged in sex acts in Africa (with girls as young as seven years old), or the other alleged crimes that have taken place from East Timor to the Congo. My criticism was not about particular national contingents, but about the problem with a lack of oversight of the UN in general; there is not a method of judicial review as we have seen in the Oil-for-Food scandal. The U.N. General Assembly has some of the most uncouth and illiberal nations imaginable, and we should insist on democratic constitutions as criteria for membership; let Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, Syria, etc. form their own "United Dictatorships."

All Americans have great respect for the Gurkhas, especially their service from WWII to the Falklands.

Victor Davis Hanson apparently enjoys comparing apples with oranges, as long as it justifies President George W. Bush's impulsive invasion of Iraq and the unconscionable military and civilian wounded and dead resulting from his stupidity.

Well, Señor Big Fella and Super Historian, Victor Davis Hanson, at the Hoover Institute, Stanford University, I want to see you patrolling the alleys of Sadr City, Bagdad, Iraq, with your platoon, before you say how nice it is that our current Iraqi casualties are a drop in the bucket compared to United States losses on Okinawa during World War II.

Listen to yourself, Vic! What does Okinawa have to do with the here and now? I was in the South Pacific and the North Pacific from Espiritu Santo to Chi Chi Jima during World War II, so I don't fall for your hearsay and bull-jiving, writing off our current casualties as not a big deal. Invading a country based on false information is deceptive and a gross betrayal of our American values, equally imbued and possessed by all of our citizens regardless of political affiliation.

Our President George W. Bush is responsible for this debacle; he has yet to resign like he ought to, and he can't pass the blame down the line. Since our Iraqi casualties are not such a big deal to you, please sign up for Iraq duty; there's an Army Recruiting Station nearby, and we need the fodder. So far, every column which you have written for the Chicago Tribune wreaks with the casuistic sophistry twisted to promote deception about the real world, but don't feel bad because most of that pro-war and pro-empire crowd are just as blind as you are; or are they?

No, I will not be polite to politicians who are destroying our democracy, as we once knew it; nor will I be bulldozed by Spin Doctors like you.

Signed: This is no April Fool

Hanson: Read what I wrote in the archive of the last four years about the war. Then find a single piece where I either ignored or downplayed the sacrifices of the American military—especially in regards to your scurrilous and fabricated charge that I employed the sick phrase "how nice it is." No one has praised our soldiers more, or more often urged Americans to recognize their sacrifice. Even your present screed cannot change that record.

War is never a matter of perfect versus awful choices, but bad and worse. Once Saddam Hussein was not removed after 1991 when it was feasible at little cost, we had the prescription for an eventual reckoning—billions in petrodollars available to a fascist, a record of aggression and anti-American hostility, and long support for terrorists, which after 9-11 became intolerable.

The administration, as I have written on numerous occasions, I think with the benefit of hindsight erred in privileging the weapons of mass destruction argument, especially unfortunate since the U.S. Senate in October 2002, both Democrats and Republicans, voted to authorize Saddam's removal on 22 other grounds, including breaking of the 1991 accords, violations of UN sanctions, attempts to kill a former U.S. president, harboring terrorists, and dozens of others from genocide to wars of aggression. On September 11, one country in the world was firing on U.S. soldiers, and it was Iraq. If occupying two-thirds of a nation's air space is not an act of war, or flying 350,000 sorties over it to prevent genocide is not, then I don't know what is. The existing policy before 9-11, of starving Iraqi children while enriching U.N. operatives and Iraqi elites in order to prevent Saddam's further genocide, did not seem such a moral act.

If we look at the tragic fatalities of the Iraq war thus far, it is hard to make the case that they inordinately fell on the poor or the uneducated or the female or the Guardsmen or the non-white. 72.5% were white males (though perhaps that cohort constitutes only about 35% of the general population). 95% had high school diplomas (though only 85% of the general population do). 75% were not poor, about like the rest of the country, and 98% were male. 84% of the decades were regular military. The notion that the all-volunteer military requires sacrifices disproportionately from women, the uneducated, the poor, minorities, and guardsmen and reserves is not borne out by the data.

Your diatribe “America's new discontents,” SF Chronicle, March 18, demonstrates once again that you simply cannot grasp that opposing a regime's fascist agenda is not an un-American or unpatriotic activity. Instead of regurgitating your by now very tedious laments about George Soros, John Kerry, et al., your verbosity would be better spent on revealing how exactly America benefits from the war on Iraq and the environment, the loss of lives, the federal deficits or Bush's policies in general. Soros or Kerry are not the issue; Bush is.

It never fails to astonish me that you can issue your ultra-rightwing propaganda from the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. The Hoover Institution may not be capable of suffering more devaluation, but must Stanford sustain black eye after black eye at your hands? As a Cal Ph.D. and former Cal faculty member, even I cannot enjoy what you do to that once respected university. Your propaganda is lacking in intelligence and craftsmanship. You should have stuck to farming, Bubba.

Hanson: I am always struck by the strange mixture of aristocratic pretension ("stuck to farming, Bubba") juxtaposed to intellectual arrogance and petty throat-clearing (similar letters arrive always with "Cal Ph.D.”,"former Cal faculty member" "J.D.", "Ph.D.), which is so at odds with the egalitarian pretensions of the Left.

You, Dr., do not like that op-ed about how upscale, pampered leftists adopt a boutique and cheap criticism of the war, at odds with most of the working classes that they so champion from a safe distance, since, to paraphrase Horace, your rightly saw mutato nomine de te fabula narratur—for which I am not at fault.

But to answer your question, and to paraphrase the New York Times, the Washington Post, Daniel Schoor, Der Spiegel, and the Manchester Guardian, the removal of Saddam Hussein and voting in his aftermath, coupled with the elections in Afghanistan following the end of the Taliban, pressure on Syria and Egypt, removing troops from Saudi Arabia, and isolating Arafat, all led to a new paradigm in the Middle East that is ending decades-long pathology, weakening the Islamicists, and changing the calculus that led to September 11.

All of that was critiqued and condemned by the above who now praise it, during the long ordeal of the past two years, during which John Kerry and others sought to arrest those efforts, that would have led not to the present optimism, but to defeat and worse. Finally, an educated person knows that an elected President is not a "regime" nor fascist; only a calcified ideologue that time has past by still believes in that infantile 1960s rhetoric. In short, your puerile letter is proof positive of the correctness of the op-ed itself, and for that I thank you for illustrating first-hand precisely what I was describing.

A question for Mr. Thornton, since he lately threw in another little Darwin quip: If he had a loved one in need of antibiotics, would he chose a physician from the Darwinian school who understands how microbes evolve in the Natural Selection environment of antibiotics and thus prescribe a medicine which tried to stay one step ahead of microbe evolution? Or would Mr. Thornton entrust his loved one to an Intelligent Design physician, who believes all microbes have been thoughtfully, unchangingly sent into the world by their Maker, and are thus requiring of only one, unevolving antibiotic treatment? I suspect that if push came to shove, Mr. Thornton would probably choose the former, as long as the discussion stays clear of how it came to be that humans share 98% of their genes with those lustful chimps.

Thornton: Your hypothetical misses the point. The issue is not whether adaptation occurs within species in response to environmental pressures, as it obviously does in the case of bacteria. The real problem involves the origin of life; the evolution of one species into another, separate species; and the origin of human higher consciousness by the same process of random mutation and selection for survivability. But such a hypothetical is a red herring: What I or anyone would or would not do that is incompatible with a belief has nothing to do with the validity of the belief. Darwinism stands or falls on its ability to account for these phenomena in ways that can answer anomalies and criticism on the basis of argument and evidence. The bad habit many Darwinians have of answering instead with appeals to authority, ad hominem attacks, and other errors of thinking is what troubles many, including religious skeptics and atheists like the late David Stove.

Victor Hanson, I thought you knew something about history. Even an amateur like me can see incredible holes in your claims, which I will now gladly point out to you. I understand that space is limited in an Op-Ed piece, but you offer no evidence for your claims supporting the divine wisdom of Bush's foreign policy in the Middle East.

"Cheap gas, however, is not the supreme driving force behind American intervention" Cheap gas to consumers? No. Cheap gas to U.S. Big Oil? Yes. Please take a look through any U.S. foreign policy encyclopedia, and tell me that oil has not been a dominant motivator for action in the 20th century. Politicians and corporate executives will tell you the noble and selfless reasons for going to war are: Democracy. Freedom. Justice. Peace. What they really mean is: Contracts! Markets! Natural Resources! Power!

"..so-called. Halliburton 'grab' for concessions and profits." Haven't you been paying attention to the news lately? Halliburton is under more than one investigation for corruption and profiteering, and is raking in hundreds of millions of dollars in the biggest post-war reconstruction prize - a secret no-bid contract to rebuild Iraqi oil facilities worth billions.

"The lack of oil may explain our wrong decision to ignore Rwanda, but not our right choice to stop the dying in the Balkans..." Last time I checked, the Balkan war was waged under a different president and administration.

"China, not America, is already the world player most guided by Oilpolitik." Provided this unsubstantiated claim were even true, does that make it right for America to be guided by 'Oilpolitik' as well? Reminder: The U.S. consumes 25% of the world’s energy, even though we have less than 5% of the worlds population. We have benefited tremendously from our domination of the Earth's natural energy supplies, and are jealously guarding our unfair hoarding of this resource.

"Whatever George Bush is, he is certainly no longer a realist oilman..." "..Bush abandoned the realist policies of his past..." Welcome to the reality party! Nobody has ever accused Bush of being in touch with reality or fact, a self-evident realization starting from the beginning of his presidency.

"The invasion of Iraq was not to loot its oil treasure..." but for U.S. Big Oil to profit from it handsomely.

"In contrast, Iraqi oil revenue is now transparent and under the control of an elected government..." amenable to the U.S. administration, and thus U.S. Big Oil.

"If Bush's democratic gambit succeeds, the world will be a far better place..." for large U.S. corporations.

"Promoting democracy also means keeping astronomical profits out of the hands of both failed autocrats and killers.." and putting it into that of U.S. Big oil.

Hanson: Are you sure you didn’t go to UC Santa Cruz circa 1971? You sound just like my former professors and colleagues, who assured us Big Oil got us into Vietnam and squashed the national liberationist movement of indigenous peoples wishing to set up a Jeffersonian free state. We were all assured that only an off-shore bonanza could explain the inexplicable cost in lives and treasure to stop communist aggression. In any case, here it goes:

1. Read what I wrote: Bombing Milosevic had nothing to do with oil, either did spending millions and lives in Somalia. All countries worry about how they are going to power the cars of you and me, but not always to the extent that it becomes the overarching aim of all policy, as your obsessive letter suggests.

2. ‘Big Oil’ means exactly what these days? That Exxon or something like it prostitutes itself to the likes of dictators in Iran and Saudi Arabia or Nigeria? Of course, they do, and regrettably so. But are they any worse than the corrupt Mexican public conglomerate or the Iranian national company or what the Russians are doing in the fragile arctic tundra? To the degree that Americans make frequent use of their cars, they are embedded in these moral dilemmas. Only a child expresses angst at ethical uncertainty by simplistic rants.

3. If Halliburton did wrong, they will be fined or prosecuted as they should be—and I suggest that it and Enron will be held far more accountable than the multibillion dollar Oil-for-Food scandal, where lives were lost by insider roguery at the UN, which is surprisingly absent from you writ. From what little I know, it seems that Halliburton’s competition during the last two years has not being dying to get to the Sunni Triangle to get in on all that easy money; nor is a bunch of Texas fly-by-nighters pouring into Iraq to cash in. Instead, it is a very dangerous place; few wish to go at any cost; and Halliburton profits because it has the size and experience to pay through its nose to get engineers and construction people to take such risks. The complaint so far is that we were tardy and too plodding rather than we simply ran into Iraq and starting building and hiring. I am sure there are abuses with Halliburton, but they arise in part because few wanted such a job to begin with.

4. I supported Clinton’s war, and wrote a WSJ op-ed in 1999 to that effect, precisely when most were bailing in week 5 or 6 of the bombing, many from his own party. But remember, unlike Bush’s invasion, many thought it was an “illegal” war since he never got Senate approval to use force (compare in contrast the October 11, 2002 U.S. Senate decree), and never even approached the UN, so assured he was of a Security Council veto. To my knowledge there was no oil in Grenada, Panama, Afghanistan, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Serbia, or the myriad other places we have intervened in some fashion.

Yes, we use too much oil. But we also supply an inordinate amount of the world’s goods and services, from computer software to university instruction to movies and books, in addition to guarding the sea-lanes from the Aegean to the Korean Sea. If there is going to be a breakthrough in energy, it will come from the United States, so it is not as if we are burning all that oil up driving in circles in SUVs. Those who need chemotherapy in Bolivia or want water purification equipment in Botswana rely on that gas-guzzling U.S. to think up something better than incantations and a bucket and pail.

5. This is all now getting very sad: “realist/realism” is a formal noun that describes a particular sort of foreign policy that accepts the world amorally as it is, and deals solely from the perception of national interest, dating from Thucydides’ Melian Dialogue all the way to the détente of the Cold War. Bush certainly is unlike his father, and seeks democratic reform across the Middle East—far different from restoring the monarchy in Kuwait after the war of 1991 or preferring a known Gorbachev to the maverick Yeltsin.

6. Big Oil hardly wants an elected Shiite as President of Iraq; ask France who cut the most lucrative deal in the history of petroleum politics with a tottering Saddam. Big Oil is not immoral, it is amoral: it simply seeks to deal with any government it can—if that government is fascist, it is fascist-tolerant; if communist, it is communist-tolerant. The more interesting question is how to conserve oil, to lower U.S. consumption and thus bring back leverage to the consumer. Your infantile use of Big Oil is like saying “Big Potato Chips” or “Big Tennis Shoes.” Of course, they are all big. Again, the world is divided between consumers (e.g., Japan, the US, India, etc.) and producers (Iran, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, etc.), and their middle men (Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon, state monopolies, and joint-venture companies). The degree to which a poor guy driving a clunker gets relief depends on bringing down the rate of consumption, so that the market is awash in oil—or breaking the cartel or finding new energy.

One final piece of advice: Evolve beyond the 1960s rhetoric. We are past the days of evil Aramco and the Exxon oil spill, and need sobriety and coolness in dealing with these globalized problems, not a return to the puerility of the past. It leads nowhere: ask a George Soros, Noam Chomsky, or Michael Moore, all of whom are shrill, occasionally interesting sport to listen to or laugh at, but ultimately irrelevant artifacts of an age long gone by—as well as being gas-consuming, high-paid, elite hypocrites who profit from the capitalist system they deride as few others can.

For your intellectual entertainment, I offer another perspective regarding immigration. Why not return to what the founding fathers and early Americans did until somewhere around the turn of this century: leave the borders open (if with medical/terrorist/criminal checks)? The tough will prosper and the younger immigrants can help provide services for the aging native population. If China can handle over a billion people in a country about our size - we should be able to handle even more. It will build a stronger and more prosperous America if we can attract the brightest and most aggressive people from the whole planet. Their kids will probably turn into regular adjusted Americans just as immigrant kids generally do (like I assume the kids of the first American generation of your family did). Isn't a stonger America more moral than something less?

Let us not confuse legal and illegal immigration nor fall in despair at the magnitude of the problem—8, 10, 14-20 million is the proper number?. We have always welcomed immigrants and take in more each year than does the rest of the Western world put together. But if we do it illegally it erodes the sanctity of the law and creates a permanent underclass that serves only the libertarian corporate right that wants cheap labor and the therapeutic left that wants an unassimilated constituency.

The key is to find a reasonable number of immigrants from Mexico—200,000-3,00,000—per annum, close the borders, have stiff fines for violations, pressure Mexico to stop exporting its own population and seek reform to end its corruption, and cease the Balkanization of the US in which separate languages and cultures are looked on as "diversity" when in fact we are reaching not the "salad bowl" but in some places apartheid where entire communities do not speak English and are not racially diverse, but composed only of other Mexican immigrants—high percentages of them here illegally. That cannot be healthy for anyone. Remember the problem is sheer numbers. 90% of illegal aliens can turn into fine Americans, but if 10% turn out not to, then you are talking about over a million people. A small fraction of illegal aliens in California is felonious, but that still represents over 14,000 who cost the state $450 million and up to incarcerate—20 times more than the current UC Merced budget. Indeed, the prison population in our state alone of illegal aliens is larger than many universities. We need to grow up, jettison the therapeutic language, and face reality—no longer in fear of being caricatured as a racist or protectionist and instead find ways to facilitate liberal immigration without creating the social, legal, and cultural mess that follows from having many millions here illegally.

If one comes without English and education, then illegality presents often the third hurdle that prevents successful assimilation for generations—some studies suggest that after three generations perhaps 1 out of 3 of immigrant families who came illegally—are still not educated or speaking English. In California 4 out of every 10 Hispanic youths do not graduate from high school, and yet the state may well now be 40% Hispanic; how can that be good for anyone in the century to come? The present system is a prescription for apartheid that no one wants, especially when an answer—reduced numbers, legality, assimilation, an end to ethnic chauvinism, and English immersion—are proven solutions.

With his latest dispatch from the green hills of Hoover Farms, Hanson adds his modest wind to a right wing tempest.

If Boxer’s moment is a metaphor of our age, then Hanson is one of our age’s symptoms: the well paid, reality-capsizing pundit whose lack of analysis is concealed by stupefying rhetorical inversion.

There are two issues of language here: Hanson’s racialized “metaphor” and his use of the word “reactionary.” In the first, Hanson claims that the Boxer-Rice exchange demonstrates the feverish irrationality of the moribund opposition party. Just look: “liberal senators” were rude to the African-American professional woman from Birmingham.

By describing Rice this way—focusing on her race and her Birmingham origins (a move that immediately evokes the brutalities of the segregated South)—Hanson erases the substance of the confirmation hearing: the lies that have directly led to as many as 100,000 deaths.

Rice’s blackness, then, and liberals’ manners, are what concern Hanson. With a subtle race-baiting feint, he presents Rice as a victim. Liberals were rude to Condi! Don’t they know she’s an African-American woman from Birmingham?

It’s hard to imagine anything ruder than being blown into fist-sized chunks, something that happens with great regularity in the newly freedomized Iraq. Yet for Hanson, murder and torture pale beside Boxer’s impoliteness. Funny thing about pundits: they find it easier to stomach catastrophic human suffering than incivility.

1. As far as the quip about Hoover Farms: I will make a challenge to this critic: each of us can put a tandem disk on a Massey 265 and then see who covers a 20-acre vineyard outside my window first without taking out a vine. Or if that sounds too inorganic for his sensitivities: each of us can stake out a row of 25 Black Amber plum trees down the road, and see who prunes them all before dusk. Or both of us can see who first forks 20 tons of fruit on a Semi in the barnyard. Or I am sure from his vast practical experience he can dream up some such contest to test our relative knowledge of farming.

2. “Reality-capsizing pundit whose lack of analysis is concealed by stupefying rhetorical inversion” illustrates why this critic is not a pundit. Perhaps he thinks “racialized” and “freedomized” are witty.

3. Race: My first point was manners, not race. For all the advantages of her upbringing, Boxer proved the boor, Rice the gracious partner in the exchange. And as far as race, I was curious why Alberto Gonzales and Condoleezza Rice encountered a greater degree of confirmation opposition than any Secretary of State or Attorney General designee in recent history—though a Janet Reno or John Ashcroft were not uncontroversial. As in the case of Clarence Thomas, there is a certain fury reserved for conservative minority figures since they refute much of the ideologies of modern progressive paternalism, but especially the idea that liberal white gate-keepers are “owed” fealty for “helping” the underprivileged. The irony is lost: those of the La Raza movement of Black Caucus are always given deference by the likes of Boxer (as I can attest when Nancy Pelosi’s Hispanic activist aide once disrupted a lecture I gave on grounds that I was a “classicist” and thus believed in “class” strife—with no apology from Pelosi’s office.). And if hypocrisy about Rice was not a subtext of the exchange, envision the following scenario: a Tom de Lay on a House oversight committee calls in a Andrew Young or Jesse Jackson nominated for a cabinet post and calls them a liar on global television in a heated exchange, after himself distorting the facts and then going on the networks to brag of his invective. What would be the progressive reaction to that?

4. The lies told were by Boxer when she said her colleagues voted on “WMD period”—when the record clearly showed Senators adduced 23 writs of complaint that formed their basis for authorizing force.

5. “100,000 dead”. The writer knows no more than I how many Iraqis were killed, so why not 1 million or 2? Or is he talking about the 1 million killed by Saddam or including thousands of jihadists and Baathists who died trying to kill Americans and Iraqi forces? If so, the analogy would be to worry about the 100,000 Nazis killed in the Bulge or Japanese at Okinawa. At some point the writer should ask himself who exactly were those Iraqis who butchered for 30 years in Kurdistan, Iran, and Kuwait, and where did they suddenly disappear to?

Victor Davis Hanson, of the far-right Hoover Institution, in his hate-filled diatribe against people he calls "Islamofascists," displays a level of self-delusion, arrogance and willful ignorance that are breathtaking in scope, and deeply disturbing to most Americans ("Why They Hate Us," 1/13/05).

Hanson's silly speculations about "modernism, pathological partnerships" and "infomercials" as the causes of terrorism, are as ridiculous and clueless as they sound. This is simple-minded tripe masquerading as informed political analysis.

The reason "they hate us" is simple. For the past 50 years, our government has had in place a strict foreign policy of torturing and assassinating their leaders, destroying their governments, stealing their oil, occupying their lands and committing other acts of state-sponsored terrorism throughout the Middle East.

Most of these atrocities have been carried out covertly, by various U.S. intelligence organizations, and were ignored or downplayed by an often supportive American Press. (This is the same American Press that is owned by, or allied with, the very same corporations that have been profiting so handsomely from the U.S. government's gruesome, and bloody, foreign policy of domination, subjugation and destruction.)

Thus, most Americans have no idea whatsoever of our government's evil acts. The time to expose these evil acts has come, for they have endangered the lives of all Americans, and the lives of everyone on this planet.

No solution to the problem of terrorism can come until these facts are accounted for, and discussed openly. Hiding them from the American People, and conspiring to keep them a secret, have only served to heighten the danger to the world, and prolong the problem.

And if the U.S. Corporate Press and Federal Government of the United States continue to choose the cowardly path of dishonesty and self-delusion, then the American People themselves must do the job of exposing our government's foreign policy of state-terrorism and imperial land grabs, for a "true patriot must always be willing to protect his country against his government."

The Founding Fathers understood this, Dr. Martin Luther King understood this, and so must we understand this, if our nation is to survive into the next century.

1. Stealing Oil. Since 1973 at least OPEC has adjudicated oil prices without much care what the US does or says. It costs somewhere between $2-3 to pump a barrel of oil in the Middle East; it now sells for about $50. Billions of dollars leave American consumers and end up in the hands of the likes of the Iranian mullahs, the Saudi Royal family and others who are no friends of America. No one has been more critical than I of our prior appeasement of the Mubaraks, Husseins, and Saudi Royals—it is past time to distance ourselves from all of them. Middle East price-gauging hurts most of all the poor of Latin America and Africa who pay through the nose for their imported oil. And the worst wannabe imperialists were the French national oil companies who dealt with an outlaw Saddam Hussein to receive 75% of all the revenues of oil pumped.

2. Violence. Nasser's gassing of Yemenis; Saddam's gassing of Kurds, the Iranian-Iraqi war, the attacks against Israel, Black September, the obliteration of Hama, the dirty war in Algeria, and thousands of others had little to do with America, but millions died nonetheless for religion, tribal honor, land, and a host of other Middle East quarrels that did not involve America. Such are the wages of a region where there is not a single democracy.

3. The Press. Anyone who thinks Ted Koppel, Dan Rather, Maureen Dowd, Paul Krugman, Bill Moyers and the hosts of other American journalists and opinion makers are pro-US government or conspire to hide facts from the American people is absolutely stark raving mad. In this age of the Internet and global radio anyone can learn of anything, whether that means watching televised beheadings or collating zillions of proposed conspiracy rants like this puerile letter.

4. 'Occupying Lands' There are far more Arabs who have moved to Europe and the United States to "occupy" Western ground than Americans have moved to the Middle East. The author should ask a basic question: can an Arab Muslim move to Detroit and open a mosque more easily than a Christian visit Riyadh to establish a church? That charge comes right out of bin Laden's infomercials.

5. Like all conspiracists, note the lack of any detail that can be established and supported; the charge is all generalities with boilerplate rhetoric about "corporations," "atrocities," and "domination" and reads like one of those C-span-televised Answer or Moveon.org rallies—sounds immature, half-baked, and full of self-righteous angst.

Cold War support for anti-communist authoritarians was hardly defensible and only then given Stalin's and Mao's 80 million murdered, but it makes absolutely no sense after 1989, and we must begin to support only those regimes that are pledged to democratic reform. The Right is beginning to see that; but the Left just cannot give up its romance. Thus a Castro who killed over 20,000 and is still a dictator will always be better than a thug like Pinochet who killed 4,000 or so and is out of power. The generation of the 1960s is like a deer in the headlights and aging very badly. Thus we hear of Michael Moore's praise for the beheaders and murderers ("Minutemen") who did their best to assassinate and blow up the brave Iraqis who went to the streets to vote in their country's first free elections.

The prime reason why the Arabs, or if you prefer, the Islamicists, hate America is because of our unbending, one-sided policy in the matter of the Palestinian-Israeli issue. Ask any Arab you know.

Hanson: Arabs are not the same as Islamicists, a violent minority who distorts Islam for political purposes and hijacks popular anger at failed regimes for their own reactionary purposes. In fact, I ask a lot of Arabs why they don't like America, and they don't tell me that Israel is their problem. In fact, most privately admire the U.S. (thus the millions who wish to visit or live here). They find that anti-Americanism is a vicarious way of expressing angst at their own autocratic Middle East—much safer than demonstrating in Damascus or Tripoli.

Anger over Palestine is a psychological mechanism that diverts attention from the real problems facing Arab society—a failing region due not to Jews or Americans, but to autocracy, gender apartheid, statism, tribalism, corruption, censured media, religious intolerance, polygamy and a host of other pathologies. China, alternatively, no longer blames the United States and its 'running dog' capitalism for its problems because it is successful and self-confident, competing with, rather than scapegoating, the West. Japan is not talking about a lost Manchuria or the Russian-occupied islands, nor is Germany deteriorating because of the Polish "theft" of East Prussia, nor is the Argentine democracy calling for suicide bombers to hit the Falklands.

If the Arab world reformed and prospered (with the aid of billions of petrodollars), it would not fault the Jews but see that the problem of borders could be adjudicated without bombing, anti-Semitic rhetoric, and other pathetic grandstanding. So the Palestinians first must reform, create a humane transparent society and then negotiate as a liberal government with the Israelis, with plenty of women, dissidents, and opposition leaders involved without fear or a rope, bullet, or bomb in their futures. Intifadas and suicide bombers lead nowhere but to global repulsion.

Voting, free media, dissent, religious tolerance, and negotiations might create non-violent opposition to current Israeli policy and a return to near 1967 borders. Unfortunately, there is the suspicion that in such a present lunatic atmosphere a large minority of Palestinians wishes to destroy Israel outright, and the majority either will not or cannot condemn them, while the Arab world on the cheap finds psychological solace in nursing such myths and hurts. Some of us remember the cheering in the streets on the erroneous news that Saddam was sending nerve gas missiles into Tel Aviv to repeat the Holocaust, and the cheering that, despite the efforts of Arafat's street thugs, was seen in Palestine on news that 3,000 Americans were incinerated. What we have seen since 9/11 is very strange in historical terms: an entire Middle East that alone of the world thinks it has singular wounds and grievances that date back centuries, while Asia, Latin America, and Africa try to move ahead with needed reform.

Finally, I think the real problem that the Arab world faces is not anti-Americanism, but a growing anti-Middle Eastern feeling in the West—witness Europe over immigration and Turkey's desire to join the EU. Too many images of masked beheaders, suicide bombers, screaming infantile protestors, fatwas, pot-bellied clerics yelling about "apes and pigs" and conspiracy theories take their toll: after Baathism, pan-Arabism, Nasserism, and now Islamicism, most in the world are shrugging, saying “there is something deeply wrong with all this” and so have turned off.

Bush's real problem is not the Sunni Triangle, but the American public, which finds the Iraqis, like the Egyptians, et al., full of ingratitude for American aid and not worth the effort. Odd that bin Laden grasped this, making himself so odious and his supporters so creepy that most in the West simply think, "What sick society created this demon and how do we distance ourselves from it?" I admire the President's efforts to bring democracy, endure such hatred, and I believe in the Arab people's ability to create a humane society on their own. He is more the humanist than any Michael Moore who couldn’t care less whether the Taliban or Saddam lynched and whipped the innocent.

We pity Victor Davis Hanson, who claims to be an historian, for his misinterpretation and understanding of the contemporary facts of life, how they are dealt with and influenced by various factors and powers.

Hanson keeps repeating the name of Bin Laden and blaming Islamist fundamentalism in almost every sentence of his article “Islamicists hate us for who we are, not what we do.” Did the respected "historian" review recent historical facts about who was the party that patronized and financed the fundamentalists and the dictatorial regimes that he blames for the conflicts in today's Middle East.

Ben Laden and his Al-Qaeda were raised, trained and financed by no other than U.S. administrations to fight the communists and the U.S.S.R., Saddam Hussein was financed and supported to fight the new Iranian regime that overthrew their puppet dictatorial regime under Shah Muhammad Riza Bahlawi, not to mention the many dictatorial Arab, African, and Central and South American dictatorial regimes supported by the U.S.

Hanson: Who is “we”? Fact: for a time to stop Soviet communism from killing thousands more Afghans and imposing an atheist collectivism that had claimed over 80 million Russian and Chinese civilians in past decades, the United States provided arms to a number of Afghan resistance groups, among them cliques ranging from Islamicists around a young bin Laden to other tribal groups like those under Masood. We supplied about 2% of Saddam’s total arsenal on the dubious premise that it was at war with Iran that had recently stormed the US embassy and through its surrogate Hezbollah murdered Americans. No one has been more critical than I of American realpolitik in the Cold War that backed anti-communists regardless of their odious natures—although I had the luxury also of not being responsible for the security of the United States that was targeted by over 7,000 Soviet warheads. And by the way, are you furious as well that we armed and supplied the Soviet Union in WWII even though we knew Stalin had killed over 30 million of his own? And are you angry that Europe, Russia, and China supplied almost all of Saddam’s weapons? Consider: Greece was furious that we bombed Christian Europeans to save Muslims in Bosnia; Arabs in the Sudan are angry we champion the cause of black Muslims who are subject to a racist genocide; Baathists hated us for saving Muslims in Kuwait; Russians were mad in the 1990s that we asked for accountability in their war against Muslim terrorists in Chechnya; Israelis were puzzled why we gave billions (so far over $50 billion) to Egypt and much as well to Jordan and the Palestinian Authority. So many Americans now simply feel the hatred is deductive and taking on an infantile character. Perhaps next time the mujahideen can stop Milosevic, or get Saddam out of Kuwait, or bring peace to Darfur—such is the growing weariness of the American people with this part of the world.

Hanson without shame wrote: "Israel's West Bank turned out not to be the impoverished, but more often the pampered of the middle class..." The Zionist movement with the help of western colonialism invaded in 1948 and occupied 78% of the land of the indigenous Arab population of Palestine, and in 1967 occupied the remaining 22% plus and over the Syrian Golan Heights and Egyptian Sinai Peninsula, are all of these territories Israeli, or do you indorse the infamous saying: "might is right"?

Hanson: The post-1967 borders are still being adjudicated, with hopes they will find a Sinai like solution. But history is not kind to authoritarian regimes who war with democracies and lose—witness 10% of Germany now inside Poland. The quote is wrong—I was referring to the profile of Hamas suicide-murderers, who, in fact, really are not the poorer of the West Bank. I don’t think the 1947, 56, or 67 wars had much to do with the so-called West Bank (then under Jordanian control) but everything with destroying Israel.

As for Iraq which the "historian" blames for the invasion of Iran and Kuwait, and believes that the U.S. led coalition invaded it to democratize and liberate it—which was supposed to be received by millions of Iraqis with rice and flowers—the result was occupation and since 1991 hundreds of thousands of Iraqis lost their lives one way or another by and as a result of wars and sanctions. These things are still dragging on and on. God knows when this will end and how big the price paid by Iraqis for their "liberation and democratization.” The Israeli ruling regime doesn't try to hide the fact that they pushed the U.S. to invade Iraq, because they hate to see an Arab power.

Hanson: In 1998 in a book, The Soul of Battle, I criticized the U.S. for allowing Shiites and Kurds to be murdered after rising up against Saddam, whom we should have finished off. $87 billion is being given to the new Iraq, more than the aggregate U.S. foreign aid budget. The new Iraq government will be autonomous and thus free to ask the U.S. to leave; and I am sure that would not disappoint million of Americans in and out of government. We don’t know the true wishes of the Iraqi people, since beheaders and suicide-murderers are slaughtering innocents every day, and intimidating the general public. Blaming Israel or the Zionists or the Jews is boring and has turned off most of the world; Arab nationalists would do better to copy Gandhi or Martin Luther King, and work to empower women, ensure religious tolerance, and protect the rights of homosexuals and other minorities first before blaming the Jews.

"The historian" said it: "They hate us for what we do" and not "They hate us for who we are". That means don't hate the good American people. They hate the American administrations for their neo-colonialism, for their support of dictatorial regimes and for supporting and financing the racist state of Israel, its expansionism and massacres it commits against the indigenous population of the land that rogue state occupies.

One last thing is to say that Israel occupies and annexed, as we said, the Syrian Golan Heights. On the other hand, Syria’s and Lebanon's people are one, and Syria rules by the consent of its people: the Syrians are not occupiers, the Israelis are.

Hanson: Easy to find out the validity of “are one” people: just allow the Lebanese to vote and see if they want the Syrians to go or stay. Or time the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza to that of the Syrian retreat from Lebanon. We are supporting elections in Iraq, in the West Bank, and pressuring the Saudis and Egyptians to liberalize their societies. If we don’t, we are attacked as appeasing the corrupt status quo; if we do, we are told that we are neo-colonialists imposing Western values. Anytime an argument reaches such a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” state, something else is going on: in this case Middle East frustration that the world is passing it by in China, southeast Asia, and Latin America who all ceased their similar “Yankee Go Home” and “running-dog capitalist” rhetoric and got on with the hard work of economic reform, gender equality, and moves to liberalized government. But to do that the Arab public must demand accountability from its corrupt leaders AND resist the fascist dissidents who wish to take it back to a mythical 8^th century of purported Islamic purity. So we wish it well in such a torturous path. Unfortunately, letters like the above—and I get many—suggest otherwise and that it is always easier to blame things on “neocolonialism” and “Zionists” that to look inward and seek introspective reform.

A comment on Thornton's "The Modern World's Greatest Delusion: How enlightened are modern myths of sexuality?"

Although I agree that modern sexual "liberation" isn't all it's cracked up to be, I don't agree that the appropriate response is to reinstate all the old religious superstitions and taboos. True, many, perhaps most, of these superstitions and taboos were based on hard experience of what worked and what didn't; it's equally true that not every single superstition, taboo, tradition, etc. passed down to us by the ancients is worth keeping. The ancients were not infallible, any more than we are, and some of their taboos and traditions really WERE based on ignorance, fear, and irrational prejudice. Consider slavery, for example. The Bible clearly condones it, as preachers in the pre-bellum South well knew. Who was Lincoln to question the ancient wisdom of the Bible? Or consider farming. For millennia farmers actually killed any earthworms they found because they believed they were bad for crops. Who were non-farming scientists to tell farmers, heirs to ancient farming wisdom, experience, and tradition, that they were wrong?

Despite the abuses of non-objective researchers like Kinsey, who used science as a tool to advance his personal agenda, there is nothing wrong with applying science and reason to the issue of sexuality, as we have applied them to virtually everything else, and eliminating obvious errors. For example, should we have a problem with the elimination of the myth that women don't have orgasms? And if it is true (as it certainly appears) that homosexuals do not "choose" their sexual orientation, does it still make sense to argue that they should be "ashamed" of their feelings and "stay in the closet"? Why should we object if two consenting adults want to affirm their commitment and faithfulness to the partner in whom they find emotional and sexual fulfillment?

This is the problem with much of the Right—the spread of this notion that EVERYTHING old and traditional is ALWAYS good, and should not be looked at critically, whereas EVERYTHING progressive, EVERYTHING that goes against tradition, must be rejected. It is this broad, either/or mentality that bothers me. Change isn't invariably good, but sometimes it really is for the better. We should look at EVERYTHING critically, traditional or progressive.