October 2004

Response to Readership

The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health just came out with estimates of 100,000 civilian deaths since the war in Iraq began, much of which was due to US air strikes in towns and cities (and the air strikes used precision munitions). What do think of these estimates, and if they are largely correct, what implication do they have for conducting war in this manner?

Hanson: A few things: (1) they simply have no idea of how many people have died anymore than we or the Japanese know to this day how many perished in Japan during the bombing raids. Most medical groups and NGOs exaggerate the figures to highlight the suffering—such as the estimates of millions of refugees and deaths that were supposedly to occur in Afghanistan. (2) I would take their figures more seriously should they, in side-by-side fashion, also issue estimates of how many deaths were incurred under Saddam or at least how many Iraqis have been killed by IEDs and suicide bombers—or is such speculation “impossible” in a way their current calculus is not? (3) What is a civilian in this conflict? If someone picks up an RPG, shoots at an American, runs home for lunch with his fellow irregulars, and then has his living room/hideout hit with an American 500-pound bomb, and then is taken to the hospital—no uniform, young, screaming—and dies there, is he counted as a “civilian”? The answer is probably. (4) In common sense fashion, ask yourself, do you feel the suicide bombers, car bombs, and roadside devices that kill dozens of Iraqis each week are more or less indiscriminate than US GPS bombs sent into Fallujah?

Since there are strong waves of anti-Semitism in both France and Germany, a “global test” for support of Israel would compromise any support the US currently gives Israel. Would John Kerry use the ruse of a “global test,” to sacrifice our relationship with Israel in order to achieve Kerry's goals of immediate peace, prosperity, and UN ascendancy in the Muslim world?

Hanson: I am worried about his support for Israel. Why? The issue hits a certain personality type like Kerry very hard. For the person without convictions who believes that he can charm or persuade or win over almost anyone—if he says or does the “right” thing— then Israel is a perfect experiment at little cost—Few Jews, no oil, no worry about terrorism, anti-Semitism promising global support, a rising Muslim population balanced against support for a small democracy and humane society. So there is a tendency to say, hmmm, let’s give them all the West Bank as if Wars 1-3 were not really over the survival of Israel; hmmm, let us not expect them to recognize Israel since it is humiliating for such proud people to do so; hmmm, yes, their books are full of hatred and their schools centers for indoctrination, but ‘who are we to judge’? It is an insidious, incremental road to abandonment. Kerry does not strike me as the type to say, “Israel exists, get used to it. It will never go away. Now, go create a real democracy and an open society so Israel can talk to someone legitimate about regional problems.” After all, it is really an Orwellian situation, when one million Arabs vote and have protection under the law only in the Zionist entity and have no desire to leave to join the mythical caliphate of the mind in Ramallah or Cairo. At some point, someone might ask,“Why do I vote in Israel and have a humane standard of living, but not in Damascus?”

Have you read about Lt. Col. Asad Khan being relieved of his command? Do you think there are parallels with how America has treated men like Patton, Curtis Le May, Sherman and Grant?

Hanson: I don’t think so. I don’t know the details of the case, but in the instances of the four generals you cite, there was a record of amazing battlefield prowess, without which the United States might have simply lost its wars. So far, I have seen no such record from Lt. Col. Asad in being able to win an entire war. We won’t know the ins-and-outs of the case for months, whether the Marines silenced a controversial hard charger in a war where politics is everything or we had an instance of a dedicated officer going over the line in his criticism of superiors. In general, in the postmodern age, I tend to sympathize with the Khans of this world who are asked by American society to go over to some pretty awful places, act like gentleman even as they are told to kill some horrific people to save the rest of us. But, again, we must wait for details before we elevate the Colonel to at least the spiritual ranks of an Uncle Billy or Old Blood and Guts.

What is your take on the ammo dump left unguarded by the U.S. military?

Hanson: (1) regrettable, but a small fraction of thousands of tons of explosives in a state the size of California; (2) we don’t know the full story yet, and the New York Times, and perhaps 60 Minutes, seem not so interested in issues of national security as using the “scandal” to embarrass President Bush with an October surprise; (3) why do we assume that such munitions were “safe” under Saddam? They were no doubt dispensed to killers and terrorists for years as he saw fit. The media seems to think that before we got there, a chain link fence around them made them safe rather than efficiently guarded to be used by a mass murderer; (4) isn’t this more a reminder of the nation-sized arms depot that Saddam had created far beyond his defense needs? (5) Again, why the story now and why the NY Times and 60 Minutes?

Will Clinton's support of Kerry influence the election?

Hanson: I don’t think so in terms of swaying undecided voters, but that is not his intent. Rather he is going into minority and traditional Democratic strongholds in hopes of energizing voting turnout in key states. Whatever one thinks of Mr. Clinton—have we forgotten his lying under oath, the selling of pardons, and his treatment of the precursors to 9-11 as criminal acts of a few rather than causes of war?—he is bright, a formidable campaigner, and a gifted impromptu speaker. Precisely because he has few core convictions and values power more than principle, he has an uncanny understanding of the politics of the day and dispenses invaluable advice. He was not a great orator simply because he held no real vision or values, but he is a brilliant impromptu speaker, with a near photographic memory, and a good vocabulary. Anyone who underestimates either his intelligence or his charisma errs greatly. Precisely because Dick Morris worked so intimately with Clinton, and admired those skills, Morris has become an invaluable conduit to the public concerning the nature of the Clintonian mind.

Has the American Left come out from behind the disguise of liberalism and now made it obvious that they are really socialists and support world?

Hanson: True, if you mean the elite fringe of the Democratic Party. Most Democrats are mainstream and moderately liberal or quasi-conservative. But the slice you refer to—of professors, actors, teachers, journalists, writers, union elites, and politicians—believe in a government-mandated equality of result not a guaranteed equality of opportunity, and are quite willing to tax and coerce to see their “paradise” inflicted on anyone who has doubts. We are lucky to watch the European Union, because we can see what the Leftists have planned for us here by watching their socialist cousins in Europe regulate everything from the size of a banana to prohibiting eating souvlakia on the street. Their tenets are multiculturalism, utopian pacifism, and cultural relativism, and the common threat in all three is a great distrust of the United States with its allegiance to liberty, the absolute rule of law, private property, and democracy. If we wished to end up like Canada or Spain, then a Howard Dean would get us there pretty quickly.

You wrote "The present antics of these influential millionaire entertainers should remind us why Plato banished them — worried that we might confuse the inspired creative frenzies of the artisans with some sort of empirical knowledge." I am curious about the exact circumstances that led Plato to such measures. In other words, what similarities are there between modern society and that of Plato?

Well, his Republic and Laws were utopian fantasies of course. Still, Plato and others of the Greek Enlightenment of the late fifth century and early fourth, were trying to argue for the primacy of reason, and a systematic acquisition of knowledge through induction, empiricism, self-reflection and critique. In contrast, actors, rhetoricians, poets, and sophists were more likely to capture the emotions of the audience, since they did not draw on cold reason, much less some prior body of knowledge. Rather, they knew the emotive power of beauty, art, music and the other sensations that appeal to our appetites. In his Ion, Plato makes the case against the rhapsodists, who mistakenly think that because they can both recite Homeric verse and thrill an audience in the process, that therefore they know something about war or agriculture or any of the other topics Homer chose to sing of, and they in turn memorized. But as Socrates shows, it isn’t true: they really are mere entertainers.

In a modern context, Plato would say whatever talent Sean Penn has to make millions pay millions of dollars to see it, it is not necessarily wisdom, erudition, or logic. It could be, but only if Penn had spent the requisite time educating himself, reading widely, and putting his ideas into the arena of debate. And worse, such artistic talent can confuse us into thinking what sounds good must be wise. Plato didn’t quite say acting equals ignorance, only something like we must keep our eye on the water not merely the pump to adjudicate the quality of irrigation. Reagan or Schwarzenegger enhanced their messages through talent and inspiration, but they were successful only to the degree they mastered the issues at hand and showed knowledge and wisdom—although most, of course, voted for them perhaps for the wrong reasons, for their star quality. The collective education and wisdom of the Hollywood elite is no different from Middle America; but they demand privilege for their views on the basis of their emotion-capital and seek to tell us that for that reason they are wise about Iraq or Afghanistan when they are not—and most often far more ignorant on both issues than the rest of us.

If John Kerry is elected do you believe his foreign policy will actually be fairly close to that of the current administration despite what he and his followers may believe because circumstances will demand that he follow the current template?

Hanson: I discussed this at length in "The Therapeutic Choice" and A Futile Foreign Policy and in the current National Review print magazine.

Suffice it to say I do not believe it will be the same policy. The pressure from Kerry’s Left will be too great, too many loose cannons in his administration, and we will return to Carterism/Clintonism that led to this mess. What Democrat since Truman and JFK felt confidence in American exceptionalism?

I'm confused by your argument whether the Iraqi war will provide us the opportunity to reduce overall troop strength in the Middle East. First you point out that the toppling of Saddam Hussein mean we don't have to keep tens of thousands of troops there to box him in; but later, on the same subject, you say that we should probably need future troop strength of about 50,000 in the region, or "not that many more present than when Saddam was in power". It sounds like you anticipate us actually having a net increase of troops in the Middle East, as a result of the war?

Hanson: Not at all. My point was that we probably won’t need vast build-ups of hundreds of thousands of troops as in 1991 or over 150,000 in 2003, but rather can reach a degree of equilibrium of somewhere around, say, 50,000—or about the number needed to ensure a secure Gulf when Saddam was in power. And if and when Iraq is democratic and stabilized, then with no need for hundreds of thousands of air sorties, our goal would be less combat patrols than we saw between 1991-2003. Again, the point is that the original American build-up in the Gulf was post-1991 to protect the region from a madman that had attacked 4 of his neighbors in just 10 years; with the reason for that build-up gone, we should be able to return to a maintenance force far smaller than what we see today—if, and only if, the situation in Iraq stabilizes.

Has the women's movement changed today's liberal man to "new" more "feminine" man, who is very unlike the men of the 30's, 40's and 50's?

Hanson: Yes, of course. We are supposed to talk more sensitively, pay attention to our hair (cf. John Edward’s compact), dress stylishly even while cycling (Cf. Kerry’s spandex), and feel no shame about dying our hair, wearing jewelry on our ears, or having our women support us.

Still, nemesis won’t be denied: the 60’s created a paradise for the vain, lazy, and egotistical male who could now get sex without ethical obligations or gentlemanly commitment, was called a “homebody” rather than “lazy” for not working, and was deemed a “metrosexual” rather than a wimp for spending more time in the bathroom than did his girlfriend. Our grandfathers hated a man who would not work, more so if he sent his wife out to earn their living; we think that is a “lifestyle choice.” Such are the wages of a shameless society.

A great age for opportunistic men, a terrible time for hardworking women—all this the Woman’s Movement inadvertently created when their real and key agenda—equal pay for equal work—was long overdue. So most women kick themselves by saying “there are no men out there.” What they desire is not a brute, but rather the old notion of a nice guy, who is perhaps a little quieter than they are, opens the door, picks up the tab, doesn’t whine to them about his lost promotion, ensures their physical safety, and very quietly and without fanfare assumes it is his responsibility to provide the major support for the household, safety for the family, and discipline for the children—and does not mind a bit, when in his full-throttle efforts, his wife just happens to make more or be the better parent. It is the intention and sense of self that is equally important. In contrast, today’s parent, who feared his father’s rebuke, is terrified of his son’s angst when he asks him to take out the garbage. If we worried our fathers, with cheap wide ties, baggy trousers, and wing-tips, were unstylish, we fear our sons with $100 shades are too cool.

What is your opinion of the current administration's policies that make big holes in the safety net for some Americans? Those Americans are ones with mental health problems, the elderly, the poor, children, single mothers with kids—all of whom aren't very well off and could possibly suffer because of serious cutbacks by the US government that is currently favoring giving benefits to the upper crust.

Hanson: I don’t listen to hysteria, but pay attention to facts, what I read and see. Bush is being damned by conservatives for increasing domestic spending at annual rates far above those during Carter or Clinton. Did people then lament the homeless or those on welfare? Second, I live in one of the poorest counties in a near-bankrupt state. And what I see at the emergency room, in the schools, and on the street is not a heartless government, but one full of compassion and quite generous. We are now giving special cell phones free to the disabled. Our local emergency room is free for those here illegally from Mexico. Our schools provide everything from free lunches to counseling. Our state colleges wave admission standards and offer aid for the disadvantaged—all a world away from what I saw in the 1950s and 1960s when we were pretty much all on our own.

So while medical care is better, schooling more therapeutic, and government larger, we are met not with gratitude, but hysteria that there is still not more. Indeed, the more we give, the greater the appetite for more, the less the thanks. California is a naturally rich state; our ancestors left us with wonderful roads, airports, universities, and infrastructure. And yet we just had a $38 billion annual deficit—despite having about the highest state income and sales taxes in the nation. If we increased state taxation rates from 10% to 30% I fear we would go through that in a year, and yell even louder about our heartlessness. With payroll, state, federal, and property taxes one can easily pay 60% of an income to various governments. So Kerry’s “rich” who make $200,000 (not worth his wife’s $1 billion), and do not have dividend or corporate income taxed at lower rates, can easily end up with $80,000 in net income. With a house payment and 2-3 kids in college, that is not a lot of money—it won’t buy a Kerry powerboat or a Soros’ Gulfstream, and of course neither the Clintons nor Teresa pass up their tax cuts. In fact, I think Teresa Kerry paid a much smaller percentage of her billion-dollar income to taxes than did you or I on ours

Re: entitlements in California. Again, we don’t worry about snow. We can farm year around. Millions flock here as tourists. We have timber, oil, minerals, as well as Hollywood, Silicon Valley, and massive agribusiness. And yet our state is destitute. Why? Again, because we spend billions on entitlements that we still cannot afford, and meet that largess with criticism rather than thanks. Our pensioners never thank the state for such generosity, but only yell for more. Our illegal community never thanks us for refuge, but demonstrates for driver’s licenses and free tuition. Our state employees demand expansion, never accountability. And the result is that we have met our limits and the saddlebags are now empty.

In my local community, we cannot even fix a rail crossing, so we simply shut down the road and closed traffic—an attitude that would have shamed our grandparents. So we are the wealthiest, most generous society in the world, with an administration that has increased annual federal spending the most generously in recent history—and yet we are furious that such hikes are not greater and thus call them ‘cuts.’ As the Romans said, ‘we can neither live with the disease nor its cure.’

Do we know why Xerxes seemingly just gave up on the invasion of Greece (480-479 B.C.)?

Hanson: Consider pride and the desire to avenge the humiliation at Marathon a decade earlier. Consider precedent: only the Athenians and the Plataeans had marched out in 490, so he was not convinced that some 20 Greek states would unite at Salamis and Plataea to defend Hellas. The Ionian revolt had been put down, and even after Marathon the Persians came away with the idea that the Greeks were fragmented, and would capitulate under serious assault. Consider also that in an autocracy that he heard no contrary advice other than the renegade Spartan royal Demaratus, who played the role of a Cassandra. And consider numerical advantage. While hoplites and free sailors might win at unfavorable odds of 2-1, Xerxes’ original forces on land and sea probably numbered over 250-300,000, giving him in local theaters a 4-1 or 5-1 advantage or even more. Finally, Herodotus may be right that he really did not know much about Spartan hoplites or Greek sailors before the invasion, much less the nature of the Greek city-state, and was thus surprised at both their battle readiness and willingness to die fighting.

Why Iraq first and not Iran?

Hanson: (1) We had a long history of hostility—the 1991 Gulf War, 12 years of no-fly-zones, and a UN sponsored embargo—with Saddam Hussein; (2) there is a real dissident movement in Iran that raises the specter of internal regime change that seemed impossible in Iraq; (3) the Iranians were much more stealthy in their nuclear acquisition than Saddam’s heralded weapons programs; while Saddam wanted attention to achieve deterrence, the mullahs learned from that mistake and hope to surprise the world with a fait accompli—thus the world’s surprise at the Iranian bomb program and its belated response; (4) don’t suppose that we won’t deal with Iran: thus had we toppled the mullahs first, you might now be asking, “Why Iran first and not Iraq?”

Will the Sadr City peace deal help to extinguish the insurgency or is it just kowtowing to Moqtada al Sadr's "fake a truce and regroup" tactic?

Hanson: Hard to tell. But as long as we are willing to resume hostilities and continue our success, the odds are on our side, as if we say: ‘We can keep this up much longer than you, so go ahead and try it again.’ After 4-5 of these faux-truces Sadr will eventually learn that for all his braggadocio, each time he resists he loses 1000-2000 of his fighters. The key is our constant willingness to fight back when he cheats; as long as our will is there, coupled with our skill, he will lose. And no one, even he, likes or can afford to lose every time he fights. But stop one time, lose, or pull out—and it will be an ungodly disaster, worse than Lebanon. The hysteria of the Saudis, the Arab Street’s yells, and al Qaeda’s barbarism all reveal a level of panic not seen before in those parts. So we must keep pouring it on, like Wellington’s “hard pounding”—and I wager they will crack first.

I was disturbed by a 10/3 article in the New York Times by Thomas Friedman accusing President Bush of using political rather than strategic principles in prosecuting the war. Would you comment on this charge?

Hanson: Look, Bush has a simple but effective tripartite strategy: (1) hunt down the terrorists; (2) remove states that sponsor or aid terrorists; (3) leave democracy in their wake and promote democratic reform in the Middle East at large to end the pathologies that led to 9-11. It is the long-term solution that alone can promise peace for our children; anything else is palliative and returns us to the pre-9-11 half-measure and “nuisance” days. Remember: if Bush wins, the House, Senate, Presidency, and soon Supreme Court are all lost to the Left. Polls suggests that most no longer identify themselves as “liberals.” All that remains to the Left are the universities, media, arts, and super-rich: influential yes, real power, no. This fear of impotence results in hysteria. If Bush is reelected, the far left is politically through, and the Democratic Party will have either to move to the center or die. Wilson, Roosevelt, Truman, and Kennedy all led this country in war or were resolute in the face of war; a Carter, Clinton, Gore, or Kerry are different folk, and hardly Democrats in the old sense.

Mark Steyn recently wrote about the good death in Iraq, stating that individuals who go to Iraq should take a gun, use it instead of being forced into a car with Iraqi strangers, and if all else fails then do “as Churchill recommended in a less timorous Britain: You can always take one with you.” So, Steyn admired in his way the heroic Italian who tore off his hood in the middle of the head-hackers’ show and shouted “I’ll show you how an Italian dies,” wrecking as Steyn claims the entire beheading video—true, there was no less blood for it, just heroics. (Read the entire Steyn at http://www.steynonline.com/index2.cfm?edit_id=22) Has the concept of a "good death" ever really been more than an ideal?

I think Steyn’s point was this: that when we reach our final moments when there is no hope in such an impossible situation, some of us still cling to “hope” (Thucydides’ “danger’s comforter”) and thus perish humiliated and to the delight of our captors; others accept the dilemma, and are resolved to go out in defiance to the chagrin of our tormentors. Look at the last minutes of an Epaminondas, Lord Nelson, Nathan Hale, or Albert Sidney Johnston that are widely quoted and inseparable from the larger story of their lives: all were doomed or dying and yet chose to pass on either in defiance or in concern about their men in the field. There really is such a thing as a good death, but in our modern age survival alone matters, so the concept is increasingly alien. The Italian prisoner’s last exclamations made a profound impression on me; he proved that we are all masters of our fates after all and he was not willing to do anything for a final few seconds of life. We hear little from the actual fighting in Iraq; let us hope that special forces are systematically hunting down and killing these psychopaths. And finally, I admire Steyn a great deal: no one in our age has fathomed as well as he the hypocrisy and smugness of the elite Anglo-American elite.

(Editor's note: The Telegraph Group declined to publish the Steyn article mentioned above, perhaps because the article made it difficult to separate the ridiculous and comic from the tragedy of a beheading. Remember though that the works of Steyn's genre have just that purpose: to show how to die well and thus live the good life. So, we recommend the article.)

Hasn't President Bush provoked Nemesis by disregarding the counsel of many such as John McCain and General Shinseki regarding the necessary commitment of men and materiel to win the war in Iraq?  Do you believe such conduct on the part of President Bush was hubris?

Hanson: Well, both McCain and Shinseki both have had prior run-ins with George Bush that might color their views. We had enough men in Iraq—but only if they stayed on the offense and punished severely incipient insurrectionists, which like cancer metastasize when untreated. 500,000 troops in Vietnam brought us no victory since they were often passive and did not invade the North. What troops do, rather than how many they number, is the key. I would not have had the celebratory pomp on the aircraft carrier, though I wrote at the time I was tired of the knee-jerk criticism of it. Instead, I would have ordered the military to show an iron fist to incipient terrorists and then frowned and kept silent. But that is water under the bridge. Bush’s main accomplishment was that he took a great gamble as a popular president to dethrone a mass murderer who would always have plagued America; that took guts and audacity and he should be congratulated for it. That he is not a Lincoln or Churchill is regrettable, but who is? As an academic for some 20 years, listening to Kerry debate is like going to yet another committee meeting and sleeping while PhDs pontificate and nuance—and then freeze and turn white when asked to vote. Kerry is the epitome of the wannabe European, whose bearing, looks, hair, diction, and class are supposed to magically equate to leadership. They don’t. We know Bush was lax in his 20s and 30s, but Kerry in his 40s seems to have been a bon vivant without any serious record of accomplishment and addicted to the plush lifestyle liberals secretly worship, but profess hatred for, wanting the deserts but not the dirty work necessary to obtain them. Thus the deus ex machina of a deceased Republican’s fortune. I am bothered that Teresa and John jet about professing utopian bromides on someone else’s fortune that was obtained precisely in antithesis to what they now advocate. That hypocrisy and Kerry’s vote against the 1991 war are rarely remarked on but should be.

What do you think would be the most fitting course of action by Israel, the United States, and the U.N. in this combustible situation against Iran?

Hanson: Well, there are no good choices. But here is a suggestion. An immediate message to the mullahs that any announcement on their part that they have completed nuclear weapons acquisition will be met by an immediate strike by us. And in the meantime, we should encourage Europeans to drag out diplomacy while we hasten efforts to back dissidents. Remember, beside the geopolitical calculus, the mullahs are desperate and hoping that a nuclear bomb, in the manner of Pakistan, can win them nationalist support: they can appear either as saviors of the Islamic Shiites or as victimized by the West for trying to raise Persian stature. So we need a Zen-like approach of stopping them while promoting the youth of Iran to throw them out—all of which can be subverted by either the presence of nuclear arms or the efforts to rid them of nuclear arms. A very Orwellian situation. That most Americans preferred that Iraq defeat Iran in their horrific war of the 1980s is an indicator of how odious that mullocracy is to most in the West.

If Kerry is elected, will China be emboldened in its quest for reunification by force with Taiwan?  Will Islamists conclude that Osama was right, Americans do not have the stomach for a long fight, and if you bleed them enough Americans will eventually slink away?  Will Israel decide that it should rid of the looming Iranian menace on its own and do it now, by the most thorough and permanent means available, because Kerry will be too feckless to deal forcefully with the mullahs?  What will Syria do?  And the new Iraqi government?

Hanson: So many questions—but all hinging on the correct presumption that a Kerry victory might unleash a new generation of Carterism, in which instead of the Iranian hostage take-over, Cambodian holocaust, central American communist insurgency, invasion of Afghanistan, and radical Palestinian terror strikes, we see China assuming Taiwan is alone, the Arabs thinking the US will not support Israel, and the terrorists believing that their acts are once again problems for police rather than likely to cause a war for their own patrons. All we can do is hope that a new belt of reformist governments in Afghanistan and Iraq, along with a Turkey and some more moderate Gulf States, will create enough momentum to ensure that the terrorists find their message appealing to very few.

Can we expect the Middle East to be less problematic as countries there establish democracies?  In comparison with the problems faced in the aftermath of the English, American, and French revolutions, do the American people have the staying power in the event of such a problematic transition?

Hanson: Problematic is a euphemism for real messy. But if one believes that our present problem with the Middle East begins with the use of anti-American propaganda by autocratic regimes to deflect popular frustrations over their own failure, then our only hope is a combination of real military force against the terrorists and an alteration of the conditions that spawn them. We need not see democracy only in idealistic terms, but rather as a realist matter of our own national security, inasmuch as the odds of democratic nations attacking one another are growing less likely. As far as our own staying power, our record is mixed when one looks at Mogadishu or our flight from Lebanon. But if one considers Germany, Japan, South Korea, and the Balkans, then, yes, Americans have an impressive ability to stay on and clean up the detritus of war. I am not shy in saying that a Kerry election will seriously undermine our efforts at creating consensual government in Iraq; note how he has never cited a single positive development in either Afghanistan or Iraq—women’s rights, voting, new judges and schools—but only harps on the negative as if every war is Vietnam redux. How odd it would be to see the Australians stay the course by reelecting John Howard, while we abandon them and choose the withdrawal timetables outlined by Kerry.

Can you give a simple definition of postmodernism? Do you know of any books that refute the postmodernist argument?

Hanson: The further attack against classical standards that questions the very basis of Western empiricism—‘who is to say or not say that this is good or that is bad?’

Look at Keith Windshuttle’s The Killing of History, Bruce Thornton’s Plagues of the Mind; a book I co-authored with John Heath, Who Killed Homer?; John Ellis, Against Deconstruction.

Early 20^th-century Modernism—painting that does not reflect what the eye sees; poetry that has neither rhyme nor meter; novels whose characters speak and act like real people or perhaps far worse than real people; rebellion against traditional social protocols—was a rejection of classical ideas of culture, literature, and art. Yet modernists were rebels against a system, and often had once mastered what they later rejected—so a T.S. Eliot or a Salvador Dali really understood meter or perspective.

But contemporary postmodernism (“after modernism”) rejects the rejection, claiming that there is no objective standard to judge anything inasmuch as power alone adjudicates arbitrary notions of artistic, literary, or cultural “excellence.” Thus the postmodernist is really a nihilist: all cultures are relative; it is impossible to have objective criteria to say that this is “bad” or that is “good.” Literature has no aesthetic or transcendent power, but is a mere narrative that can be deconstructed to determine how issues of race, class, and gender are manipulated to privilege particular positions (usually associated with white capitalist males). “Theory” is the Holy Grail: since there are no such things as “facts” that can lead to a disinterested investigation, analysis, and conclusion, one instead offers “truth” based on a priori recognition of the role of power and its insidious machinations.

Of course, hypocrisy was the fatal toxin to postmodernism, since its practitioners really did put their names on their books and wanted financial and professional rewards for their “good” work; real science does exists and thus jets deliver academics to conferences thanks to the unchanging principles of aerodynamics and physics; and there really are standards that span time and space since no one really thinks a crucifix in a urine jar is just as valid an expression of art as The Last Supper or the Venus de Milo. In a practical sense, radical egalitarianism, utopian pacifism, cultural relativism, and multiculturalism all are predicated on the postmodern idea that there can be no hierarchy of knowledge, truth, or morality. As postmodernism dies, it will leave little more than a few embarrassing PhD dissertation titles.

How do you maintain that the current administration's policy toward North Korea—a country that, when Bush first took office, had two nuclear weapons and now has six—is the best way to deal with that country.

Hanson: Two or six nukes—the administration still inherited a situation in which the Jimmy Carter/Bill Clinton solution of food and oil for good nuclear behavior failed miserably, despite post facto efforts to explain away the disaster. The Americans now have bad and worse choices only—how do you negotiate with a lunatic with nukes who has utter contempt for the United States, and can wipe out a Japan or Taiwan in a matter of minutes? So we get the present plan of apprising China of the bleak scenario in its own soon-to-be nuclear-armed neighborhood—all in response to its own laxity in allowing its client to go nuclear. Once rogue nations go nuclear, we have no good options—either containment through overwhelming deterrence that we hope works with madmen or prayers for eventual internal revolution. It should be a cornerstone of U.S policy that under no circumstances can Iran be allowed to have nuclear weapons—no circumstances whatsoever since to do so would mean the entire Middle East would be held as nuclear hostage.

Do the insurgents in Iraq see their battle as won or lost by November 2, 2004 election?

Hanson: That is hard to tell, since the more critical date is the Iraqi elections in January which if successful will make the terrorists’ murdering even more difficult, inasmuch as they really will be seen as reactionaries fighting an elected government. One thing is clear, however, that the antagonism toward Bush throughout much of the Middle East and in the Arab World in general is in part attributable to his questioning of the global status quo, which was corrupt and amoral. When a President reexamines why we still have troops in Saudi Arabia or Germany, or why we negotiate with terrorists and killers like Arafat, or why should we keep the Taliban or Saddam Hussein in their boxes with cruise missiles only—there are bound to be repercussions. It may be reductionist, but I still ask myself, “Who would our enemies or former friends prefer to win the election?”— then I simply vote in opposite fashion.  Their battle is against Iraqi freedom; so a Bush victory doesn’t mean, from their vantage point, that they are completely lost, but that they will continue to have a formidable enemy advising and training Iraqi forces, and ultimately ready to defend the interim government.

With so many other commentators praising Kerry's performance in the debates, do you think Bush can still win?

Hanson: By classical standards of judging debates—the aura of assurance, clear, forcible, and confident answers, vocabulary and syntax mastery—Kerry clearly won the contest. However, when one reads the transcript of his answers, he comes off the more confused in arguing for meeting a "global test" on the wisdom of protecting America and without a clear plan still to chart a different course in Iraq. So what did the debate accomplish? It saved Kerry from being knocked out, behind 6-8 points with no chance to catch up. In turn, the pressure mounts on Bush to prove that he was uncharacteristically off that night, and in the next debate will either win or draw. If Bush has 3 bad debates he may well lose the election; yet, if the next 2 are draws, then Kerry will still, I believe, end up 2-3 points back, on the theory that there are too many swing voters who still don't quite trust him and may well equate his rhetorical skills with glibness and falsity.  So it will be a wild final month. And don't forget the situation in Iraq; victories and resolute action may help Bush while continued suicide bombing and general chaos bolster Kerry's case. Again, one great speech by Bush on the moral and political reasons why we are in Iraq, and how this necessary sacrifice represents the best of what America stands for could make all the difference in the world, and seal his victory.