Response to Readership

Do the roots of Islamic terrorism lie in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and America's support of Israel? Arab elites make such claims, but is it really the main reason?

Hanson: Of course not, and a psychotherapist could diagnose the region’s problems in minutes—perhaps explaining why someone like Charles Krauthammer understands and sees through so well the Arab World’s monotonous gripe. It is a perceived grievance that psychologically allows one to retreat to tribal and ethnic pride in lieu of honest self-critique. Kuwait ethnically cleansed thousands of Palestinians and now blames us for our supposed callousness toward the West Bank. China swallowed Tibet and the world snores. By 1967 the Arab world had simply deported almost all its Jews and sent them to Israel—and few complained. The Sudanese government has killed more black Africans in a week than Israel has Palestinians in a decade, and the Arab World is silent. The first three wars between 1947-1967 were not over the West Bank. And when it is autonomous, the next one won’t be either. And on and on and on.

China, Latin America, most of Asia, India, and much of Africa seek reforms and hard work to join in on Western-induced globalization. But the reactionary Arab World wants it three ways: (1) not to give up tribalism, autocracy, controlled economies, gender apartheid, religious intolerance, or polygamy; (2) still enjoy modern material benefits it cannot produce and cannot pay for, whether computers, advanced medical care, or jumbo jets; and (3) blame the West for whetting its appetite and putting it in such an embarrassing dilemma.

And their writ against us depends entirely on Western complacency and appeasement. Yet, their lament is a castle of sand: as soon as the West says, “Quit whining, change, and reform yourself or simply don’t emigrate, stay inside your own borders, and live in peace and isolation in the 8^th century,” a real dialogue opens up. We must remind the Arab Islamic World that we wish to be friends and partners in their painful ordeal of change, but should they either send terrorists against us, or aid such killers for the psychological benefaction of ameliorating envy, we will make war so terrible that they will regret it in ways one cannot imagine. Again, we are in difficult times—very, very dangerous times should Iran go nuclear or WMDs fall into the hands of al Qaeda, who cannot thrive without some sanction and support from states hostile to the United States. After 9-11 there are no good choices—only bad and far, far worse.

How can the United States convince the world of our reasons for the current foreign policies? More importantly, what do we need to do to win the hearts and minds of the Middle East?

Hanson: We can do much, much better. We need to remind the world constantly of September 11, that the so-called hegemonic US endured three decades of provocation since 1979, from Islamic terrorists and autocrats before finally striking back in any meaningful way. We should remind the Middle East that we wish no territory; we pay for, not steal, oil—and at rigged and unfairly high prices—we spend blood and treasure keeping the sea lanes open, while ensuring borders are respected, and opposing tyrants and terrorists who threaten the general peace. When we war we seek to leave consensual governments in our wake, no longer just thugs who keep communist out and oil pumping.

But we must remind the Middle East that our stick is as big as our carrot. And that it is a very dangerous thing to strike the United States, since our retaliation is as predictable only in the sense that it will be overwhelming and lethal. We need to do that in Iraq, and remind those killers in Fallujah that we are helping other Iraqis as assiduously as we are going to destroy them. So—be magnanimous, don’t falter in using force against the bad guys, and warn potential enemies that we are unpredictable while assuring friends we are reliable. Easier said than done.

Was Europe during the dark and middle ages more advanced in science and technology than the eastern civilizations?

Hanson: After 9-11 that question has become a battleground, as we are told ad nauseam that Europe was backward while Islam was flowering—a vast oversimplification. Remember after the fall of Rome, Europe was fragmented in a variety of religious and ethnic enclaves while by the 8^th century Islam was beginning to unite much of the former empire in North Africa and Asia. However, recall too that the logistics of transporting the Crusaders to the Holy Land was sophisticated and there was not much difference between arms and armor on either side; both copied designs whose origins were Roman or Roman-inspired. We can arbitrarily cite this and that selective evidence as proof of a particular point of view, but I tend to note that whereas in the Islamic world free, secular inquiry and the preservation of classical texts, at the apex of classical Islamic culture, were often either under siege or the domain of a small elite.  In Europe such enclaves were the result of social and economic turmoil rather than political or religious coercion, a foundation that explains in part why the West later exploded during the early Renaissance. The classical spirit was never entirely dead in Europe, and when politics and economics settled down it was there to reclaim civilization in a way not so true elsewhere.

How much of anti-Americanism is due to demographic changes worldwide? We read in the press about France’s high Muslim population, as well as large Muslim immigration in Britain, Germany, Ireland, Scandinavia, Italy and elsewhere. Most of this immigration is non-assimilative and the Koran refers to gaining power through demographic changes.

Hanson: The U.S., far better than Europe, assimilates immigrants for reasons that go back to our very founding. Thus in two or three generations Arab-Americans in Detroit are far more likely not to speak Arabic nor to see themselves as Muslims first and Americans second than is true in a class-bound, aristocratic, and former colonial Europe. But demography is a problem as a postmodern West shrinks, convinced the good life is too precious to waste on diapers and 3 AM feedings. If there is a clash of civilizations it lies in this domain—the West acculturates and buries others with its extravagant menu of freedom and affluence, whether in the elevated sense of computers, classical music, and free literature or in the crass aspects of rap, video games, and Playboy, even as the East seeks population increases as the great equalizer. It is almost as if the West in Europe says, “We are too precious and sophisticated to sweep our streets and make our beds, so you poor, uneducated Muslims come over here to toil for us,” while the Islamic radical answers, “Yes, we will, but since we live a purer, less materialistic life, we seek meaning in our children who will decide the future far more than your gadgets.”

Will we need to mobilize on a large scale, like that of WWII, in order to defeat Islamofascism?

Hanson: After 9-11—an attack far worse than Pearl Harbor—I feared it would have to come to that. Right now, we are one more 9-11 away from total war, whose terrible logic becomes standard thinking after thousands have been butchered. Americans sense that 160,000 of their best can keep the terrorists at bay far away, while we run up deficits, get tax cuts, and quibble over Scott Peterson’s trial. Maybe, maybe not. But we surely have the power to mobilize our resources to such a degree that we could, should it come to that, utterly defeat our enemies in short order. They know that—thus the race in Iran for the bomb, and the terrorists’ desperation in getting WMD. So we sit and wait, fighting incrementally abroad, and at home ready to go berserk if they try it again. I must say I think al Qaeda is crazy if they think our reaction will be akin to Madrid’s. The first time fascists lost Afghanistan and Iraq, the next time…well, it’s too terrible to contemplate.

What is your assessment of John Kerry's four-point plan for Iraq?

Hanson: Is there one? How will he get Germany or France to cooperate? What will he say or do in exchange? When has the UN done anything successfully to stop a major crisis—Rwanda, Iran, North Korea, Darfur, Somalia, or the Balkans? What will he tell the millions of Iraqis who are reforming on the promise that we will stay the course? I think his plan is exactly like the one he once raised about Vietnam—chronological deadlines, negotiations with our enemies, international adjudication, and the other dreams of the utopian and naïve idealist. We’ve seen it all before and it leads to helicopters buzzing off the embassy roof, followed by global turmoil.

Why didn't the military change its tactics as soon as we began losing soldiers to roadside bomb attacks? There must be something else we could have done besides sending them out to their slaughter every day.

Hanson: I think they immediately began to retrofit Humvees with greater armor, started electronic jamming of radio-controlled bombs, and modified tactics, but such responses are not immediate in war. Before B-17 squadrons understood the value of fighter escorts, incendiaries, chaff, 20,000 airmen were dead with very little to show for it. To us the response seemed slow, but to those in the field I am sure there were frantic efforts to do something differently. War is a constant flux, and the side that wins adapts best and loses the fewest in the process—but loses some nevertheless.

At what point in recent history should gathering danger of Islamism to modern society have become apparent to serious and informed people?

Hanson: It seemed to me that after 1979, with the Khomeini fatwas and the Iranian embassy take-over, the Rushdie death sentence and the Lebanon-Iran nexus, everything from then on was predictable. The earlier PLO terror was ostensibly Marxist and Soviet-inspired. The key question is not when we should have known it, but why in the world so many Americans remain in denial, claiming that Islamic extremism is just a generic form of religious excess, like hyper-Christian fundamentalism, as if one yells “Jesus” as he blows up children. It is almost criminally irresponsible and certainly intellectually dishonest for politicians to fail to speak of Islamic fascism.

What are your thoughts on the Taiwan independence movement? How much should the USA risk antagonizing China for the sake of preserving Taiwanese democracy?

Hanson: We are going about it the right way—trying to rein in a little the more provocative Taiwanese on the premise that China will go democratic before Taiwan becomes communist. So I suppose our advice is something like, ‘Don’t provoke a dying government, since it will be like you in a few years, given its economic liberality and increased global dependency.’ Let us hope that some nut in China does not think we won’t protect Taiwan and thus wishes to take it down with him as Communism implodes.

In your opinion, is there any merit to John Mosier's "Myth of the Great War"?

Hanson: I discuss that book in connection to his work on Blitzkrieg, along with other scholars, in the next issue of Historically Speaking, the news magazine of the Historical Society.

How do you make a choice between voting for the Bush military and foreign policy of realism and idealism, such as the war against terrorism and Saddam Hussein, and against the Bush domestic policy of corporate welfare, tax cuts for the most wealthy, huge budget deficits, neglect of the environment, and inattention (to say the least) of jobs for working people and the middle class?

Tough—but the party of Howard Dean, Michael Moore, Terry McAuliff, and the Hollywood elite sort of says it all this year. They are not exactly Wilson, Roosevelt, or Truman at war, are they?

I am very critical of the budget deficits. That tax cuts result in greater revenue matters little if one cannot restrain spending. We are essentially borrowing money to import oil, Chinese consumer goods, Japanese cars, and European luxuries to support a lifestyle we have not earned—on the premise that if they cannot sell their products here and cannot stash their profits in America, then they are in worse shape than we are.

“Starving” the Democrats doesn’t work to obtain sobriety, neither does shutting down the government. So the administration should have had a budgetary freeze. I am on record in a number of op-eds opposing ag-subsidies. In 1996 I wrote a strong op-ed for the Wall Street Journal condemning the Freedom to Farm Act, and predicted it would be a farce and reneged upon—and it was after about 4 years (but not until handing out billions to those who did not need it).

We need, if only for a balance, a strong populist Democratic party. Like Zell Miller, I cannot vote this time for a ticket that perches Michael Moore next to Jimmy Carter at its convention or has a scoundrel like Terry McAuliff as its nominal head, or a money speculator like George Soros as its fiscal godhead. I mean, here is a man who called beheaders in Iraq “Minutemen” and lamented that the dead at the WTC were mostly Democrats; here is another who made millions on questionable stock deals that broke a company and screams about corporate fraud, and the third is an international financial criminal who has been indicted and convicted in France and helped to destroy British banks and their depositors. How can a Leftist Moveon.Org take money from such a rapacious capitalist? The answer is that in the Democrats’ postmodern world, there are no bothersome facts—hence the CBS fraudulent memo that is both “a forgery” and yet “accurate.”

In short, too many Kerrys, Kennedys, Gores, Edwards, and Deans and not enough Liebermans, Gephardts, and Zell Millers. Aristocratic smugness does not mix well with “men of the people” politics—or the billionaire Teresa Heinz-Kerry’s lectures about being “un-American” or her Marie Antoinette quip “let them go naked” about the hurricane displaced. We need one party of the folks to scrutinize the other party of capital and financial power, not simply to mimic the elite with the added wage of hypocrisy. And we are at war, and the Democrats—who could have hit Bush from the right of not being aggressive enough in places like Fallujah—embraced Carterism and we know where that leads. I will support instead those who unapologetically wish to defeat Islamic fascism, not a group of boutique liberal multimillionaires, whose exegeses come from elite professors, journalists, foundations, and bureaucrats. Harry Truman, Henry Jackson, and JFK had no doubts about American exceptionalism and the treacherous nature of the world outside our shores. They would have been appalled at neocolonialist dogma, postmodernism, and radical cultural relativism that have imbued the Democratic ideology of today with an equality of government-mandated result rather than of protected opportunity. Those who demand greater power to be angels end up as abject devils.

I read this morning about the alleged Israeli spy in the Pentagon. Up until now, I had planned to vote for President Bush and I am generally favorably disposed toward Israel. But I see this as potentially damaging to President Bush's chances for reelection. If true, the highest officials at the Defense Department would have to resign (I'd hate to see Rumsfeld leave) and it would seriously call into question the basis for the Iraq war, giving new life and meaning to the word "misled." I know we will need to learn more, but what's your take?

Hanson: Don't believe anything like that—at least not yet. The so-called suspect is a principled scholar, gifted linguist and expert on the Middle East. He is hardly an Israeli spy. This is an election year in which our sense of balance is all out of kilter: a former National Security Advisor walks out with top secret documents stuck in his pants that may have been later "lost" and we shrug; mention "Jewish" sympathies and we have a full-blown spy-scandal. I have met a number of officers and civilians in the Pentagon and none of them were patsies for Israel; they were among the finest people I've encountered. I'll leave you with a disturbing thought: at a time of war, going to Paris and freelancing with Viet Cong representatives in 1970-71 should have been a felony; being a midlevel analyst and perhaps talking too much about what we should do in Iran is not even a misdemeanor. So let us wait for the facts to come out. We are only now getting the full story of the so-called Joe Wilson escapade, and it looks worse for him each week.

Can you please recommend some good U.S. and world history books for a junior high or high school age student, perhaps ones that are less leftward leaning?

Hanson: On U.S. history there are so many that it is nearly impossible, but I like Paul Johnson's history of the American people. On Western history, I used Kagan, Ozment, and Turner, which are sober and reliable. I've read most of the major 'world' historians—Toynbee, Spengler, Hegel—and their epigones and didn't learn all that much from their overarching preconceived ideas about Western failure and inevitable decline. Read Jacques Barzun instead.

I was recently reading a magazine article by publisher Adam Bellow, in which he mentions associating with a variety of conservative authors, including "midlife converts like Victor Davis Hanson."

Hanson: Hmmm. I know Adam Bellow well. He was my editor for five books at Free Press and two more at Doubleday. I like him and always have. Again, as I mentioned the other day, I don't know what I am anymore. I am a registered Democrat, but cannot vote for Kerry or any of the elite millionaires like a Gore, Kennedy, Dean, Kerry, Soros or others who would lose this war on Islamic fascism. I suppose a Zell Miller most closely sums up most of my views.

Why do neo-conservatives like yourself have such blind faith in the ability to install democracy by conquest? The American South was as thoroughly smashed in 1865 as Germany was in 1945, but Radical Reconstruction still failed.

Hanson: I don’t know whether I qualify as a neo-conservative; I certainly was never a radical leftist who became disillusioned and went Republican. Mexifornia did not endear me to neoconservatives. If you look at books like Fields Without Dreams, The Land Was Everything, or Who Killed Homer?, instead I think you can detect a consistently socially conservative but still populist theme, whether wary of agribusiness subsidies, open borders, or elite academic culture.

I don’t feel comfortable in either New York or Washington and as someone who farmed for a number of years am no fan of corporate agriculture. You err when you employ the term “blind faith”—as if all these Bushites thought New England would sprout up in a few weeks outside of postbellum Baghdad.

Trying to offer reform in the wake of the war was the least bad of very bad alternatives. We left Somalia, fled Lebanon, let the fanatics take over Afghanistan, didn’t go to Baghdad in 1991 and ended up with rogue, failed states and September 11. Anytime we stayed on—Germany, Japan, South Korea, Panama, Nicaragua, or the Balkans the prospects were much better. Let us see what Iraq looks like in 3-5 years, versus what either leaving now or leaving Saddam in power might have been like.

I don’t want to get into Reconstruction, but someone like Grant, who was no wild-eyed liberal, felt that after a decade there of Federal troops there was gradual progress, and the election of 1876 was a travesty in American history, leaving a wound open that would not heal until the 1960s. There are no good choices when it comes to war and its aftermath, only bad and worse alternatives. We should remember that in Iraq and beyond.

Is Gettysburg (1993) an anti-war film?

Hanson: Only in the sense that any realistic reenactment of the gore and horror of war is by needs antiwar—whether Saving Private Ryan or The Thin Red Line. In the case of Gettysburg, I think the directors were trying to evoke the tragedy of thousands of young men, who otherwise had few differences that could not have been settled by negotiations, trying to kill each other over a fundamental issue dividing their respective peoples—slavery. Looking at any one second of Gettysburg reminds us of how silly war is and horrific. But before we condemn Lincoln, we must first figure out how the wealthiest class in the history of civilization – the mere 3% of the Confederacy who owned large plantations and great numbers of slaves – was going to dismantle their source of riches peacefully.

Any thoughts on Shelby Foote’s three-volume set on the Civil War?

Hanson: I’m glad it has had a renaissance; it is beautifully written with uncommon insights not often found in the academic mind. It also should help graduate students gain the confidence to work on style and narrative, in addition to scholarship, to regain the attention of the American people in reading about their past. So he did America a great service.

I am an Arab-American born in the U.S. I cannot understand why anyone would be hostile toward the Palestinian right to freedom when these are the very ideals on which this country was built. I regret the targeting of civilians on both sides, yet many pro-Israeli individuals regret only the targeting of Israeli civilians. What is your opinion on the solution? Do the Palestinians have a right to freedom from the illegal Israeli occupation? Are the Israelis to blame for anything, or is it just the Arabs?

Hanson: I don’t want to get into 50 years of acrimonious history in this short answer, and feel most Americans like myself support some sort of autonomous Palestinian state with perhaps 95% of the territory of the West Bank. But remember that any outstanding difference between the two sides might be adjudicated—if there were two roughly equal parties at the table.

There are not. On the one side, you have a free press, open society, gender equality, and democratic government with a vocal opposition; on the other, you have one-time rigged election lawlessness, Arafat’s censorship, and thuggery in lieu of politics—not unlike Saddam’s Iraq, Qadhafi's Libya, or Assad’s Syria.

Don’t tell me this is “radicalization” because of this or that gripe; rather, ask why is there not a single Arab democracy in the Middle East? Colonialism or Cold War realpolitik was the excuse for 40 years, but its shelf life is over, and we need to hear some new reason that forbids 300 million from voting.

No, when we look around the world and see terrorists killing in Russia, Israel, Madrid, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Spain, and on and on, we see a generic pattern that transcends the politics of the day. Of course not every Muslim is a terrorist, but we are getting to the point that every fascist terrorist is it would seem nearly always a Muslim. Why so?

The answer is that instead of blaming Israel, the United States, or the man in the moon for Arab problems—sit down, take a deep breath and ask yourself, ‘Why is there no democracy, no equality of the sexes, no religious tolerance, no free press, no loyal opposition in a Syria, Yemen, Libya, etc.’—or why do Arabs not vote freely except in the United States, France, or in the case of those one million Arabs who live in Israel of all places?

Look at China or South America who have very little oil or natural resources, and yet are restructuring their societies to meet new challenges rather than blaming the British for the Opium Wars or trashing the United States for the United Fruit Company. I am very worried about the Islamic world’s obliviousness about the radical shift in world opinion. The globe no longer has any patience with suicide bombers, car explosives, beheadings, and all the other nonsense that is now offered daily on our screens for the various causes of Chechen independence, Arafat’s autonomy, a return to Baathism, a theocratic state in Afghanistan, or a return of Spain to the Moors, and on and on.

We are simply tired of it. If the Palestinians had open and fair elections, a free press, nonviolent politics, and peaceful civil protests, then a great deal of their grievances would be addressed. But until then I am afraid that the average citizen of the world turns on the TV set, looks at some teenager burning some flag and shooting off a machine gun, or watches one of those barbaric last farewells of suicide bombers, and then simply flips the channel, and sighs, “enough of that nonsense.”

The Arab leadership should ask itself, why are 4 billion Anglo-Americans, Chinese, Indians, Japanese, Russians, black Africans, and Latin Americans coming to the consensus that something is very, very wrong in the Islamic world and it has nothing to do with outside parties—but everything to do with a failure to address self-induced misery that involves everything from patriarchy and tribalism to religious intolerance and autocracy. I’m again sorry, but after the last two weeks of daily killing, I have no patience with the same old, same old “Israel is to blame.”

In the time you wrote that question, more poor unarmed Black Africans were butchered by Arabs in the Sudan than all the Palestinian militants killed in the last month by the Israelis—but the Arab-American community is absolutely silent to the tens of thousand murdered in Darfur by Arab Muslims who identify themselves as such as a reason for their pursuit of genocide.

In his book "Reflections on a Ravaged Century", Robert Conquest calls for an international "Trans-Oceanic" alliance in place of NATO and the UN, consisting of the US, UK, the old British commonwealth, and a few other countries. His argument is that these countries share a common culture and history of civic order that is unique. A culture of common sense he calls it. This corresponds to a Anglophone alliance, the so-called "Anglo-sphere" (and to the alliances of the world wars). Could you please comment on this.

Hanson: I've written something to that effect as well. Why have a UN chain with links like Syria or Iran? How can the UN be democratic when its members are not? And there is something about the Anglo-American tradition that is responsible and wary in a way continental Europe is not.

Have you read any of Newt Gingrich's Civil War books, "Gettysburg" and "Grant Comes East"? What are your impressions of them?

Hanson: I haven’t read either. But I have become more and more impressed with Gingrich as a political and strategic commentator. He shows a degree of maturity and savvy that was not always evident when he was Speaker, and has played a valuable role as a pundit and sage. He may be the most slurred and caricatured brilliant public figure since Henry Kissinger, whose memoirs rank with Sherman’s and Grant’s. How odd that in 1994 Gingrich rose when Clinton fell, and then vice versa imploded as Clinton survived. But now their respective postfacto careers are really instructive: Clinton still offers the same old hackneyed excuses and blather, while Gingrich, well, he will say anything on his mind, and do it with grace and magnanimity. So I think he has become more honest while Clinton never evolved.

What are the liberals and naysayers getting out of being so negative about everything?

Hanson: I don’t know. Perhaps an alleviation over their guilt at being so pampered, safe, and removed from the grime of everyday life. They seem to carry all the world’s worries on their shoulders from Martha’s Vineyard, Malibu, and Chevy Chase. They fret over the ghetto, but put their kids in prep schools, worry about health care for the poor, but buy high priced organic boutique food, remonstrate over the planet’s ecology but buy SUVs. A Ms. Kerry, Al Gore, or Arianna Huffington is a paradigm of our times.

So, yes, I think many of the most vocal are elite and pampered—trial lawyers, academics, journalists, aristocrats, actors, artists, who don’t start up the delivery truck, open the nursery store, or replace the generator each morning. In their view, anything less than utopia is failure, and always the mantra is “just give us, the educated and sensitive, enough money and power, and we will change mankind for the better for all you yokels at NASCAR”—which usually translates into corpses.

Does our military have an escape plan in the event of a popular uprising against the American occupation?

Hanson: I fear it is called something like “We won. Saddam is gone. We love ya all, but so long, see ya.” Or maybe “Adios and sorry you didn’t want all the $87 billion.” Or even “There is always GPS just for you if you put him back in again.”

Does the purported relationship between Chalabi and the Iranians as he loses support in Washington remind you of the connections between Alcibiades and the Persians as he lost support in Athens?

Hanson: Sort of I suppose. He certainly seems a similar triangulator—with Iraq, Iran, Jordan, the US. But then both figures have been so demonized, that who knows what is the truth? We still don’t know to what degree Xenophon, Thucydides, Plato, Aristophanes, and Plutarch were all talking about the same Alcibiades.

What do you think the ancient Greeks would tell us is our most pressing concern today? What would they tell us to do to resolve it?

Hanson: The unchanging nature of man. They would say: “Don’t be deceived by new isms and ologies, nor get confused by technocrats. Nor listen to the latest therapeutic bromides or some self-acclaimed new strategic thinker.”

As long as we are born into this earth, there is a certain logic and way of humans, a sameness to their desires, appetites, and impulses. Any who think they have evolved beyond the “human thing” usually are sorely disappointed. So remember we are guided by honor, status, and a desire for recognition, plagued by envy and jealousy, and quite crass and uncouth without the thin veneer of civilization—and in great debt to the Greeks and subsequent Western culture that quite singularly has allowed the world a modicum of decency and humanity.

Do you believe that the Bush administration has abandoned a genuine effort to win the war in Iraq, given the capitulation in Fallujah and several other places?

Hanson: Well, we are on the horns of a dilemma once we rightly turned autonomy over to the Iraqis. It is now their country and the government there (a) wants us to keep it safe and give it billions, but (b) cannot say that publicly since Arab pride precludes such honesty.

So, arises the present paradox, reminding us in future engagements always to smash a bug like Sadr or the Fallujah psychopaths when we have the chance: George Patton’s unforgiving minute. We forgot that victory or defeat on the ground determines politics, not politics victory or defeat. The wild card is that we still don’t know how many were killed in Najaf or Fallujah; there is still the chance that daily strikes and fighting is taking a high toll on them. One hopes so.