Tag Archives: Victor Davis Hanson

Prosperity unimaginable

Posted on March 6, 2008 | Comments Off on Prosperity unimaginable

I always enjoy Victor Davis Hanson, but never more so than when he’s comparing America’s present to its past:

"Our 1972 Olds 98 (my dad bought it used) in terms of reliability, comfort, ease of driving, and safety was a relic, a deathtrap, a clunker compared to a 2007 Honda Accord or Toyota Camry. None of these considerations appear in statistics about income, unemployment, purchasing power, etc. After all, how do you measure the value of a lap-top with wifi, or the notion that you can sit at Starbucks and have a 10-million volume library at your fingertips? What does one pay for that privilege?"

He mentions a 1930s family with its wood-burning stove and prize-possession radio. Reminded me of my Mississippi grandmother, who still had both in the mid-1950s. I wonder, though, whether Americans today don’t just take their affluence for granted and get upset when they can’t afford more? Making the entitlement "promises" of a Barry or Hilarity attractive.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Scribbles

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Avoiding a Greek tragedy

Posted on January 20, 2008 | Comments Off on Avoiding a Greek tragedy

In a Greek tragedy, the fated catastrophe can’t be prevented. But conservatives should be able to avoid a Republican train wreck (caused by sitting out a McCain candidacy), says military historian Victor Davis Hanson, if they give up their litany about his past sins and accept his turnarounds, for instance on blanket amnesty. The alternative, afterall, would be four years spent discovering Obama’s make-it-up-as-I-go-along intentions, or another round of Clinton sex, money and national security scandals. And, whichever one won, the bumbling, expensive and corrupt social manipulations for which the Democrats are so famous. McCain, by comparison, should be a walk in the park. I disagree that ONLY McCain has "an outside shot at edging out" Obama/Clinton. I think they’re eminently beatable. But I like Hanson, have read many of his good books, and tend to follow his lead. This looks like another good time to do it.

MORE:  Hanson’s earlier good, and therefore controversial, take on McCain. 

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Posted in Scribbles, The War

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Warriors for the right

Posted on October 6, 2007 | Comments Off on Warriors for the right

"Whatever one’s views on the war are, it seems to me morally reprehensible that anyone would slander an American soldier, whether comparing them to terrorists or their General to a betrayer. We have a very rare precious resource in today’s military that really does represent the moral upper crust of American society, and as long as it is engaged, we need to support it."

I don’t think you’d find many American veterans who disagree with that and you should read the rest of this analysis by military historian Victor Davis Hanson, who recently returned from Iraq.

UPDATE: Part II of VDH’s report, with a third to come. Here’s Part III.

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Posted in The War, Troops

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The insurgent advantage

Posted on September 13, 2007 | Comments Off on The insurgent advantage

"It is often said that had the weeks in the hedgerows after D-Day (June to late July 1944) or the Battle of the Bulge (December 1944 to January 1945) been televised each hour on CNN or Fox—with real-time email and cell phone communications with beleaguered soldiers in the field—we would never have won either battle."

–Military historian and prolific military author Victor Davis Hanson on the new face of Western war.

MORE: Underscoring Hanson, there’s this bad news. Whatever the good Gen. Petraeus had to say, and what I saw sounded like realism to me (insurgencies, as he wrote in the Army’s new manual, take a decade or more to defeat), the Iraqis apparently aren’t impressed with the surge. Not that the campaign has ever been entirely for them, mind you. Or that I would trust a BBC poll in the first place, but it’s worth considering.

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Posted in The War, Troops

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Democrats campaign for disgrace

Posted on July 18, 2007 | Comments Off on Democrats campaign for disgrace

Military historian and classicist Victor Davis Hanson, whose fascinating "Ripples of Battle," I’m reading of late, sums up the history-making the Dems in Congress, and their MSM buds, seem hellbent to accomplish:

"Leaving Iraq with the enemy in control of the battle space would be the first time in our nation’s history that a US military army group had abandoned an entire battlefield (a Somalia or Beirut were withdrawals of only a few hundred troops)…To do what the New York Times suggests—skedaddle from Iraq now—would destroy the reputation of the US military for a generation."

Not that they would care, apparently. What would they do, I wonder, after Syria takes over Lebanon, and Iran gets the bomb and buys the missiles to deliver it? Send Nancy and Harry over to chat? 

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Posted in Library, The War

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War about war

Posted on July 11, 2007 | Comments Off on War about war

In a way, when you read the AP piece which Crittenden has posted, it merely reflects what Herbert Meyer calls the growing ascendency of "Perception Two: We’re Reaping What We Sowed," in regards to 9/11. I have to admit that President Bush, despite admirable attacks to dispose of the Taliban and Saddam, has failed to do the obvious: put the US on a war footing, impose some sort of draft, decapitate Iran and Syria and help the Israelis dismantle Hezbollah and Hamas. How Bush expects Gen. Petraeus to succeed in Iraq, without either closing their borders or hitting the insurgents’ suppliers in Iran and Syria, is beyond me. As for Petraeus, he admits, in the Army Field Manual 3-24 Counterinsurgency which he authored (excerpts available here in PDF), that insurgencies are rarely beaten and the only time the US has done it was in the Phillipines a hundred years ago. Moreover, he says wars against insurgencies take nine or ten years to win. Meyer sees little chance of that sort of committment, after more than four years in Iraq. Even Victor Davis Hanson, who has written that democracies rarely support wars of more than a few years, has come around to the view that we’ll retreat from Iraq. Then what? Meyer says we’ll need a bigger repeat of 9/11 to finally go all out. Sure looks that way.

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Posted in Afghanistan, Iraq, The War

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Houston, we have a problem

Posted on June 6, 2007 | Comments Off on Houston, we have a problem

Military historian Victor Davis Hanson disquietingly concludes of Iraq that "…the narrative of the war is still the IED, not the purple finger," and makes another, so-far futile, call for more presidential persuasion on the fight for "…nothing less than the future of the Middle East." You know, the place where the oil comes from.

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Posted in The War

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