Tag Archives: Victor Davis Hanson

Six months

Posted on May 2, 2007 | Comments Off on Six months

Some soldiers say they can turn it around in Iraq in eighteen months. Military historian Victor Davis Hanson bets they have six.

"The war will be won or lost, like it or not, fairly or unjustly, in the next six months in Baghdad. Either Gen. Petraeus quells the violence to a level that even the media cannot exaggerate, or the enterprise fails, and we withdraw. For all the acrimony and hysteria at home, that in the end is what we face—the verdict of all wars that ultimately are decided by the soldiers, and then either supported or opposed by the majority at home with no views or ideology other than its desire to conform to the narrative from the front: support our winners, oppose our losers. In the end, that is what this entire hysterical four years are about."

I hope he’s wrong. If he’s right, there will be hell to pay. 

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Posted in Iraq, The War, Troops

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Finally, our Grant?

Posted on February 25, 2007 | Comments Off on Finally, our Grant?

Victor Davis Hanson making predictions on the campaign in Iraq:

"If Gen. Petraeus fails he will be unfairly forgotten, but if he succeeds, and I think he will, he will be fairly canonized."

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Posted in Iraq

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Waiting for a Sherman or a Grant

Posted on January 4, 2007 | Comments Off on Waiting for a Sherman or a Grant

Historian Victor Davis Hanson returns from Iraq dreaming of the emergence of an American general capable of more than midnight assignations with the MSM for anonymous complaints:

"The traveler to Iraq is struck not by dearth, but opulence—everything imaginable from new SUVs to Eskimo Pies. Internet Service there was far faster than from my home in rural Fresno County…Somewhere in the US military right now is a Grant, Sherman, Patton, Ridgeway, or Abrams…Now is the time to let them come forward—as they have always arisen from obscurity in past American wars when their nation’s hour of need has come."

A good read in which history offers more hope than the shoulda, coulda, woulda war hearings the Dems are about to begin.

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Posted in Afghanistan, Iraq, The War, Troops

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Adios Rummy

Posted on November 9, 2006 | Comments Off on Adios Rummy

I like him and will miss his gruff disdain for stupid questions from the news media. I hope he just got tired of wearing the bullseye, rather than Bush caving to the hysterical and getting rid of him, but we’ll know what happened in time.

Meanwhile, there’s a good postmortem on him and the elections by military historian VDH.

Rumsfeld, VDH says, "Tried to take a top-heavy Pentagon and prepare it for the wars of the postmodern world, in which on a minute’s notice thousands of American soldiers, with air and sea support, would have to be sent to some god-awful place to fight some savagery—and then be trashed live on CNN for doing it."

UPDATE  Rummy spoke today at Kansas State U.

"As we look back on those critical years during the Cold War, so too our grandchildren will one day look back on this time as a defining moment in America’s history. History will judge whether we did all we could to defeat a vicious extremist enemy that threatened our security, our freedom, our very way of life. Or, if we left it to the next generations to try to fight an enemy strengthened by our weakness, and emboldened by our lack of resolve."

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Posted in The War

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Oh, let’s do call them fascists

Posted on September 25, 2006 | Comments Off on Oh, let’s do call them fascists

They’ve certainly earned it, says classics and war historian Victor Davis Hanson.

"…Islamists, as is true of all fascists, privilege their own particular creed of true believers by harkening back to a lost, pristine past, in which the devout were once uncorrupted by modernism.

"True, bin Laden’s mythical Volk doesn’t bath in the clear icy waters of the Rhine untouched by the filth of the Tiber; but rather they ride horses and slice the wind with their scimitars in service of a soon to be reborn majestic world of caliphs and mullahs. Osama bin Laden sashaying in his flowing robes is not all that different from the obese Herman Goering in reindeer horns plodding around his Karinhall castle with suspenders and alpine shorts."

Via NRO

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Posted in The War

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Souls that live on

Posted on September 18, 2006 | Comments Off on Souls that live on

Somehow, I managed to miss the death Friday of the fiery Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci, 77, but Victor Davis Hanson does her obit proud, and brings in the Pope’s recent problem as well.

"So long may you run, Ms. Fallaci, you who by now have learned that, yes, there is a soul, and, yes, yours was indeed saved for eternity if only for its singular courage and honesty alone. And dear Pope: clarify, contextualize, express sorrow over the wrong interpretation of your remarks, but please don’t apologize for the Truth—not now, not ever."

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Posted in Obituaries, The War

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