Posted on 03/18/2004 8:52:04 AM PST by quidnunc
Frontpage Interview has the pleasure to have Victor Hanson, author of the new book "Between War and Peace: Lessons from Afghanistan to Iraq", as its guest today.
Frontpage Magazine: Mr. Hanson, it is a pleasure to have you join Frontpage Interview. Welcome.
Hanson: Thank you for having me again.
FP: This collection of your 35 previously published essays, most of them from NRO, is extremely impressive. Their themes apply exactly to our latest tragedy and crisis in Spain.
One of your special expertises is on how leftists, and some of our European allies, have chosen to side with our enemy. Now, after the Madrid terror attack, we see another European ally succumb to appeasement. Let’s start our discussion with your general thoughts on this development.
Hanson: Well, even before the terrorists' communiques were fully disseminated the Spanish electorate voted for appeasement and a socialist government that would distance itself from the United States. This is the most profound example of capitulation since Daladier and Chamberlain and sets a truly awful example: will British, Polish, Italian, and American elections now be presaged by mass murder on the assumption that decadent, affluent Westerners can be intimidated in fear of attacks?
Worse, this was not panic from a fickle leader but an overwhelming expression of public fear and intimidation. I am afraid it confirms what most of us have thought for some time about the Europeans: they want our bases and troops, but only in the shadows and with avenues of distance and denial, as a last guarantee only of their safety in extremis. I wish the Spanish had voted to expel our soldiers as well — but perhaps that will be in the next terrorist demand. And note that the Greeks, who slurred NATO in the Balkans, did nothing for it in Aghanistan, and trashed the US over Iraq, find a bomb at a Citibank office and suddenly are talking of NATO help in their Olympic security — even as the hated Americans are offering our commandos for joint practice operations with them against potential terrorist-like incursions.
As for Spain — and I say this with real remorse given their suffering and national catastrophe — not since Theodosius and the late Romans paid their annual bribe money to Attila have we seen such success in bullying and terrifying a Western nation. It is right off the pages of Gibbon in his discussion of how weak, wealthy, and fearful Westerners paid Goths and Huns before Adrianople and Chalons. And this is the beginning not the end of it, as we shall soon see.
All Americans feel terrible about the Spanish mass murder, but how can we express our solidarity when the reaction is to repudiate both us and Spaniards who were allied with us? And contrast the American example: 26 days after 9-11 we were in Afghanistan attacking the Taliban and al Qaeda; the Spaniards n 48 hours were turning out to apologize. A sad day for the West.
FP: And so what do you think of the Spanish reaction to the terror in Madrid, in terms of the turning to appeasement specifically?
Hanson: I am nauseated by it.
FP: Expand a bit on why you say this.
Hanson: I can understand a shocked public acting on emotion rather than reason. But to channel that grief so immediately toward a political end, and have the Socialists almost immediately employ invective against the United States, promising to take the troops out by June and rethink relations with the United States. It is an al Qaeda fantasy come true.
Our own NY-DC political-military axis should take a hard look at all this, and start crafting some long-term strategies, inasmuch as this appeasement is a grass-roots phenomenon, and apparently independent of a ruling elite. Greece (which will soon have one worker per one state pensioner) just cut defense spending, asked NATO to help with its security, went on joint manoeuvres with American anti-terrorist forces — all during a year-long spasm of anti-Americanism.
It may well be that the Europeans are angry with us not despite our principled help and NATO basing, but rather precisely because of it. And I don't mean our too visible presence, but rather due to deep-seeded feelings of inferiority, envy, and spite that they are weak militarily and being protected and thus vent with the antics like what we just saw from the newly-elected Spanish minister.
Perhaps a very quiet, very professional downsizing of all our troops from the Mediterranean would send a powerful message toour allies that our alliance is based on friendship and mutual sacrifice, and does not rest in perpetuity, but only as long as there is a group effort to combat a common threat. Those circumstances simply no longer exist.
Again, we really are a different people if you contrast the American and Spanish reactions to al Qaeda's unprovoked mass murder on their shores. So sad — this idea that bin Laden knows far better than we the true nature of the Spanish citizenry. Why John Kerry would wish to hint that such leaders who are angry with the United States praise him through back channels, I don't know. That may play well with his wife's foundation friends and at the Kennedy School of Government, but out here in middle America it would seem to me the kiss of death.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at frontpagemag.com ...
I like the way this guy thinks; since I've been saying this for the last 12 years.
[please freepmail me if you want or don't want to be pinged to Victor Davis Hanson articles]
If you want to bookmark his articles discussed at FR: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/k-victordavishanson/browse
His NRO archive: http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson-archive.asp
His blog: http://victorhanson.com/index.html
Yes, he is listened by the Bush Administration; they like him maybe as much as we do: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1085464/posts?page=6#6
I just tested the link and it works properly and points directly to the article.
Heres another link:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=12632
The browser I use is Safari on a Mac G-5 with a Unix-based OS (Panther 10.3.3), and it opens FrontPage just fine.
Maybe it's Netscape.
As for Spain — and I say this with real remorse given their suffering and national catastrophe — not since Theodosius and the late Romans paid their annual bribe money to Attila have we seen such success in bullying and terrifying a Western nation. It is right off the pages of Gibbon in his discussion of how weak, wealthy, and fearful Westerners paid Goths and Huns before Adrianople and Chalons. And this is the beginning not the end of it, as we shall soon see.
Erudition bump! These Europeans blast Americans for not knowing history, but they have forgotten the lessons chronicled by their very own historians. Gibbon, indeed!
Remember the Maine, to Hell with Spain
Amen!
Well, Hanson ought to remember that OBL thought that America hadn't the resolve to fight back either, based on OBL's long experience with Clinton and the Somalia Black Hawk incident.
In that instance, it wasn't the grassroots, as VH discusses in re Alspania, but the elites (the Clinton admin).
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