When you give nearly $2 billion a year in aid to Egypt and its media are the locus classicus of anti-American hatred, you have earned not merely ingratitude, but ridicule in the bargain.
Great writing -- right on the money!
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
excerpts [if it's possible at all: he defies excerption; this is just a teaser before you read the complete article]:
We know precisely the crisis and we know the enemy. The mixture of autocracy, religious intolerance, and feelings of inferiority brought on by globalization has created a lethal brew in all the unfree parts of the Islamic Arab world. Again, our crisis is not really with the majority of Muslims who live under consensual or semi-democratic auspices — in Turkey, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia, or India. Instead it is in the Middle East where a minority (encompassing millions) has turned to fundamentalism and hatred of a dominant West to account for the misery incurred by its own economic and political failures. And these belligerents will only quit when they believe it is in their own interest to do so.
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We should accept that they are at war with us and cease the intellectual dishonesty and moral cowardice that makes us worry about bombing during Ramadan in Afghanistan while our religious enemies seek to inaugurate these same holidays with the murders of Americans. When you are at war and you care more about the sanctity of your enemies' religious holidays than they do, you are in serious trouble.
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When you give nearly $2 billion a year in aid to Egypt and its media are the locus classicus of anti-American hatred, you have earned not merely ingratitude, but ridicule in the bargain. ...
there is a ubiquitous asymmetry, and it is just as disingenuous — and dangerous — to ignore it as it is indiscriminately and wrongly to blame Islam. We rightly fret about the latter, but wrongly ignore the former. And if we don't change, we will lose this war.
In short, our enemies are ideological fanatics who benefit from sanctuary in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Iran, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Yemen, money from Saudi Arabia and pan-Arabic charities, and indirect political tolerance and at times covert support from members of the Saudi Royal family, the government of Basher Assad, Saddam Hussein, the Taliban, elements of the Pakistani government, and Yasser Arafat.
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We all know that privately, but we must now publicly accept the challenge of our day — if we wish to ensure that there are no more craters and incinerated flesh in New York. ...
...the peace marches, New York Times editorials, or near-slander from Democratic presidential contenders cannot change that reality, and so the decision really is either to cease and desist or to wage war and finish the conflict. Anything in between is madness.
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In short, we don't care what al Qaeda says, what Mullah Omar broadcasts, or what the Baathists scream. No, all we need to know is that they will all melt away and go get a half-day job when they — and hundreds of millions of bystanders — are convinced that their present hatred really will earn such killers and all their leaders and friends a terrible reckoning. And if we don't believe that, we shouldn't ask our best youth in this country to fight this war.
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In the last two years, on each occasion when the United States finally said "enough is enough" and began to apply itself in earnest — after the fourth or fifth week in Afghanistan, pouring it on through a sandstorm in Iraq, or rounding up terrorist cells here at home — the enemy was impressed and faltered. ....
Despite the chaos, we are doing a wonderful job in Iraq; but it is past time to show that we are at times angry and a little crazy — as we remember that we really are in an all out war for our survival and civilization. Our goal should be to arm tens of thousands of freedom-loving Iraqis and put them with us on the front lines of the Sunni Triangle — and then ensure that sober Iraqi members of the new government are in the forefront of the media spotlight to take credit for winning the freedom of their own country. The problem is not just getting Iraqis to fight, but rather extending to them the responsibility, sense of honor, and pride that will accrue when they finally rout the Baathists.
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It is time for Clark, Dean, Kerry and the rest either right now to advocate legislation to stop the war and bring the troops home — or to simply be quiet and support the effort of our soldiers. Any further hysteria about purpose rather than quibbling over tactics, and the American people will rightly conclude that such Democratic invective hurts America and helps its enemies, whose entire strategy of assassination and terror is aimed at appealing to the anti-war movement in the United States.
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We are in a war and we are winning due more to the courage and superb character of our soldiers than to the popular mobilization and engagement of the American citizenry itself. We have the best military in the history of civilization, but we can still lose this war — unless we remember September 11, acknowledge the awful nature of our enemies, and always, always accept the truth that civilization itself hangs in the balance.