Victor Davis Hanson: Our Orphaned Middle East Policy. Things are looking up...

It is common now to hear of an American Middle East policy in shambles. And why not, given the daily mayhem that is televised from the West Bank, Afghanistan, and Iraq, and the overt threats of Iranian President Ahmadinej(ih)ad?

Somewhere in the Sunni Triangle, with costs mounting in our blood and treasure, the United States lost the last vestiges of that wonderful sense of national unity that had swept the country following September 11. About every week now some administration official seems under pressure to resign or in fact does.

Tell-all books by disgruntled former CIA agents and ex-diplomats lament how the supposedly clueless people in power did not listen to their own Protean expertise. Those who leak from the CIA, an agency with analysts seemingly at war with their own government at a time of war, are hardly considered culpable — so long as their tips were to the "right" newspaper and for the "right" cause.

Former proponents of Saddam's removal and democratization are now unabashedly triangulating — scrambling to be recast as "I warned them" foreign-policy consultants, as they showcase their intellectual wares for the next generation of politicians in 2008. Their support comes and goes, as they wonder whether the good news from Iraq should rekindle guarded approval, or the bad news should reaffirm their belated opposition. Not since the up-and-down summer of 1864 has this country at war seen such equivocating and self-serving editorialists and politicians.

No one pauses to suggest what the region would now look like with Saddam reaping windfall oil profits, 15 years of no-fly zones, ongoing corruption in Oil-for-Food, the bad effects of the U.N. embargo, Libya's weapons program, and an unfettered Dr. Khan. If a newly provocative Russia is willing to sell missiles to Iran's crazy Ahmadinej(ih)ad, imagine what its current attitude would be to its old client Saddam.

Or perhaps, as in the 1980s when over a million perished, our realists, who seem fond of such good old days of order and stability, could once again encourage an unleashed Saddam, with Uday and Qusay at his side, to be played against Iran for a (nuclear) round two. How sad that those who once fallaciously argued that the fascist Saddam was the proper counterweight to the fascist Iran now ignore that the genuine corrective is a democratic and humane Iraq.

A few retired generals smell blood, want to even old scores, and have demanded Secretary Rumsfeld's resignation. They earn not the usual condemnation from liberals for intruding into the gray area around our hallowed civilian control of the military, but praise for their insight and courage — as if speaking out on in retirement is especially brave or calling for radical change at a time of war is always wise. That they are usually Army officers long furious over military transformation is left unsaid — as is the irony that Iraq will largely be saved by the skill of their brethren U.S. ground officers currently deployed.

Scholars under the rubric of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, not the American Conservative magazine, publish a pseudo-scholarly treatise about undue Jewish influence that resulted inexplicably in a disastrous tilt in American policy toward the only liberal society in the Middle East.

Meanwhile, we are faulted for "outsourcing" the problem of Iranian nuclear ambitions when we let the multilateral Europeans take the lead in talks with Tehran. And we are then condemned as itching for more "preemption" and "unilateralism" when we sigh that at some point someone may have to act to prevent Mr. Ahmadinej(ih)ad from arming his missiles. This is a psychopath, after all, who assures those on the West Bank of his love and support by promising to send a nuke soon in their general direction. I suppose Hamas thinks that 50 kilotons can distinguish east from west Jerusalem.

But if we look beneath all these self-serving contradictions, real progress amid the carnage since September 11 is undeniable. It is not just that the United States has not been attacked again. Al Qaeda's leadership has been insidiously dismantled. Even bin Laden's communiqués are increasingly pathetic, whining about lost truce opportunities for the Crusaders while warning of more welcomed genocide in Darfur. We can be sure of his war-induced attenuated stature when some on the Left are already suggesting that the 9/11 attacks were mostly the operations of just a few criminals rather than precursors to international jihad.

Some European governments that were patently anti-American — Chirac's in France or Schroeder's in Germany — are either gone or going. The European public no longer thinks that the threat of Islamic fascism was mostly something concocted by George Bush after 9/11. American supporters in Australia, Japan, and the United Kingdom were returned to power. Finally a parliament is meeting in Iraq. There have been open elections in two regions of the Arab Middle East. In one place, terrorists were voted in; in the other place — the much more criticized one — terrorists are being hunted down.

Hamas wanted power; the Americans didn't interfere, and they got elected. Now they can galvanize their people for their promised war against Israel (that they will lose), or they can find a way to evolve from thuggery to governance — it's their call. It is not the decision of the United States, which, after fifteen years, is finally freed from subsidizing West Bank terrorists masquerading as statesmen.

It is a fine thing for all to see the once swaggering gunmen now on television appealing for daily cash from suddenly stingy Middle East benefactors, as Hamas whines that Fatah is in Israel's hip pocket and decries militants who shoot without government authorization. Democracy, not more autocracy, exposed that absurdity.

Middle Easterners wish that we would be humbler, that we would let more Arabs into the United States, that we would not lecture them so, that we had not used force to remove Saddam, that we did not seem so self-righteous when promoting Western democracy, that we could express our intentions in a more sympathetic and articulate fashion. It is true that at critical junctures we did not explain ourselves well, and did not apprise the public candidly here and abroad about the range of poor options that confronted this nation after September 11.

But aside from these complaints, the people of the Middle East for the first time are watching on television a voting parliament in Iraq — and what sort of killers are trying to stop it. They know that oil skyrocketed and that the petroleum of Mesopotamia was not appropriated by the United States — and that huge windfall profits in the Middle East are still not likely to trickle down their way. They also accept that China in the Middle East cares only for petroleum, Russia only to cause others trouble, and Europe mostly to talk.

Those in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya, as elsewhere in the Arab world, want closer, not more distant, relations with the United States. Ever so slowly the Arab Street is grasping that the more its own governments are angry at us for prodding them, the more it is a sign that we are on the right side of history.

As for the Iranian crisis, the only peaceful solution, given Russian meddling and Western fear over oil prices, may be through the emergence of democracy in Iraq, which would then galvanize dissidents in Iran. Anyone who rules out force in dealing with Iran's nuclear ambitions should support unequivocally the democratic experiment in Iraq.

For all the scrambling to disown the present policies, the irony is that they are bearing fruit and always had the best chance to end the region's genesis of terror. How sad that those who supported the costly spread of freedom are written off as illiberal, and those who resigned themselves to the easy status quo were seen as wise and sober.

So there we have it: an orphaned policy with a bright future that is being claimed by fewer and fewer — we'll see if that changes when Iraq emerges as a stable democracy.

A Footnote

Thanks for the tip. Here it is: http://www.radioblogger.com/#001575

So, about that Libyan health care system...
04-27vdh.mp3
HH: It's good to be back, and even better to have back, is Professor Victor Davis Hanson. Professor Hanson, I understand you had a close run thing in Libya last week, and we're awfully glad that you're back in the States.
VDH: Yeah, I did. I had a ruptured appendix, and emergency surgery, and eight days later, somehow I made it back to the States, and very lucky.
HH: Well, you're going to have to give us a first-hand report about Libyan health care.
VDH: Well, you know it's very interesting. I started having some problems, about 24 hours, and then because the country has just been opened up to Americans. There's nobody really there. There's no Embassy, and nobody has any experience with it, Qaddafi's Libya. But I got a government person to escort me, and they found a Red Crescent clinic at Two in the morning. They found a doctor who was trained in Cairo, and he basically gave me an excellent diagnosis, and said I had about ten hours to either fish or cut bait. And he operated, took out the mess, and gave me some pretty strong antibiotics for peritonitis. They don't give you opiates there, or any post-operative pain killers, because...
HH: What, no drugs???
VDH: No drugs in Qaddafi's utopia. But the funny thing was that oddly enough, even though it was a bad experience, there on my back, I got a lot of people from the Libyan government that came to talk to me. And it was very amazing what they said. I mean, the country has just been opened up to cell phones, internet, satellite dishes, and it's a very small country. Very large territorially, but only five, six million people. But they're very, very pro-American. They really want better relations with the United States, as much as they can talk freely in that state.
HH: Professor Hanson, before we talk a little bit about Libya and where we find ourselves this week with the war and other things, tell me a little bit about the quality of the health care. Even though drugs weren't available, were you confident in the surgeon's skills?
VDH: It's a very big divide there, Hugh. The surgeon himself had, was very good. And there's a group of surgeons that have either been trained in Europe before Qaddafi thirty years ago, who are still there, and have trained other surgeons. So he knew how to deal with a ruptured appendix pretty well, and he especially knew how to clean up the area around it, and he knew which drugs to give. But the backup, the anesthesiologist, the post-operative care, the hygeine, masks, gloves, all of that is something comparable to probably the 1920's in the United States, if that. That's why I sort of decided that while I had been given a second chance because of the skill of the surgeon, that even though I should probably be in the hospital a little longer in the States, by day four I thought I'd better chance it and see if I can get home any way I could.
HH: Did you get any pain killers along the way?
VDH: No.
HH: No???
VDH: No, I didn't. As the doctor told me when I left, he said you in the States take pain killers...and in sort of broken English, he told me you're not going to have any constipation or gas.
HH: (laughing)
VDH: If you can tough it out, you'll heal quicker.
HH: Did anyone have any aspirin?
VDH: No.
HH: No aspirin?
VDH: No aspirin. They don't have Advil.
HH: This is like the Civil War. You've been to Andersonville, Professor.
VDH: I have. But you know, I couldn't think of a worse thing, now sitting back and being in a Red Crescent clinic in Libya, getting a ruptured appendix, and being told I had about five hours before I was a goner. But now that I look back at it, just meeting the people who came, the doctors, the nurses, the U.S. Charge d'affaires, people from the Libyan government who thought that maybe I was a captive audience that would hear their spiel about Libya, it was all a very valuable experience.
HH: Did Col. Qaddafi drop by?
VDH: No, but his minister, one of his minsters of education did. And he wanted to insist that I understood that Col. Qaddafi was an experienced person in the Middle East, that there's a radical change in Libya, that...I guess if I could term, sum it up, that where they had been going didn't get what they wanted. And after...they don't really want to admit why the change is happening, that it has anything to do with Saddam's fate. But they do want to emphasize that all of the existing issues from Lockerbie to the Bulgarian nurse scandal, to the terrorists...they can all be resolved for the greater good of relations with the United States.
HH: So you're lying in a Red Crescent hospital, having had anesthesia-free abdominal surgery of a major sort without any post-surgery anesthetic, and Col. Qaddafi's education minister comes to talk to you about resolving Libya's many outstanding difficulties with the West?
VDH: (laughing) Well, I did have...I was knocked out with a type of gas. I don't know what type it was, but after that, I didn't have any pain. It was a strange experience.
HH: Yeah!!!
VDH: Listening to prayers at the Mosque right outside the window all day, and then as you know, I've been a big supporter of Israel. And I had problems, some problems getting a visa to get in. So all these were on my mind. But I tell you, when you're flat on your back, and you're going on a gurney in a strange country like Libya, and you're told you have a ruptured appendix, you really don't have a lot of choices. You're just sort of...I was in the hands of somebody I'd never met, who turned out to be a very gifted surgeon, a very wonderful person.
HH: Are you a religous man, Professor Hanson?
VDH: I am, and it never came home to me that I was...I really didn't have much control. I knew that after...if I survived the operation, that I would do all I could to get home, because I knew that a lot of people kind of depended on me here at home. But there was a period of about 48 hours when it ruptured...I had given a lecture...I was on a boat, and the boat was going to Tunisia for 30 hours at sea. And one person said it may be a kidney stone, and you can get on the boat, and the other person said we don't know anything about Libyan medicine. There's no Americans in the hospitals here. But if we're wrong and you don't have a kidney stone, you may not make it by the time, in a day and a half. So I would suggest you get off the boat, try to find a clinic, and take it out. And so I took that second advice, and that made all the difference.
HH: That is an amazing story. I hope you write at length about that. Now turning to the subject of the Libyan apologia that you were offered. Is it persuasive to you? I mean, can you even remember it?
VDH: I think it is. I think we're watching a phenomenon sort of like Iran, that the more the government was opposed to us, the more the people picked that up. And Libya's a very interesting case, because the money has been squandered. All that oil revenue was given to everybody from Robert Mugabe to Yassir Arafat, and the people themselves didn't benefit. And the oil production is declining. They haven't been exploring, but the reserves are enormous, and it's got one of the most beautiful coastlines that's unspoiled. It's got, I think, the most impressive ruins of the ancient world in the Mediterranean, at Leptis Magma. So it's just unlimited potential, and it's got a population that's very worried about Egypt that has 60, 70, 80 million people next door, and then Tunisia, and here it's only got five or six million people with all this oil. And it's been ostracized. And now, for some reason, and that's where we get into the sticking point, they really don't want to admit the reason may be our taking out Saddam, that for some reason, there's a complete about face. And the United States, I think, is playing it really smart. I talked with the Charge d'affaires there in Libya about not giving away too much too soon. Just playing it very carefully, and quid pro quo at each step of the relationship.
---
HH: Will you be back resuming your travels soon, Professor?
VDH: Well, I was supposed to go to Iraq on May 5th, but I think I'm going to go on the 29th of May instead, take about three weeks off. And then I have to go to Rome to speak to a group for David Horowitz in late May, and I'm going to try to do that as well.
HH: Let me ask you about the Iranian challenge to our demand for responsibility. It in many ways reminds me of the period of 1936, and the year prior to that, when Hitler eventually just marched into the Rhineland, even though he was not strong enough to do so, and could have been repulsed. But he was bold when the West was weak. Is it an imperfect or a pretty good analogy?
VDH: Well, they sense something, that there's a big domestic divide here in the Unites States, and that Mr. Bush, even though I think Iraq will work out pretty well, is on the defensive about these things like preemption and unilateralism. And they're going to press...they're almost sounding like North Korea now, as lunatic as they can to cower us. We should remember the 1980's, the late 1980's, during the Iran-Iraq War. When we flagged ships, the Iranians were very bold in mining the harbors, and actually a U.S. frigate was attacked. So they're not...this isn't completely braggadocio. They're able to do certain things that would make life very uncomfortable, and I think that they understand that with Bush's poll ratings at 36%, that they can talk themselves into a nuclear bomb.
HH: Do you think if the United States stands up to them, that that regime can be dispatched in relatively quick order?
VDH: Well, if the United States has the political will...I mean, if they're going to stand up to Iran, ultimately that's going to be ultimately a military option, and the American people have to understand what that would entail. That would entail CNN with collateral damage every five minutes. It would entail large oil prices. If they're willing to put up with that, I think then you can talk tough. But it won't do any good to talk tough unless you realize that that's what it ultimately may devolve into. And there's China and Russia in the picture.
HH: Now Victor Davis Hanson, then, how significant are the days in which we are living? Because the alternative to doing that, and you make it sound remote, and I have to agree if it was a different president, I would think it was remote. The prospect of a nuclear Iran is really extraordinary.
VDH: I think it is, and more importantly, this is a man who says that he's the biggest supporter of Hamas, and yet from his rhetoric, you understand he's willing, probably, to send a missile into East Jerusalem as if 50 kilotons can tell the difference between East and West Jerusalem. I mean, that's how he treats his friends like the Palestinians. He says I'll help you by nuking the people right next to you. I mean, it's crazy. He listens to a voice in a well. He thinks people can't blink, and we don't know to what degree this is staged or real. So we don't have a lot of options. It's bad and worse. Oddly enough, the people who don't want to use military force under any circumstances in Iran should be the biggest supporters of what's going on in Iraq. Because with this recent presidential change, there's a good chance that we could end up with a government that would prove very destabilizing to the theocracy in Iran. But to say you can't use force in Iran, and yet you're not for what we're doing in Iraq, then you really don't have any options that are peaceful.
HH: At this point, when you talk to senior military officials, as you frequently do, Professor Hanson, do they expect military action against Iran, if not by us, then by Israel?
VDH: I think they've come to the conclusion that we're going to exhaust the multilateral option with the Europeans. We're going to try to cajole the Chinese and Russians. We're going to try to use the U.N. as much as we can. We're going to try to hope that dissidents in Iran are empowered by the experiment across the border in Iraq. And then at the 11th hour, when those things are being armed in a year, two years, we're going to act. And they hope we don't get to that, because they see it as a public relations nightmare, but something that we could pull off. It would be, really, an act of war, and we'd be in a war with Iran.
HH: Do you think we have that much time?
VDH: I think we have about a year, myself. But I'm not an expert at it. Remember, this is a person who says that Israel is a one bomb...I think the exact term was a one bomb state.
HH: Right. That it would be blown away with one strong wind.
VDH: There's not going to be a second Holocaust. If you're an Israeli prime minister, and you know that the Iranians have threatened to wipe you off the map, and you know that they may have, months away from a nuclear bomb, you're not going to go down in history as a person who ensured a second Holocaust. We've got to remember that.
HH: So Iran is driving, one way or the other, towards a confrontation?
VDH: One way or the other. And it's hard to know to what degree it's bluff, and to what degree, once they get the weapon...I mean, it's a win-win thing for them if they get the weapon. They can bully the Arab world for oil concessions, cut back some production, they can threaten Israel, they can threaten our bases, they can pass themselves off as an ancient Persian, nationalistic force...It's just win-win if they get it.
HH: So that cannot happen. Victor Davis Hanson, congratulations on your successful return, and God speed on your recovery. I look forward to talking to you again soon.
End of interview.
Posted at 8:49PM PDT

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