Let me know if you want in or out.
Links: FR Index of his articles: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/keyword?k=victordavishanson
His website: http://victorhanson.com/
NRO archive: http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson-archive.asp
Pajamasmedia: http://victordavishanson.pajamasmedia.com/
As long as our side continues to wait for a knight in shining armor, and neglects the hard work of defeating, destroying and discrediting the worldwide leftist media monopoly, we will continue to fail.
The “press” rules the world, rules the world’s pols, determines wars, and writes our history, gives, spikes, spins, emphasizes, deemphasizes, what info it chooses to, makes or breaks reputations, careers, elections, it’s power is immense.
It is they who have ruled that blowing up innocents in a marketplace, on buses, in restaurants, is somehow "winning", just as they have done in Israel for decades.
VDH wonderfully clarifies and describes what's at stake and what should be done, but I wonder if he fully realizes that the "cultural and media resources" he wants to marshall are almost totally controlled by the left.
...We need to confess that the jihadists are not only keen students of insurgency warfare, but good observers of the American psyche. We think their kidnapping, childish infomercials, gruesome tactics, and horrific websites are primordial and counterproductive; but they are more likely horrifically simple in inciting the most basic fears and self-preservation instincts of ordinary people. Precisely because decapitation belongs to a different century makes it more gruesome now, not less. Because the al Qaedists steal many of their talking points from the Western Left does not make them unimaginative as much as eerily familiar. And because we can daily predict the serial barbarity of the jihadists makes it not so much unimaginative as savagely inevitable.
So what to do?
We can quibble and fight about tactics on the ground, manpower numbers, strategic postures toward Iran and Syria, the need to prod the Iraqis, but our problem is more existential. Either stabilizing Iraq now is felt critical to the United States and the West or it isn’t. If the Left is right that it isn’t, then we should flee; if they are wrong, and I think they are, then we must start using our vast cultural and media resources to explain what is at stake — in a strategic and humanitarian sense — and precisely what it is costing America and why it in the long run is worth it, and how we have adjusted to counter our enemies who in the last four years have not won in Iraq or anywhere else either.
To win the larger war we need to win the infowar.
Or close readers of the US media, anyway. The NYT tells gives good guidance as to what will make the Administration look bad and erode public support for the war.
I think we’ve lost that one. Even people I know who hate Islam and Jihad think it’s all about oil and Halliburton. The only people who see the whole thing as anything other than America establishing and/or maintaining an Empire will probably be able to post on this thread without pushing it into another page. I mean VDH is totally right, but not only did As Quaida learn from Vietnam, so did the MSM. The only people who can defeat America are...Americans (term used loosely when referring to the MSM).
It would be crazy if a bunch of rag tag terrorists — and you’ve all seen their training tapes — defeat the powerful US with its star war weaponry. Every single Democrat leader calling for cut and run should be singled out for shaming this nation. Especially Edwards who wants his hair blow dried a thousand times, this way and that, for that glossy dapper Dan effect, before he gets down to real serious business.
Note tagline. The Left is in overdrive working to destroy America from within. If enough Americans comply, it will succeed.
FYI.
VDH bump
Let’s have FOX or CNN cover some military footage showing the capture of Bin Laden or his body. Let’s trump up some stuff in the world to get these guys to expose themselves. Let’s “leak” to the world news media that America currently has 37 covert infiltrators working withing the terrorists ranks and watch them run to the media to prove otherwise. Let’s have a leak to the international media that suggests “secret” bombs have been placed in Iran’s nuclear production facilities and are ready to be detonated if needed. I liked the whole “America is planning a war with Iran” stuff. Keep the enemy guessing and put them on media defense for a change.
Later, declassify the strategic lies as a tool in our military arsenal. We have used propaganda and deceit in every war and it’s effectiveness should not be taken lightly.
You should post his townhall column from this week about all the mistakes in WWII. Then send a copy to Historian Newt. He keeps harping on how bad the Iraq war was run.