Victor Davis Hanson...
HH: Joined now by eminent military historian and classicist, Victor Davis Hanson. Professor Hanson, I got up pretty early this morning, had a 7:00AM meeting. But before I did, I read your Jewish World Week Daily column on your house, and it was melancholy. And I said that's not very VDH. Explain to people your reflection on your six generations of Hansons and your farmhouse, and let's take it after there.
VDH: Well, I live in a house that was built in 1870, and so I have an alternate version of U.S. history, because I grew up with stories from my parents, about my grandparents, about my great-grandparents, about my great-great-grandparents. And it was always the take on the U.S. from this particular house, whether it was the Great Depression or World War I, or the Spanish-American War. And I was just saying that if I could synthesize that take on the world of people who lived in this house, it looks just about the same as it did when it was built, was a tragic view that they accepted that Americans did not have to be perfect to still be good, that when you went to war, you had a bad choice and a worse choice. But we, the generation, and I said the people that live in this house live in a very different therapeutic world. Even though the house looks the same, I think that our ancestors would look, if the house could talk, would say what's wrong with you people? Do you think that you have a birthright to have perfection? Don't you understand that we almost died? We starved to death, we had Typhoid, people got Polio in this house? We were lucky to eat? We built this farm out of nothing, and now you have six hundred channels, and you're less happy than we were. And I think I was trying to use this as a metaphor to a way a lot of Americans look at Iraq, for example.
HH: That's where I was going. Does that crisis of the spirit that you're describing for the next generation, the generation after you and that one, condemn us to defeat?
VDH: I don't know if it condemns us to defeat, but at some point, either somebody who's in the administration, a spokesman's got to say now just wait a minute. We went 7,000 miles over to the ancient caliphate, and right in the heart of the autocratic Middle East. We're trying to make a democracy. We've lost 2,300 people, but that's about two weeks in Okinawa, and this country's been through a lot worse at Shiloh and Antietam, Belleau Wood, Iwo Jima, the Yalu River, and we can win this, and we're not getting any oil, the price skyrocketed. We have the biggest, magnanimous foreign aid plant since the Marshall Plan, $87 billion dollars. We don't have anything to apologize for, and we're almost there. We've had three successful elections. We've dismantled a lot of al Qaeda. We have millions of people in Iraq who've pledged their lives to see this democracy work, and we're not going to stumble before the finish line. So stop it, and just get a grip on yourself. But we need to hear that.
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2 comments:
A couple things:
Again, you fail to link or cite from where you cut and paste. so I forced to assume that the "HH:" in this piece is Hugh Hewitt. If so, there's no real reason to go on.
In the last paragraph, VDH makes comparisons to compulsury struggles; stuff that happened to people in his house, in his country, and had do be dealt with -- disease, famine, civil war, and world war. Iraq is an incorrect comparison in that it was and is a struggle of choice, not something forced upon us by forces far afield. I know you and VDH think it is great that folks in Iraq can sit around and stare at their purple finger all day, and that in itself is a reason to contunue to waste blood and treasure. But maybe Iraqis would actually like to have some vague and abstract ideas like running water and electricity too.
Your comment that "disease, famine, civil war and world war" are cumpulsory is incorrect. In some cases yes, but in most cases no. World War I and II were not at all compulsory. The Civil War, for many states, was no compulsory. The difference is that in the past, individuals chose to fight and die for a cause that was greater than their own personal satisfaction. That loss of the greater other has been lost, and I think Hanson hits that on the head.
I'm sure Iraqi's would like an excellent infrastructure in addition to the ability to vote. I want that for them as well. But it will take a long time and a heavy committment? So are you saying once everyone has electricity, we have succeeded and you'll be happy? You are certainly not.
Finally, the reason you consider it a waste of blood and treasure is because there is nothing - in your mind - worthy of the wasting of blood and treasure, not wars or liberations or anything. Self-satisfaction is the supreme good, and self-hatred its greatest virtue.
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