Phase Three?" by Victor Davis Hanson

[tlcandie]

http://www.benadorassociates.com/article/522

<snip>
Our careful air campaign, the inability to sweep down into the Sunni triangle in the first days of the war from Turkey, and the abrupt collapse rather than the destruction of enemy forces in the field paradoxically resulted in thousands who ran away rather than were defeated. We immediately ended the fighting and began the humanitarian effort to help the helpless — even as our enemies and their jihadist friends saw that magnanimity as the removal of the stake driven through their vampirish heart.
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Because September 11 was a direct consequence of our early failures to confront our enemies, our general response to the latest challenges should be even greater defiance. It is time to bring to fruition the president's warning of nearly two years ago, that one is either with or against the terrorists. So Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, from which our enemies (many now in Iraq) operate, must either close their borders, turn over terrorists, and join the ranks of civilization — or chose the side of barbarism and accept the terrible consequences of such a fatal decision. And for the short term, we must continue on course-employing counterinsurgency tactics to go after the terrorists in the field, accelerating the transfer of governance to Iraqis to increase their visibility and responsibility in the conflict and restoring infrastructure to Afghanistan and Iraq.
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http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=19651
'The Andean Condor Who Deploys the Hawks'

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Victor Davis Hanson, a blood-and-guts classicist and one of Vice President Dick Cheney's favourite dinner guests.
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<snip>
But historians would be negligent if they ignored the day-to-day work of one person who, as much as anyone outside the administration, made their media ubiquity possible.

Meet Eleana Benador, the Peruvian-born publicist for Perle, Woolsey, Michael Ledeen, Frank Gaffney, and a dozen other prominent neo-conservatives whose hawkish opinions proved very hard to avoid for anyone who watched news talk shows or read the op-ed pages of major newspapers over the past 20 months.

Also found among her client list are other major war-boosters, including former 'New York Times' executive editor and now 'New York Daily News' columnist, A.M. Rosenthal; 'Washington Post' columnist Charles Krauthammer; the Council on Foreign Relations' resident imperialist, Max Boot; and Victor Davis Hanson, a blood-and-guts classicist and one of Vice President Dick Cheney's favourite dinner guests.
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[shockingelk]

1. I've seen logic from Hanson in the past

This is not one of those times:

"Blowing up petroleum pipelines and vital water supplies in a scorching summer is directed at the Iraqi people, not just the American military."

Uh, Vic, who will Iraqis be pissed at when they're without electricity or water? I read a Che Guevera book in a bookstore for about 10 minutes and from that seem to understand the motivations for blowing up water pipes better than Mr Hanson. He speaks as though he thinks Iraqis allegiance is to America and not Iraq ...

[UTUSN]

2. Classics Department Dudes

HANSON, Leo STRAUSS, NIETZSCHE. Separately, they appear to be "original" and unsettling, but they each go back to the original sources of Greco-Romanism. They hark back (haha) to the pre-Christian values and virtues of PRIDE (no "humility"), might makes right, who's-got-possession-is-what-actually-counts.

Some of the NeoCons started out as STRAUSSians and CHEENEE annointed HANSON as his guru and made a show of holding a public lunch with him with accompanying media stories. HANSON provides them with historical examples as precedents for what they really want to do anyway. Perpetual war as constant revitalization, "winning".

Full HANSON archive: http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson-archive.asp

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Nat'l Cathedral: (History or Hysteria?) http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson032803.asp
.... In disgust at the hysteria, I took a drive to Washington to the National Cathedral on Sunday. Big mistake. All except one of the entrances were closed due to security concerns. I walked in under the wonderful sculptures of Frederick Hart, an authentic American genius who almost single-handedly restored classical realism to American sculpture. A small statue of a kneeling Lincoln, who sent thousands into battle to eradicate slavery, was in the corner. A plaque of quotations from Churchill, about the need for sacrifice in war, was on the wall. So I was feeling somewhat good again — until I heard the pious sermon on “shock and awe.” In pompous tones the minister was deprecating the war effort, calling down calumnies upon the administration, and alleging the immoral nature of our nation at war.

Such a strange man at such a strange time, I thought. His entire congregation, by its own admission, is in danger from foreign terrorists (why else bar the gates?). His church is itself a monument to the utility of force for moral purposes. His own existence as a free-speaking, freely worshiping man of God is possible only thanks to the United States military — whose present mission he was openly deriding at the country’s national shrine. ....
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