Our man Vic is still hard at work justifying every twist and turn and nuance of Bush's Iraq War policy with shaky historical analyses and Party-line jive talk. In Iraq and Moral Distortion (Victor Davis Hanson, American Enterprise Magazine 12/20/05), he recites various talking points about why supporters of the Bush policies, including criminal sadistic torture, should treat all criticism with scorn.
So, let's pretend we're in sophomore philososphy class, and specify why Vic's prowar, pro-torture talking points are what they are. Vic has helpfully arranged five of them as bullet-points for easy recitation:
European and American journalists agonized over a purportedly mistreated Koran in Guantanamo Bay, yet remain silent about the police state right outside of Gitmo's walls.
Let's see: Cuba, run by Cubans. Gitmo, run by the United States. Can you say "responsibility", Vic? Try real hard. Also, spend a few minutes Googling on "Cuba" and "human rights"; I believe you'll find quite a few American papers reporting on human rights issues there. Try adding "Miami Herald" to the search criteria if you're not finding them fast enough.
Sexual stupidity at Abu Ghraib gets far more weight than the thousands murdered in the same building by the dictatorship that America ended.
Abu Ghuraib under Saddam, run by Saddam's regime. Abu Ghuraib under the US, run by the US Army. That annoying responsibility thing again. Also, "sexual stupidity" in VicSpeak translates to "criminal, sadistic torture" is normal American English.
The U.N. is held up as a morally superior alternative to coalitions of the willing, even after the vast Oil-for-Food scandal that enriched Saddam and U.N. insiders at the expense of everyday Iraqi lives has been exposed.
Lord, if the Oil-for-Food scandal completely discredits the moral authority and practical usefulness of the UN, what does the crony capitalism of the Halliburton Republicans and Tom DeLay's "K Street Project" and the Abramoff bribery network and all the rest say about the US government? And especially about the Republican Party? Also, even passionate defenders of the United Nations could come up with better reasons than the Oil-for-Food scandal (in which some American companies came out with less than clean hands) to question the abilities of the UN in international crises.
France and Germany present themselves as alternatives to U.S. leadership in solving the problems of the Middle East, even though they were the main traffickers with Saddam up until the very eve of the war, and have sent money to terror groups like Hamas.
For an historian who freely imagines lessons for today's USA gushing from the experiences of ancient Athens and Sparta, one might think that such hyper-selective memories of recent times would not be found. But one would be wrong. Anyone who doesn't realize that the Reagan administration actively supported Iraq in its war with Iran, even to the point of becoming an actual naval belligerent at one point, needs to read up on their recent history. And as Robert Dreyfuss explains in his excellent book Devil's Game (2005), Hamas is a classic example of the "blowback" effect of shortsighted policies. In this case, the myopia was Israel's. Dreyfuss couldn't confirm the widespread speculation that Israel originally set up Hamas. But he does explain how Israel actively promoted the Islamist Hamas group in order to divide they Palestinians from Yassir Arafat's secular Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO).
The U.S., which has welcomed millions of Arab immigrants, and given billions in aid to Egypt, Palestine, and Jordan, and rescued Muslims in Kuwait, Kosovo, Bosnia, Somalia, and Afghanistan must now plead that we are not anti-Muslim.
Duh! How can this faith-based (fantasy-based is perhaps more appropriate here), propagandistic stance do any good for any kind of policy? It's just aimed at confirming the Republican rightwingers in thinking Muslims are irrational and incorrigible America-haters. I mean, even American newspaper readers who couldn't tell you what two countries are chronically fighting over Kashmir, or who couldn't tell Chechnya from Czechoslovakia (the latter of which hasn't existed in years, by the way), would still know that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Iraq War have something to do with Muslim attitudes toward the United States. But the American Enterprise Institute crowd process things in their own mysterious ways.
Liberal bloogers use the term "media whores" to refer to mainstream reporters who promote the Republican Party line on a regular basis, or lazily go along with White House spin. The term "academic whore" would be appropriate for intellectuals like Vic who do the same. Or, to give it a more academic-sounding twist, maybe we could call them "academic harlots".
After his bullet-points, Vic proceeds to tell us that Cindy Sheehan and Ted Kennedy are anti-American; Bush needs to be even more outspoken in talking about how noble and generous the United States is; it's not America that lets oil twist our foreign policies, it's every other government in the world that lets oil dominate theirs (give Vic marks for creativity; I haven't hear this one before, goofy as it is!); the Iraq War is kinda like the Second World War (a staple VDH talking point); The Terrorists hate our freedoms; and critics of Dear Leader Bush's policies hate our freedoms, too, plus they love Saddam Hussein.
As a bonus, check out this memorable rant by James Wolcott at his blog about one of Vic's ideological soulmates and comrades-in-perpetual-warmongering: Daniel Pipes loses control of his facilities 12/20/05. Wolcott is also an occasional Vic-basher. (It takes several of my VDH Watches to match one of Wolcott commentaries.)
