{"id":5741,"date":"2009-10-29T07:32:23","date_gmt":"2009-10-29T12:32:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=5741"},"modified":"2009-10-29T07:32:23","modified_gmt":"2009-10-29T12:32:23","slug":"barbarians-at-the-gates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=5741","title":{"rendered":"Barbarians At The Gates"},"content":{"rendered":"

Victor Davis Hanson takes down so much of what’s wrong<\/a>. with the Obama Administration in this post.\u00a0 You need to read the whole thing.<\/p>\n

But it’s this part that stuck me; this was the bit that had me nervous even before the election.\u00a0 Democrats – I was about to write “liberals”, because there used to be a distinction when it came to foreign policy, but I’m not so sure anymore – have a certain “style” about fighting wars.<\/p>\n

And Obama might as well be <\/em>Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Ted Kennedy or Algore:<\/p>\n

Here is our anti-terrorism policy.<\/p>\n

1) Euphemism<\/strong>: hope that words can change reality\u2014\u201coverseas contingency operations\u201d aimed at \u201cman-caused disasters\u201d (this will mean there is no more terrorism as our enemies are no longer demonized)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Remember when critics – mostly liberal, many of them correct – used to barber on about how crazy some military terminology sounded to civilian ears?\u00a0 Now “Neutralized” sounded so much nicer than “Kill”?\u00a0 How “Prep Fire” was so much more clinical than “hose the entire area down”?<\/p>\n

“Man-Caused Disaster”?<\/p>\n

As a language geek, I suppose I can say it’s accurate enough.<\/p>\n

But if you’re a 20 year old kid being asked to go over seas at some considerable risk to fight for this country, how do you think the idea of losing an eye or a leg or a life in a “man-caused disaster” sounds?<\/p>\n

Like your leaders are clueless?<\/p>\n

2)\u00a0\u00a0 Apologies to Islam:<\/strong> boast that Muslims fueled the Renaissance, invented printing, pretty much gave the world our present civilization, while we offended them after 9\/11 (this will mean no more plotting inside the US to kill us all, as they sense our newfound empathy)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Societies go through peaks and valleys.\u00a0 Germany gave the world Bach, Beethoven, Goethe, Schiller, Nietzche, Wagner and the Hamburger (and, to be fair, Marx, Freud and Nietzche); then, there was the little matter of the Nuremberg Laws, World War II, the Warsaw Ghetto and Treblinka. German society had to see to a few touch-ups.<\/p>\n

Islam has a great history, indeed.\u00a0 In some places – most of India, Indonesia and the Balkans – it has a history of getting along just fine with its neighbors in pluralistic societies, just like Germans live next to Poles and French and Danes in Europe and, for that matter, in the US.<\/p>\n

And as with that unfortunate stretch in the thirties and forties with the Germans, it only takes a few million bad apples to screw it up for the rest; as with the Germans, there’s the little matter of that sect that wants to kill the Jews, have a big piece of the world to rule for itself, and destroy its enemies.<\/p>\n

3)\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cBush Did it\u201d<\/strong>: a) blame Bush the Impaler for our unpopularity and shredding the Constitution to pacify the Middle East and Europe; while stealthily keeping in play most of his protocols like Predators (more attacks in last 9 months than Bush did in 3 years); tribunals, renditions, intercepts, wiretaps, and Guantanamo, etc.); (this will mean that we copy Bush, but blame him for our failures and claim success as our own).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Mr Hanson, I believe you’ve got it.<\/p>\n

4)\u00a0\u00a0 Reach-out: <\/strong>Become socialist at home, and UNish abroad, to convince an Ahmadinejad, Assad, Chavez, Putin, and others that we are a declining, 1950s British-like socialist state, a threat to no one, exceptional in the manner that Greece is, and becoming, as Pravda boasts daily, more like them than they like us (this will mean, why hate us when we are one of you?)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And you’ll note how well that worked in keeping peace between Nazi Germany and the USSR, who were functionally pretty identical…<\/p>\n

5)\u00a0 Declare victory and leave<\/strong>: there is a reason why Afghanistan and now Iraq have flared up since Obama took office, and it may well have to do with the fact that radical Islam, defeated in Iraq, stalemated in Afghanistan, suddenly bets that with a little push here and there, Obama will declare victory and leave, with something like \u201cWe can\u2019t win Bush\u2019s wars.\u201d If I were a terrorist, I might think, \u201cOne or two more big death days, and this American government will Mogadishu its way home\u201d).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

They’re already making those noises.<\/p>\n

In\u00a0a year or two, al Qaeda will begin to suspect we are the weaker horse. They hated us when we were strong, but they will hate us even more when we appear weak.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Not just Al Quaeda, mind you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Victor Davis Hanson takes down so much of what’s wrong. with the Obama Administration in this post.\u00a0 You need to read the whole thing. But it’s this part that stuck me; this was the bit that had me nervous even before the election.\u00a0 Democrats – I was about to write “liberals”, because there used to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-war-on-terror","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5741"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5741\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5744,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5741\/revisions\/5744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}