Things Forgotten
Second-generation spin.

By Victor Davis Hanson, author most recently of Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power.
February 19, 2002 8:40 a.m.

he tired voices of past criticism are now using the present pause in the war to postulate another American predicament. Oddly, learning nothing from the immediate past, they are beginning now to advance a second-generation of pessimistic prognostications. These new myths are as fallacious as were their earlier parent legends about the Afghan winter, the Arab street, the sanctity of Ramadan, and so on.

Now we are told an attack against Iraq will supposedly inflame the Muslim world. Toppling Saddam Hussein will cause irreparable rifts with the Europeans and our moderate allies, and turn world opinion against America. Almost all these identical arguments were used against our decision to bomb the Taliban. Earlier in the campaign against Milosevic, we were likewise once warned that public opinion in the Orthodox states — Russia and Greece particularly — was running 90 percent against our action and thus could only lead to permanent estrangement from such critical countries. In fact, both are now more embarrassed than proud that they ever supported such a murderer in the first place. Yet according to our present critics, the past lessons of a freed Panama, a freed Grenada, a freed Kuwait, a freed Serbia, a freed Bosnia, a freed Kosovo, and a freed Afghanistan — all at little cost in American or civilian dead — can only mean that we shall prove both weak and amoral in freeing Iraq?

In fact, recent military history has confirmed the wisdom of the ages: Armed action is judged simply on two criteria — morality and effectiveness. Had we quit in Serbia, Milosevic would not now be on trial. European Muslims would still be dying; and Americans would still be on the receiving end of years of moral censure. Similarly, the world said little when we acted against the Taliban because they knew our cause was just and we won. Had we carelessly slaughtered innocent civilians or failed to rout Mullah Omar, we would still be listening to lectures in the U.N. General Assembly. If we fight successfully in Iraq, waging a devastating campaign that distinguishes Saddam Hussein's thugs from the Iraq people, we will be as quietly praised as we are publicly upbraided.

The Greek idea of hubris is on everyone's lips — as if Oedipus-like, after ridding the neighborhood of the murderous Sphinx, our conceit is now leading us to a predestined rendezvous with Nemesis. The conventional wisdom of our Theban chorus of critics is that we are now blood-drunk on our victories and thus seeking a self-righteous and perpetual war against inequity — cynically either to guarantee large defense budgets at home or to expand American hegemony abroad.

The opposite is more likely true. If we practice diplomacy and military action creatively and forcefully, in the future we can be far less visible and active in the Middle East than we are now. The key is to make our current enemies into friends and in some sense our present "friends" into enemies. Should Hussein leave Iraq — a secular and wealthy state — and the people craft some sort of moderate government, there would be three immediate and beneficial effects. We would end U.S. belligerent action in the skies over the Gulf; Iraq would serve as a model and catalyst for Iranian reform next door; and we could exit Saudi Arabia and put the Gulf sheikdoms on notice that what transpired in Baghdad can and should happen to them.

Our goal eventually is to help establish regional moderate governments that reject both autocracy and fundamentalism, and thereby do not serve as sanctuaries for those who kill Americans. Just as the removal of Milosevic was critical in the formation of a post-Cold War moderate Eastern Europe, so too a change in Iraq might foster a similar spread of sanity in an otherwise insane region. No doubt, future reform governments, after being liberated by direct and indirect U.S. action, will prefer to look to Europe, and resemble more the quasi-socialist governments there than our brand of unfettered democracy and capitalism. We could care less.

Since our ultimate aims are simply to provide stability in the region, consensual government is the only ultimate mechanism for bringing American combat troops back to our shores. If we want Americans closer to home and peace in the region, we can neither have friends like the Saudis nor enemies like the Iraqis and Iranians. We can confront them all now or later, but ultimately confront them we must. These are regimes — like the other "axis" Korea — who in a few years will be willing and able to kill millions of us. None of them are impressed by a Tomahawk missile, a U.N. resolution, or a few million dollars in American bribe money.

As we enter the cold war against terrorism, suddenly we are hearing once again from European diplomats. Their renaissance is mind-boggling: wrong about everything from the abrogation of the ABM treaty to the bombing in Afghanistan, Phoenix-like they now have arisen from the ashes of past prattle to lecture us that we must go it alone on Iraq. But surely, if the past is any guide to the present, this is prima facie evidence that we are exactly on the right course. As we have seen since 9/11, the Europeans have shown a new type of amorality, in some ways every bit as pernicious — but far more insidious — than their past creed of imperialism and colonialism. Embracing cultural relativism, utopian internationalism, and moral equivalence as apparent virtues, what really is the litmus of European ideology is instead simply inaction and a rather crass utilitarianism.

If future action against Iraq implies complications and costs, the Europeans will demur — citing concerns for morality rather than sacrifice — only to become its greatest patron and trading partner should we rout Saddam Hussein. If the Israelis decide that they have had enough of suicide bombers and surround the pistol-packing Mr. Arafat's house, the Europeans will call for replacing Mr. Sharon — fearing everything from more terror in Paris, harassment of Europeans abroad, lost business, and possible oil disruptions emanating from an unstable Palestine. If there is a need for peacekeepers from Bosnia to Kabul, the Europeans will pose as the real moralists — as long as the expensive, hazardous, and unpopular prerequisite work of ridding evil is first accomplished by Americans. And so it is reductionist but nevertheless true that we can almost gauge the morality and wisdom of our own action by the degree to which EU diplomats and bureaucrats oppose it.

After the campaign in Afghanistan, some warn that we now find ourselves over committed and languishing in a "quagmire." The American people, in a more sober and judicious fashion, are purportedly waking up to what we have gotten ourselves into in this war against terrorism and the "axis." In truth, support for Mr. Bush's action even after nearly six months of war is still steady at about 85% approval rating. The U.S. military is stronger, not weaker, after its war against the Taliban — a textbook example of how to wage a deadly campaign across the globe without incurring numerous American and civilian casualties.

The real problem on our campuses and in our media is that so far Afghanistan has proved no Vietnam. Mullah Omar was not Uncle Ho; bin Laden was as hairy but not as smiley as Che. A few stray bombs on an al Qaeda stronghold did not make a My Lai. B-52s were somehow different this time — same plane, but weird new smart and accurate bombs. Johnny Walker makes a poor Rosenberg or Hiss. The recent movie Black Hawk Down was hardly the easily caricatured Green Berets. Prayer mats and Fruit Loops at Guantanamo were not Tiger Cages. Noam Chomsky and Susan Sontag are now as likely to be in the AARP as screaming in the campus quad. And Jane Fonda at her age could hardly pose with a Stinger in a cave, miles from the nearest camera — more likely to be groped than kowtowed to by her hosts. Our thirty-something pilots and special forces are not naïve 18-old-year draftees of the past. Nor is Mr. Rumsfeld a McNamara or Mr. Bush a Texan LBJ. The Taliban lacks red-starred caps, Mao-suits, and the cute phrases of The National Liberation Front.

And so just as in the first lull between Sept. 11 and Oct. 7, we are now in another — completely natural — breathing spell between the end of the organized resistance on Dec. 18 and more challenging operations in the months ahead. Skeptics here and abroad keep waiting — or rather hoping? — for that one great American blunder to come, but so far the American people aren't holding their breath.