Victor Davis Hanson hollers: “Looking Back at Iraq ” and asks the question: “So who lost Iraq ?” then
elaborates: “It is historically inaccurate to say the war was cooked up by Bush
alone.” Actually, the hollering was most likely done by the editors of National
Review Online who chose to make the phrase a title for the Hanson article which
they published on June 26, 2014. As to the elaboration, it was lifted from the
article itself where it appears in the last paragraph, and was used by the
editors to serve as subtitle for the article.
Victor Hanson seems so resolute to keep the historical record
straight, he succeeded in doing just that … well, sort of. It may be said he
succeeded in the sense that he brought into the record a number of facts that
other people neglected to mention. But in addition to that, he also peppered
the article with a whole lot of spin to show that the war was worth it even if Iraq was lost.
This is like the surgeon who said the operation was worth it despite the fact
that the patient died.
Where the Hanson presentation is deficient in a serious way,
however, is in the processing of the facts. These would be the facts that were
brought up by himself, and those that were brought up by others. And in doing
what he did the way he did it, he shed light on something that will help
explain why it is futile and useless to debate anything in America these
days.
Hanson's contribution to the debate rests on the fact that
he mentions the names of just about everyone in America
that had something to do with the George W. Bush decision to launch the war on Iraq
in 2003. Thus, he brought to light the facts that (1) Bill Clinton signed into
law the Iraq Liberation Act; (2) both houses of Congress authorized the removal
of Saddam Hussein by force; (3) Senators Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, John
Kerry, and Harry Reid argued on the Senate floor that Saddam should be removed;
(4) Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller and House Representative Nancy Pelosi
lectured about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction; (5) columnists from the
Right and from the Left of the spectrum such as George Will, David Brooks,
William F. Buckley, Fareed Zakaria, David Ignatius, and Thomas Friedman
supported Saddam's removal by force; (6) 70 percent of Americans agreed with
the war.
A neutral observer might ask: Does it mean that all these
people were responsible for the war? And there will be some debaters who will
say yes; and there will be some who will say no … and a bickering as to whether
the war was a good thing or a bad thing will resume, and will lead nowhere yet
again. And in the midst of all the bickering, a voice will rise to remind
everyone that enough is enough. The voice will go on to say that the time had
come to do a bit of self-examination.
To this end, the voice will ask: To the question “who lost Iraq ?” what
does it matter whether you people believe the war was a good thing or a bad
thing? The truth is that Iraq was lost not because who among you felt what; it
was lost because the people most affected by it – those that live in the region
– did not ask for it, did not want it and did not like it. Iraq ...
perhaps even the entire region was lost because the people there, like people
you encounter everywhere else in the world, do not like being bombed by a
foreign power.
And the fact that there was bipartisan agreement in America to
launch the war in the first place, has signaled to these people that the war
against them was not meant to serve American interest, but meant to serve
Jewish and Israeli interests. This is what made the people resent what happened
to them even more; it is what will make them more cautious in the future when
it comes to American overtures. And that's because such overtures will be taken
not as friendly gestures but as a threat to the peace and tranquility of which
they have been robbed ever since the planting of Israel in their midst.
Unlike America
that has been around for only five hundred years, the people in that region
have been around for thousands of years. Despite what was done to them, they
will survive, will rise again and build new layers of magnificent cultures. The
same cannot be said about America ,
however, where the simple act of debating the issues of the day gets to be
smothered with the spew of the handful of losers who never managed to develop a modus
vivendi by which to coexist with other human beings.