Politics & War

Victor Davis Hanson has a great article at Pajamas. It's sort of a summary of Europe's obsession with BO and a little tour through the past year in Iraq. He makes a couple of excellent points about how Obama will allow Europe to play a thinking-man's Athens to America's muscular Rome, and how Obama uses the illusion of sophistication that Bush could never (nor would ever want to) pull off. For example, Obama wants America to be more multilingual like Europe, even although he only speaks English and Bush is fluent in Spanish.

VDH also touches on a point that I mentioned yesterday. That disdain for Bush, the Texas yokel in the eyes of the world, is really the source of Europe's love for Obama. But that such a fleeting moment of infatuation will pass as easily as the irony of Bush-hate is lost on us all:

The final irony?

The hated George Bush is still around; Chirac, Schroeder, Villapin et al. are history. Iraq is secure. Iran is becoming isolated. North Korea supposedly is denuked. And America is reassuring a jittery Europe that we will stick by them in a world of bullying Russians and Chinese.

A Modest Prediction

In 5 years, Europeans will prefer George Bush to a “We are right behind you” Obama.

Totally agree.

His commentary on Iraq is also a welcome reminder of how things have changed, about how Iraq was won, then lost, and now again on the brink of victory (although perhaps we should heed our own advice and be cautious about celebrating a victory that is still some way off).

He refers to two major reasons why the war is going well:

Don’t Forget…

Two critical developments are relatively unappreciated, but likewise proved critical. The first was the continual growth and improvement in the Iraqi security forces that now include many veteran units that have learned to confront and defeat terrorists.

Second, between 2003-7 American forces took an enormous toll on jihadists. We have heard mostly how many Americans have been lost, rarely how many of the enemy they have killed or wounded—but the aggregate number is in the tens of thousands. Even in postmodern wars, there are finite numbers of skilled combatants—and many of them simply did not survive their encounter with American troops.

The second paragraph is something that we never hear about, which I think is ridiculously symptomatic of this era. Sure, the softly-softly position of the modern world seems to mourn the loss of all life (except that of an unborn child), but these guys are terrorists and murderers whose crimes are so horrific they're almost unbelievable--read Michael Yon's book, especially the story about how al-Qaeda served (that's right, served) a disapproving local family their own 10 year old boy, whom they had baked, for lunch. Why shouldn't we be hearing that US forces killed 150 members of AQI in a firefight in Anbar?

Anyway, Hanson concludes with a reminder that history remembers people like Washington, Grant, Sherman, Ridgeway and (hopefully) Petraeus ahead of the Sheehan's and Reids and MoveOns, and all the others who said it couldn't be done. Thank God! Also, how great does President Petraeus sound?