Victor Davis Hanson on Iraq

About a month ago I went to a friend's party and got into extended debate with two of her left-leaning friends. One of them, LF, had said that if I was so sure the Iraqis really wanted us there, I should find a survey of Iraqis conducted by Iraqis to support my contention.

Last week, Senator Joe Lieberman wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in which he mentioned just such a survey, saying, "[P]olls conducted by Iraqis for Iraqi universities show increasing optimism. Two-thirds say they are better off than they were under Saddam, and a resounding 82% are confident their lives in Iraq will be better a year from now than they are today." I sent Lieberman's column to LF, and another lengthy debate followed, in which LF finally said that he believed the US, Iraq, and the world would have been better off if we had left Saddam in charge in Iraq. At that point I called off the debate, because we could never come to an agreement, being such polar opposites about so fundamental an issue.

In yesterday's National Review Online, Victor Davis Hanson's column on Iraq answered so many of LF's arguments, that I almost wonder if Hanson read LF's emails over my shoulder. This paragraph of Hanson's takes many of LF's points head-on:

We took no oil — the price in fact skyrocketed after we invaded Iraq. We did not do Israel’s bidding; in fact, it left Gaza after we went into Iraq and elections followed on the West Bank. We did not want perpetual hegemony — in fact, we got out of Saudi Arabia, used the minimum amount of troops possible, and will leave Iraq anytime its consensual government so decrees. And we did not expropriate Arab resources, but, in fact, poured billions of dollars into Iraq to jumpstart its new consensual government in the greatest foreign aid infusion of the age.

LF prides himself on being an objective, independent thinker, neither left- nor right-leaning, and on making his own assessments without mindlessly spouting anybody else's slogans. But his arguments seem to come right out of moveon.org's talking (screaming?) points.

While those on the left bemoan the Iraq war as an evil perpetrated by an avaricious United States, Hanson's assessment puts Iraq in its proper context:

Instead, what Iraq did is ensure that al Qaeda’s Sunni support is being coopted by democracy. Jordan, the terrorists’ old ace in the hole that could always put a cosmetic face on its stealthy support for radicals, has essentially turned on Zarqawi and with him al Qaeda. Syria is under virtual siege and its border sanctuary now a killing zone. Bin Laden can offer very little solace from his cave. And somehow Islamists have alienated the United States, Europe, Russia, China, Australia, Japan, and increasingly Middle East democracies like those in Afghanistan, Turkey, and Iraq, and reform movements in Lebanon and Jordan.

Decision day is coming when Zarqawi’s bombers will have to choose either to die, or, like a Nathan Bedford Forrest (“I’m a goin’ home”), quit to join the reform-seeking majority. That progress was accomplished only by the war in Iraq, and without it we would be back to playing a waiting game for another 9/11, while an autocratic Middle East went on quietly helping terrorists without consequences, either afraid of Saddam or secretly enjoying his chauvinist defiance.

Hanson's overall message to the Bush Administration is that they need to get the message out about the importance of and the progress in Iraq as often and as visibly as possible, and they can't rely on the MSM to hand that message to the American people on a silver platter.

Too many people have been listening to the poison of the left, because that's all they ever get to hear from the MSM. It's up to people who want the truth to actively seek it out. Read the text of the President's speeches by chekcing in now and then at the White House website, where there are links to his recent speeches. Don't trust the New York Times, the Washington Post, The LA Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, or any of the other Bush-hating newspapers to present the Iraq War fairly. They won't, because they are at war. With the President.