Making Strange Bedfellows

Victor Davis Hanson speaks insightfully about the Middle East. More so than just about anybody going these days, he is well-versed in history of the region, history of it's conflicts and he does so with a degree of moral clarity missing from too much of what passes as meaningful commentary.
His Tuesday appearance on Hugh's radio program was another example, as they discussed the assassination of Pierre Gemayel in Lebanon. His observations are insightful and clear as they make a point about exactly who it is we're dealing with in the ME:

HH: I thought we might have a month away from the bad news, but as Beirut descends into crisis tonight, it appears as though the bad guys sense an opening.

VDH: Yeah, they do, and I think this should be a wake up call for everybody in the United States who wants to bring in the 1990's realist team, that anybody who thinks that they can have some sort of reconciliation with Syria and Iran are missing the entire problem in the Middle East. The problem is those two countries, and those two governments.

HH: Victor Davis Hanson, if you had a chance to visit with the President tonight, what would you be telling him?

VDH: Don't give up. Don't weaken. Don't hesitate. Don't pause. Do not cut a deal with those two governments. They're killing American soldiers through surrogates in Iraq. They're trying to destabilize Lebanon like they did in the 1980's. They're the source of most of the evil that's now causing us problems from Afghanistan to Iraq. And this idea that you're going to bring James Baker back, and that team back who gave us everything from Iran-Contra to jobs, jobs, jobs as the only reason we're going to go into the Middle East, to flank the Jews. I could go on, but it's a very sensitive point with me. I think a lot of us, Hugh, stood by this administration through thick and thin when the paleocons turned on them, when the liberal hawks turned on them, when the neocons are starting to bail. But my God, if you're going to go into the Middle East, and put 130,000 Americans in harm's way, fighting for democracy, and then you turn around and you appease those two governments who are killing people, I don't think a lot of us are going to stand for that.

HH: Is this an Archduke Ferdinand moment with the assassination of Gemayel?

VDH: I think it may be. I really do. I think that Syria realizes that as soon as they saw that the United States was going to cease pressure on them, it was time to go in and start killing non-Shia politicians, reporters especially. They've killed journalists, they've killed T.V...it's not just this Gemayel. It's not just a Christian politician. They've been doing this for two years, killing, systematically, any critics. And they sense that they get a green light from us when we pull back. And I think it should be a wake up call for the United States, that when you go to war in Afghanistan and Iraq, you don't go to war in a half measure. You either go to war or you don't go to war. And we're in a war in Iraq, and we're in war with, as the President said, Islamic-facism, and autocracy and dictatorship, and there's no better examples than Iran and Syria.

HH: Victor Davis Hanson, earlier, talking with Claudia Rosett, I said, to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, you go to war with the Congress you have, and now we've got a left-leaning Congress coming in. Does the President have the ability to wage aggressive war with a pacifist Congress?

VDH: I think he does, but let's be candid, Hugh. The problem right now isn't...it may be the left wing Congress, but he's got another problem, and that is he's bringing in Robert Gates, and he's bringing in the Baker realism, and that doesn't have a good record. That's the people who said don't talk to Yeltsin. Let's stick with Gorbacev. Let's not go to Baghdad. Let the Shia and Kurds die. Let's arm the Islamisists to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan and then leave. It's not a good record. It's short-term expediency at the expense of long-term morality. And it's not in the interest of the United States to do that, to cut a deal with these countries.

HH: Now tell me something. If you and I see this as we do the same way, and almost inevitably, it's a very clear picture what's going on here. How could "realists" persuade themselves, Victor Davis Hanson? And I haven't seen Baker do this yet, so I'll withhold judgment. I haven't seen Gates do it yet, so I'll withhold judgment. But how could any realist step up and say the thing to do is to negotiate with the Syrians? What's madness.

VDH: I don't know. I think they think that these two countries, it's almost a prima facia admission that these two countries are backing, in various ways, the Shia and Sunni insurgents in Iraq, and then maybe we can cut a deal, and let them have some leeway at the expense of what? Another democracy in Lebanon? So they won't topple our democracy in Iraq? You can't do that. It'd be like asking the Soviet Union to allow a democratic Ukraine, or Hitler to allow Czechloslovakia to have elections. That's not what those countries do. They exist to destroy democracies, and I don't understand it. But I do think if they appease these two countries, they're going to lose a lot of support of people like ourselves, who've been with them thick and thin, when everybody else has bailed.

These remarks also touch a point that I intended on writing about some time ago but never did. The post just never came together, so I scrapped it.

A few months back, after watching Pat Buchanan's most recent interview on Today I began a post I titled Buchanan as Fetish. The point being simply that I've come to believe that to a certain degree at least, Anti-Bush sentiments on the Left have led more than a few folks to hitch their wagons to horses they'd otherwise have nothing to do with, a la the Paleocon's Paleocon, Patrick J. Buchanan.

I sensed in reading Hanson's comments here, a similar thought:

HH: Victor Davis Hanson, earlier, talking with Claudia Rosett, I said, to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, you go to war with the Congress you have, and now we've got a left-leaning Congress coming in. Does the President have the ability to wage aggressive war with a pacifist Congress?

VDH: I think he does, but let's be candid, Hugh. The problem right now isn't...it may be the left wing Congress, but he's got another problem, and that is he's bringing in Robert Gates, and he's bringing in the Baker realism, and that doesn't have a good record. That's the people who said don't talk to Yeltsin. Let's stick with Gorbacev. Let's not go to Baghdad. Let the Shia and Kurds die. Let's arm the Islamisists to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan and then leave. It's not a good record. It's short-term expediency at the expense of long-term morality. And it's not in the interest of the United States to do that, to cut a deal with these countries.

If in fact the Baker-Hamilton recommendations are a return to 'realism', is it in our best interests? If it is, how? And why do the people in punditry who appear most interested in it's return advocate for it when they were--in it's last incarnation--opposed to the idea of pragmatic, amoral and interest-driven foreign policy?

I'm left wondering if it's their bitter, passionate dislike for the current President that makes for such strange bedfellows. Why else do they quote a man like Kissinger--a loathed man in many environs for his policies--when he tells us all is hopeless? When they're not busy telling us how bad a President George Bush is, they're busing telling us how this same Kissinger is a war criminal.

As to the point of the conversation that Hugh and Mr. Hanson were having on Tuesday, the notion that we can negotiate something of meaning with Iran and Syria on the subject of terrorism-at-large or Iraq seems absurd on it's face and obviously so. At least to me. Why we would even consider the thought of it as serious policy is befuddling.