Are Iraqis Worth It? Hanson Nails Issue

We daily scour the blogosphere and news columns for stories or opinions that strike a chord within us, that indicate the author is a kindred spirit, that demonstrate that someone else out there “gets it” when it comes to the important issues of our time. Today while reading National Review Online I read an article by an author I read with regularity and had such an experience. Even before this week, with the passage in the House and Senate of the Iraq White Flag Surrender Turn Tail and Flee Beginning October 1st Bill dominating the headlines, I wrote about the real reason why some Americans are not willing to sacrifice long and hard for the fledgling democracy in Iraq, and today prominent author and NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson took up this issue in a brilliantly written and bluntly articulated article titled, “Iraq, and the Truth We Dare Not Speak.”

Hanson shared my view that much of the war weariness among Americans is due to a feeling of superiority, that somehow democracy and freedom are exclusive American virtues and rights, and at the least sign of difficulty, we assume other peoples are not prepared of capable of governing themselves as we do. Hanson wrote:

But, again, most Americans now don’t think it is worth it — and not just because of the cost we pay, but because of what we get in return. Turn on the television and the reporting is all hate: a Middle Eastern Muslim is blowing up someone in Israel, shooting a rocket from Gaza, chanting death to America in Beirut, stoning an adulterer in Tehran, losing a hand for thievery in Saudi Arabia, threatening to take back Spain, gassing someone in Iraq, or promising to wipe out Israel. An unhinged, secular Khadafi rants; a decrepit Saudi royal lectures; a wild-eyed Lebanese cleric threatens — whatever the country, whatever the political ideology, the American television viewer draws the same conclusion: we are always blamed for their own self-inflicted misery….

But the real catalysts are the endemic violence and hypocrisy that appear nightly on millions of television screens. When the liberal Left says of the war, “It isn’t worth it,” that message resonates, as the American public rightly suspects that it really means “They aren’t worth it.” Voters may not like particularly a Harry Reid, but in frustration at the violence, they sense now that, just like them, he also doesn’t like a vague somebody over there.So here we are in our eleventh hour. A controversial and costly war continues, in part so as to give Arab Muslims the sort of freedom the West takes for granted; but at precisely the time that the public increasingly is tired of Middle Eastern madness. In short, America believes that the entire region is not worth the bones of a single Marine.

In my previous posts about Indonesia’s successes as a Muslim democracy and the Democrats unwillingness to be patient with Iraq’s governmental development, I, like Hanson, questioned why so many Americans, the Democratic left in particular, were so eager for a rush to withdraw without victory in Iraq. Their behavior demonstrated what I described previously as a “carrot and stick” approach, with Pelosi and Reid holding the stick of abandonment over free Iraqis who are working and dying to cement democracy for future generations of Iraqis and other aspiring but oppressed populations in the Middle East. I concluded:

There are only two possible explanations for the behavior of Speaker Pelosi and the anti-war Democrats: first, they despise President Bush so much that they cannot afford to allow the Iraq War to be won, as a victory there would cement President Bush’s legacy as the man who brought democracy to the Middle East and ensure a Republican sweep in the 2008 elections; or second, Democrats are prejudiced in their belief that democracy should not be shared or supported in Muslim nations because Muslims are too backward in their thinking to truly want democracy.

In World War II, Americans had little trouble relating with and having empathy for the European populations our soldiers died to free from the Nazis. However, fighting to preserve democracy or at least halt the spread of Communism in Korea and Vietnam, Americans demonstrated far less cultural understanding or will to share the blessings of freedom with Asian peoples. Is this same phenomenon occurring now in Iraq? Is our minimal knowledge of Middle Eastern cultures, languages, and religious groups causing us to consider those peoples less worthy of our money, time, and blood than Europeans were in two world wars? Perhaps the most salient question is, if we give Iraqis a taste of freedom and democracy and abandon them before they can sustain their freedom, will any other peoples rise up to overthrow tyranny knowing that the bastion of freedom, the United States, cannot be trusted to defend democracy?

Victor Davis Hanson’s article was a gem that Capital Cloak heartily recommends to all readers.