It's hard to understand what he is criticizing Obama for, exactly. For being too soft, certainly. But on whom? On Qaddafi? Oops. On Syria's Bashar Assad? Well, they won't come out and say we should start a war with Syria, so what then? Arm Assad's opponents? Oops: blowback from angry students is one thing; blowback from armed militants is another. So that leave us only with more finger-wagging in Assad's general direction.
Or is Obama being too soft on mobs of Arab street protesters? If so, how could he "get tough" on them? By bombing them? By infiltrating them with our spies? By arming police with tear gas and riot gear? I'm sure that would calm them down; no blowback potential there, oops. Then what should Obama do? More finger-wagging again?
Or, take the recent brutal murder of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens in Libya. Obama said he would track down the killers and bring them to justice, which sounds pretty tough to me. (And this President actually tracks down killers.) Hanson and others criticize Obama for an "absence of adequate military security" in Benghazi. Fair enough. But isn't that a technical, not a policy, issue? The U.S. had no diplomatic presence in Libya for years, and so our embassy outposts there have not yet been well-developed. Moreover, being a diplomat in a war-torn country is a dangerous job; that's what they signed up for. Just like serving in Afghanistan and Iraq is a dangerous job, to which 6,611 U.S. military fatalities there to-date somberly attest. (V.D. Hanson can claim his share of intellectual credit for putting them there.)
Here's how Obama explained, before the UN on September 25, why he did what he did:
We intervened in Libya alongside a broad coalition and with the mandate of the United Nations Security Council, because we had the ability to stop the slaughter of innocents and because we believed that the aspirations of the people were more powerful than a tyrant.And as we meet here, we again declare that the regime of Bashar al-Assad must come to an end so that the suffering of the Syrian people can stop and a new dawn can begin.We have taken these positions because we believe that freedom and self-determination are not unique to one culture.These are not simply American values or Western values; they are universal values.
American values? That kind of talk drives blood-and-guts neocons like Hanson to tears. Values never gave anybody a hard-on.
This is all child's play relative to deadly-serious nuclear tensions between the U.S. and Iran, yet Hanson and the Right's criticism of Obama is pretty much the same: Obama is too soft. OK, what should Obama do then? Start a third preemptive war in 10 years that would suck in the entire Middle East and send the price of gas sky-high? Don't like that, you say? OK, what then? Yet more finger-wagging? Oops, it sounds like Obama just did that at the UN:
Make no mistake: A nuclear-armed Iran is not a challenge that can be contained. It would threaten the elimination of Israel, the security of Gulf nations, and the stability of the global economy. It risks triggering a nuclear arms race in the region, and the unraveling of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
The simple truth is that Hanson and his fellow disgraced neocons have no new ideas, they blew their load in Iraq, and now they long for the good ole' days when our President was a gullible gorilla who liked to grunt and beat his chest, and who would ape whatever they whispered in his ear. The days when a few craven and dependent dictators like Qaddafi and Mubarak might pay attention.
You see, America's super-muscular military might is only effective against regimes, not against oppressed people who have nothing to lose, and already live in privation and terror. U.S. military power cannot secure their health, their dignity, or a job. Therefore, neocons like Hanson want America to maintain friendly but autocratic foreign regimes. Without regimes to threaten or pay off, Hanson and Co. have nothing to offer.
The more difficult truth is that there is nothing "weak" about America's reading the writing on the wall and adjusting. Sooner or later, Qaddafi and Mubarak were going down. Sooner or later, Assad will too. Yes, these Devils We Knew provided some comfort and stability to us in a region we don't understand and don't really care to. But as these devils come under attack by their own oppressed people, it would be stupid and pointless -- and contrary to our stated values -- for us to stand alone against a tide of self-determination. Obama should be applauded for not standing behind dictators who were about to fall, vainly propping them up a bit longer. That was not weakness on his part, it was wisdom.
Finally, the most difficult truth for some Americans is that we cannot direct world events like pieces on a chess board, especially and increasingly not by military means. We can't (and don't want to, I hope) stop some moron for posting an amateurish film on YouTube; just like we can't stop street protests in more than 20 countries as a result of it. We shouldn't try. And we shouldn't wring our hands over our "powerlessness." Only when all people enjoy liberty will the real work of U.S. diplomacy begin: then they, not their oppressors, will decide whether they stand with the United States. Meanwhile, we must have faith that our cherished values will prevail, and speak with confidence and consistency about them to the ignorant and the skeptical. The alternative has been tried... and failed.
By Victor Davis Hanson
September 25, 2012 | National Review
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