Wise Man Talking

By Semperpapa

There is a man who too few American people are familiar with, a brilliant man, in my opinion, who should be invited by the Department of Education to oversee, if not fully write, the history books that our children would study from. This man is Dr. Victor Davis Hanson.

I am not going to elaborate on his resume, because it is so vast that it would take the whole article, but suffices to say that I have never seen or heard anyone with more historical knowledge that Dr. Hanson. And being a history junkie, I truly appreciate his contribution to our society in both speaking and writing terms.

That said, I visit his web site often at www.victorhanson.com to get this man’s prospective on the historical times we are currently living in.
One of the effects reading his articles have is a calming one. As I go through the day feeling physically ill by witnessing the damage the current political leadership is perpetrating on my country, usually reading Dr. Hanson’s work calms me down, as he has a very precise, doctrinal and scientific approach to his condemnation of the reckless actions of our government.

On April 14, 2010 the following article appeared on Hanson’s web site, and just by the title I knew that the man was fairly incensed by some of the latest events. Here is the article:

http://www.victorhanson.com/articles/hanson041410B.html

The five reasons that pushed Dr. Hanson into calling the NY Times writer a “lunatic”, action very uncharacteristic, is the focus of my interest.

a) "Netanyahu was the first foreign leader to think he could steamroll Obama." Hardly. Right out of the blocks Putin did it with his phony missiles-for-Iran deal. Under "reset" diplomacy, Ahmadinejad for a year now has been pressing ahead as never before. The Chinese certainly assume that they can "steamroll" this administration, as we saw from the last meeting there.

Who can forget the embarrassing scene of Sec. Of State Clinton with the Russian Foreign Minister and that “reset” button, which word was spelled wrong. But even wanting to ignore the ignoramus, it is well known, understood and totally ignored the fact that Russia has been the major supplier of nuclear technology to Iran, so the accusation against Netanyahu of being the first foreign leader trying to bully Obama is the total fabrication of a complacent journalistic apologist.

b) Khrushchev was our enemy trying to destroy freedom from Asia to Eastern Europe; Netanyahu is the head of an allied democracy, one that is a beacon of constitutionalism in a sea of autocracy.

Comparing Obama’s insult of Netanyahu to the way J.F. Kennedy stood up to the Soviet Premier Khrushchev is indeed absurd. Israel has been an open ally of the United States for a long time.
When during the Gulf War Iraq was launching SCUD missiles against Israel, killing its civilian population, the Jewish government maintained restrain even is their military would have been more than capable to take final care of the SCUD problem. They refrained so that the fragile coalition the United States had assembled against Saddam Hussein would remain intact. Sure the coalition took extraordinary steps to reduce the particular threat to Israel, but any kind of military intervention, which would have been fully justified, would have created much graver problems. That is an ally.

c) The Soviet Union was a massive superpower with thousands of nuclear bombs and missiles and an entire bloc of communist client states; Israel is a tiny country of 7 million and mostly alone; how heroic is it to bully an allied small democracy versus a huge communist dictatorship?

This touches on what has become clearer regarding the tendencies of Obama toward the Middle East, because it shows that the U.S. President is more inclined to stand next to the enemies of Israel and turn his back on the only democratically run nation in the whole region. On the other hand, Obama is turning his back on the American people in favor of our radical Islamic enemies, so that is not much of a surprise.

d) Kennedy said later of that summit in Vienna that Khrushchev "beat the hell out of me" — an accurate assessment, since Khrushchev came away determined to press his luck during the Cuban Missile Crisis to come. So we don't know the reaction of the Israelis or Palestinians to all this — only that anytime the U.S. gratuitously seeks to humiliate Israel, we can expect its enemies to see a green light and escalate, whether on the ground in the Middle East, at Arab Summits, or in the U.N.

The consequence of the humiliation Obama handed over to Netanyahu have not manifested themselves as of yet. But if the enemies of Israel, and of America for that matter, are going to be emboldened by the obvious distancing that Obama is showing with the Israeli nation, the results may be catastrophic, as over the years Israeli Military power, and the willingness to use it, combined to the knowledge that the US would back that nation, has been a strong deterrent.

e) A shaky American leader usually seeks to stand up to powerful regional dictatorships rather than pick on friends — that is, if the point is that the United States is still there for its allies and a formidable foe to its enemies. But apparently that was not the intent at all with Israel.

This point sorts of give foundation to much of my past statements. Obama is throwing Israel under the bus, to use an expression of others, just has he has done with many of the nations that have traditionally been America’s closest allies. Britain, Israel, Poland, Georgia.
If the bases of such outrageous policies were just a total lack of understanding of the situation, one would expect Obama to lean even more on those governments that he knows for certain he can count on.
By instead clearly opposing an ally like Israel, gives me one more reason to believe that the alienation of that country is a deliberate move to not only distancing himself from them in order to ingratiate his agenda to the Arab world, the Muslim anti-Jewish world, but a conscientious attempt to isolate Netanyahu and his country, leaving him to have to fend for himself in a really dangerous neighborhood. The question remains of why and the answer will probably be given by the events of the next few months.

Just my thoughts!