I think that it’s going to be very difficult for President Bush to follow the path established by his father… While Bush may want to earn the approval of the nation during the last two years of his presidency, he is clearly at an “inflection point”.
Hugh Hewitt: If you had a chance to visit with the President tonight, what would you be telling him?
Victor Davis Hanson: Don’t give up. Don’t weaken. Don’t hesitate. Don’t pause. Do not cut a deal with those two governments [Iran and Syria]. 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….
Bush is 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.
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.
If Bush goes the way of James Baker, I will be the first to post “Impeach George Bush”.