A Deo Lumen

One of my favorite voices whom I have discovered online in the past few years, is Victor Davis Hanson (VDH). He is military historian, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, and a recipient of the 2007 National Humanities Medal. His blog is Works and Days, and he frequently writes at National Review Online.

His deep knowledge of history always seems to produce great insights. He is no thoughtless, reflexive anti-liberal conservative, though he has been a staunch supporter of the proactive Bush Doctrine, which, if you can recall, is based on the post-9/11 risk-based approach of pre-emption. In other words, the risk of another unprovoked attack like 9/11 from Islamic terrorists justifies our invasion of those “safe harbor” nations that do not root out terror cells within their own borders.

With all its negative and unintended consequences, this approach seems most faithful to the President’s Constitutional calling as Commander-in-Chief to protect American citizens. I am no expert on these matters, but when dealing with active terrorists with no history of reasoning with the West to come to a place of peace, this seems the safest (if often hardest) approach.

If one accepts this line, then removing those conditions which tend to foster terrorism–in the lands wherein terrorists find a home–is also critical to American self-preservation.  Setting up a Democratic ally in Iraq, then, is not as misguided a goal as some may think, even if the execution has been off-track at times.

Of course, part of the greatness of America is that we can disagree about such things, and still be friends and work together toward common goals.

One of those common goals, according to VDH, should be to reduce our personal oil consumption. While one can support this assertion with environmental arguments, Hanson provides some historical insights on such economic self-discipline and its role in American military success:

In all our major wars — except the present one — Americans have won through a combination of military prowess, correctly identifying the enemy and economic savvy. In the Civil War, the south was blockaded and starved of its cotton revenues, an effort that proved every bit as important as Gettysburg and Sherman’s “March to the Sea.” Germany was blockaded in both World Wars and cut off from precious metals, oil, and food. The Soviet economy collapsed before its military could. Only in this war has our own profligacy empowered our enemies.

After years of learning how to fight an unfamiliar war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and to protect us at home, we are finally getting most things right. But if our soldiers and intelligence agencies have learned how to win, our politically-correct diplomats and the American consumer haven’t — and are doing as much at home to empower radical Islam as those on the front lines are to defeat it.

The full article is here at National Review Online.