What the Heck was I Thinking!?

Victor Davis Hanson at Real Clear Politics writes a post that challenges western attitudes about the war in Lebanon and Israel. 

This paragraph, in particular, spells out the issue he thinks defines the liberal media’s and liberal politicians’ impact. It also calls into question how well they remember their history:

"Knowingly or not, news outlets continue to spread Hezbollah’s propaganda. One wonders if Westerners remember or know that, until Sept. 11, Hezbollah had killed more Americans than had any other terrorist organization."

His conclusion is a fitting condemnation of these liberals’ moral failure:

"Instead far more worrisome is the moral crisis in the West itself. If so many of its politicians, intellectuals and media will not or cannot fathom moral differences in this war, they will hardly be able to see them anywhere else."

Peter Wehner posts (h/t Dr. Sanity)  on the wobbly argument of the liberals about the value of democracy in the Middle East.

Ironically,  some of their arguments actually lend support to the case the Administration makes:

"You have free elections in Iraq, and the head of the parliament calls us butchers."

Err, doesn’t that demonstrate that these people are actually elected, not puppets of the Americans, and probably represent the range of views, even some we don’t like, of Iraqis? Isn’t that truly democracy in action?

Wehner goes on to point out:

"It is not as if Hamas replaced the Palestinian version of the Federalist Party."

 And, how quickly we forget our own pristine history of democratic behavior - Tamany Hall, carpet baggers, all kinds of less than perfect representation of democratic principles.

The Hamas and Hezbollah leaders aren’t what you’d call democratically elected leaders. Not any more than Soviet and Chinese communist leaders were elected (usually by an overwhelming majority!), or other tyrants.

Wehner asks some critical questions:

"Do critics of democracy believe we would be significantly better off with the reign of an Arafat? Do they believe that Iraq, which consists of a freely elected, multiethnic government whose leadership is fighting terrorism instead of supporting it, was better under Saddam Hussein than it is now? Do they believe that it was better to have the Taliban control Afghanistan, not Hamid Karzai? Do they believe we should support more repression within Arab societies?"

Near the end of his post, he pierces the illogical logic of these defeatists:

"Those who disagree with him [the President] must believe, by the power of their own logic, that continued tyranny is the route to a better world. "

 Well worth the read.

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