VDH steps up with another beaut. You can agree or disagree with his proposals, but you have to give full marks for consistency. The Bush Doctrine's Next Test:
"...far from representing a distraction in the struggle against current front-line enemies like Iran and Syria, the reformation of Egypt, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia would only further isolate and enfeeble those states - as William Tecumseh Sherman's 'indirect approach' of weakening the rear of the Confederacy, at a considerably reduced loss of life, helped to bring to a close the frontline bloodshed of northern Virginia, or as Epaminondas the Theban's freeing of the Messenian helots dismantled the Spartan empire at its very foundations.
Egypt, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia are not the equivalent of the Soviet Union's satellite states of Albania, Bulgaria, and Romania. Rather, they are the East Germany, Hungary, and Poland of the unfree Middle East: pivotal nations upon whose fate the entire future of the Bush Doctrine may well hinge."
There's lots more, and it's all good. (Hat Tip: the fine left-right Daou Report)
If you want further background, we covered exactly what the Bush Doctrine is a while back, and talked at greater length about Pakistan (OxDem's Democracy in Pakistan series) and Egypt (How Do You Solve A Problem Like Mubarak?).
Do you guys actually get credit for branding it as the Bush Doctrine?
I didn't manage to chime in until February of this year, but I live in Wisconsin and it was cold. The Bush Doctrine
Uncle Jimbo, we do not get credit for inventing "The Bush Doctrine." Norman Podhoretz wrote the key (long) article, but the term was in use before then in a disorganized kind of way.
To the extent that even Podhoretz gets credit, it's for defining it more precisely rather than branding it.
Well that is an unsurprising genesis for something like this.
I do appreciate the elucidation by the Winds folks though, and I imagine the credit for branding would go to Sir Karl of Rove. Venture On.
Cordially,
Uncle J
Military Matters
Just a brief remark about the "indirect approach" of General Sherman. It was actually systematic and deliberate war against the civilian population of the Confederacy, in order to starve it. It was a novel thing in its day.
It was also the essential genesis of the mass bombing of London, Coventry, and Dresden; the firebombing of Tokyo and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; and the "defoliation campaigns" of Southeast Asia.
It was also accompanied and followed by the unprecedented "loss of life" in finally subduing Lee's forces that got General Grant the nickname Grant The Butcher.
Now a man might argue that some or most of this carnage was necessary to win those wars. But the most disgusting and morally corrupt thing about Mr. Hanson and all of his ilk is the casual way that they paper over the real human cost of it in the pedantic and pretentious waving of their historical reading at contemporary problems.
#4 Joseph Marshall:
"...the most disgusting and morally corrupt thing about Mr. Hanson and all of his ilk is the casual way that they paper over the real human cost..."
Funny, one of the most notable things about Hanson is how much attention he pays to the real human cost. I guess that Joseph Marshall either has not actually read Hanson, or else his ideological blinders led him to grossly misunderstand him.
"But the most disgusting and morally corrupt thing about Mr. Hanson and all of his ilk is the casual way that they paper over the real human cost of it in the pedantic and pretentious waving of their historical reading at contemporary problems. "
That is simply not an accurate description of Hanson. The disgusting and morally corrupt argument is the one that ignores the inevitable cost of inaction. While the strangulation of the Confederacy and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki took lives that can be counted, whatever other course was chosen would have costs lives as well, and most agree they would have cost more lives in the long run. Waving the number of Iraqis killed since the invasion while shrugging with disinterest at the number Hussein would have killed as a matter of course is simple hypocracy.
An additional feature of the writings of VDH that I have read is that he does not paper over the very real human costs of NOT fighting a war. That is an unfortunately-common trait of the anti-war Left these days.
"But the most disgusting and morally corrupt thing about Mr. Hanson and all of his ilk is the casual way that they paper over the real human cost of it in the pedantic and pretentious waving of their historical reading at contemporary problems."
Just curious: what leads people to think such vituperation actually accomplishes anything, other than perhaps discrediting the vituperative? Are there places where this stuff carries the day? There but for the grace of God go we, I guess.
Leftism has a human cost many times that of all war. they went from "you have to break a few eggs" to the eggs deserved it.
Hasnt stopped their devotion to socialism.
Sherman brought the war to the elites; while they were civilians, they were also otherwise the least likely to feel the pain of war unlike their poorer and less-landowning bretheren lined up against Union blue. Ruining Southern agriculture was primarily to ruin the ability to fund/support the war and to attempt to cause the powerful to reconsider the effort, it was not primarily to starve the population. This is a significant distinction to make.
And I agree with others here - your characteristic of Hanson is inaccurate and, hazarding a a guess, uninformed.
Also: "...historical reading at contemporary problems".. are we now exempt from History? Do we live in a time past the relevance of History? I thought that debate was over and done with.. it sooo 2002. Has History nothing to teach us, and has human nature changed ('scuse me. ahem "progressed") so much that the lessons of the past are obsolete given the new paramaters of the modern human condition??
To answer my own rhetorical questions: Whaddareya, kidding me??
Burning everything of military value -- factories, railroads and farms -- is not direct war against the civilian population.
Mr. Marshall:
Apart from the fact that VDH frequently mentions the human costs, and Sherman was targeting infrastructure and resources rather than the civilian population (unlike the WWII bombings mentioned), when was the last time you emphasized the fact that Marxism directly murdered close to 100 million people in the 20th Century, and enslaved or imprisoned (in the sense of "made virtual slaves of") a multiple of that number?
So, the next time you talk "papered over" keep in mind not only W.C.'s foolish "little Eichmans" comment, but also the fact that not much is ever made in the leftist community of the human costs imposed by monsters like Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, etc., in the grand tradition established by Maximilian Robespierre.
It is extraordinarily clear that Marshall has not read Victor Davis Hanson.
Joseph Marshall -- You are incorrect about both Sherman and Hanson's take on him. Hanson points out that Sherman killed very few of the enemy, and lost very few of his own men. It was precisely his destroying the banks, freeing slaves, telegraph offices, massive agricultural estates, government offices and the like while leaving alone humble sharecroppers that destroyed the South's will to fight.
He completely destroyed the property of the elite that had started and continued the war, while freeing slave labor and leaving the property of the poor whites alone. He spread terror in a way that Grant did not precisely because he threatened the wealthy elite's property. Grant butchered his own and Lee's men in Cold Harbor and the Wilderness, and almost lost Lincoln the election. Sherman killed almost no one and mostly destroyed property, including Atlanta thus winning Lincoln the election.
When Sherman threatened to march into Virginia from the Carolinas, THAT as much as anything else convinced the Richmond elite to throw in the towel and save their property. Sherman, more than anyone at Shiloh, appreciated the folly of straight on butchery and chose a war of maneuver and economic destruction. For that he is vilified (for destroying elite property) while Grant, butcher of thousands, is celebrated.
Hanson also (like Steven Ambrose in his televised lectures) links the horrible attrition warfare caused by kamikazes on the ground and air at Okinawa with the various war plans by all the services, and the decision to drop the bombs. At Okinawa the Japanese strategy was to inflict "enough" casualties to cause the Americans to leave them with most of their empire intact, including China and other conquered nations. Figuring that the Americans would have no response to attrition. Hanson's point was that Americans DID have a response to the attrition strategy, which was the Atomic Bomb. His other point was that the devastation inflicted in WWII left the German and Japanese people with little appetite for another imperial drive. Hitler's stabbed in the back notion paled under Zhukov's assault on Berlin and Dresden's ahnilliation, as did Tojo's words of imperial exhortation.
I'd say Meade's troops storming the trenches at Petersburg convinced the Virginians the war was over.
The Quagmire: As the Iraq war drags on, it's beginning to look a lot like Vietnam, by Robert Dreyfuss, informs us that
The "astounding success of the Bush Doctrine" to which Hanson refers evidently does not extend to
Planet Rolling Stone.
Joseph Marshall: the unprecedented "loss of life" in finally subduing Lee's forces that got General Grant the nickname Grant The Butcher.
Grant's army actually had a lower casualty rate than Lee's. And of course the Army of the Potomac suffered incredible casualties under a long string of previous commanders, while accomplishing little or nothing. Procrastination and incompetence take lives, too.
Grant understood that continuous offense action was costly, but endless indecisive warfare was far more costly. Grant's ruthless pursuit of Lee saved a lot of lives, and so did Sherman's march to the sea. This is not a difficult thing to understand, but some people refuse to understand it.
The error of all pacifism is the refusal to acknowledge that inaction is a moral choice with moral consequences. Good intentions do not excuse you from moral responsibilities. The bogus pseudo-pacifism of Bush's enemies, of course, doesn't even deserve the dignity of of being called an error.
It's hillarious to read some of these older posts, especially in light of recent developments. Maybe you ought to purge your databases every now and then and spare yourselves embarassing notes like Alan Furman's "Planet Rolling Stone" comment. History is proving folks like Robert Dreyfuss right, and wingnuts like Victor Davis Hanson wrong.