{"id":455,"date":"2005-12-02T12:49:25","date_gmt":"2005-12-02T19:49:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/balafon.net\/?p=455"},"modified":"2005-12-02T12:49:45","modified_gmt":"2005-12-02T19:49:45","slug":"a-just-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/balafon.net\/?p=455","title":{"rendered":"A Just War"},"content":{"rendered":"

Victor Davis Hanson is up to his usual form<\/a> today:<\/p>\n

Of course, the White House, as is true in all wars, has made mistakes, but only one critical lapse \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and it is not the Herculean effort to establish a consensual government at the nexus of the Middle East in less than three years after removing Saddam Hussein. The administration\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lapse, rather, has come in its failure to present the entire war effort in its proper moral context.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We took no oil \u00e2\u20ac\u201d the price in fact skyrocketed after we invaded Iraq. We did not do Israel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s bidding; in fact, it left Gaza after we went into Iraq and elections followed on the West Bank. We did not want perpetual hegemony \u00e2\u20ac\u201d in fact, we got out of Saudi Arabia, used the minimum amount of troops possible, and will leave Iraq anytime its consensual government so decrees. And we did not expropriate Arab resources, but, in fact, poured billions of dollars into Iraq to jumpstart its new consensual government in the greatest foreign aid infusion of the age.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In short, every day the American people should have been reminded of, and congratulated on, their country\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s singular idealism, its tireless effort to reject the cynical realism of the past, and its near lone effort to make terrible sacrifices to offer the dispossessed Shia and Kurds something better than the exploitation and near genocide of the past \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and how all that alone will enhance the long-term security of the United States.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That goal was what the U.S. military ended up so brilliantly fighting for \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and what the American public rarely heard. The moral onus should have always been on the critics of the war. They should have been forced to explain why it was wrong to remove a fascist mass murderer, why it was wrong to stay rather than letting the country sink into Lebanon-like chaos, and why it was wrong not to abandon brave women, Kurds, and Shia who only wished for the chance of freedom.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Victor Davis Hanson is up to his usual form today: Of course, the White House, as is true in all wars, has made mistakes, but only one critical lapse \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and it is not the Herculean effort to establish a consensual government at the nexus of the Middle East in less than three years after … Continue reading “A Just War”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/balafon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/balafon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/balafon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balafon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balafon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/balafon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/balafon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balafon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balafon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}