Victor Davis Hanson ponders the crucial role played by two of the deadly sins, Pride and Envy, in world events today, especially in Europe and the Middle East. His take on America's national personality is spot on, too, and he has some suggestions for American strategy in response.
The realization that we have not yet evolved past these baser impulses is critical in this war, since victory entails not merely the military defeat of our often tribal adversaries, but a careful combination of humiliating enemies while allowing credit to go to envious allies and the once defeated. "Hearts and minds" refers not merely to bequeathing good schools, utilities, and safety to Iraqis, but to restoring the pride of the Iraqi people. The trick is for Americans, who sacrifice lives and treasure, and are singularly responsible for the salvation of the Iraqi people, to ignore Arab ingratitude, callousness, and mean-spiritedness and allow them instead the sense of accomplishment that they saved, and are restoring, their own country.Posted by Alan at January 17, 2004 09:34 AMAt the risk of sounding monotonous, we cannot win in Iraq until Iraqis, not Americans, are on television — confidently summing up the reconstruction that we in fact are mostly responsible for. All the tiring shoe-shaking, fists in the air, banners, fatwas, and demonstrating we have seen in Iraq — not to mention the dead-end sniping and killing from a dying cabal of criminals — are not explicable just through political or economic gripes, but revolve mostly around wounded pride and a sense of disgrace.
As Mr. Bush has grasped, every time we have humiliated our enemies we have gained respect and won security. By the same token, on each occasion we have shown deference to a Mr. Karzai, the Iraqi interim government, and our Eastern European friends, we have helped to create security and stability. Apart from the model of our forefathers who crushed and then lifted up the Germans and Japanese, we could find no better guide in this war than William Tecumseh Sherman and Abraham Lincoln — in that order. The former would remind us that our enemies traffic in pride and thus first must be disabused of it through defeat and humiliation. The latter (who turned Sherman and Grant loose) would maintain that we are a forgiving sort, who prefer restored rather than beaten people as our friends.