Last week, Hugh Hewitt conducted an extraordinary two-hour interview with Victor Davis Hanson that should be read in its entirety.
The interview contains a remarkable analysis of George W. Bush’s place in history, the current state of the presidential race, the likely result of Democratic control of both the Congress and the presidency, the strategic role of
Iraq in the
Middle East, a prediction of what is likely to happen over the next month, and much more, including this:
HH: There’s a choice in front of the
United States, and it’s McCain-Obama. And they will then direct the foreign policy of the
United States. And people in
Israel are watching this choice, and people in
Iran are watching this choice, and our enemies in caves in
Waziristan are watching. What do you see is those two paths? How will [it] be different if we select McCain than if we select Obama vis-à-vis
Iran and
Israel? Will the path of history be different, Victor Hanson, in your assessment depending on the outcome of this? Or is the confrontation coming regardless of who we send in?
VDH: Well, the difference is it’s easy to voice cheap rhetoric, as we saw in the [McCain-Obama] debate last night. It’s easy to say, as Obama says, it’s a game-changer if
Iran were to get a nuclear device. What does that mean, a game-changer? That’s intolerable. What he’s not telling you is that if I choose to make sure that they don’t have a nuclear device, then that means that basically the United States is going to have to impose an embargo or a Naval blockade because the Europeans will still try to profit to the 11th hour, or even a military strike. I, Barack Obama, must be hated by people in
Berlin. There’s no more Victory Column great extravaganzas for me. There’s no more fawning interviews with Der Spiegel. It’s going to be hatred from those people. I’m going to be a unilateralist pre-empter, and I’m going to do that, and all the people in the Muslim world and the Arab world that love me and fawn over me are going to hate me as worse than you know what. Okay, I’m willing to do that for a principle. Do you think he’s going to be willing to do that, or John McCain? I’m sorry, but I don’t think that all of that cheap rhetoric about invading Pakistan and a game-changer in Iran is anything other than rhetoric, because I think the problem with Obama is he’s bought into the idea of Vero Possumus, the new presidential seal that he’s promulgating, that the seas are going to cease to rise, that the planet won’t heat up, this is the change that we’ve been waiting for. And he really believe[s] in this Messianic sense that people love him for himself. And he’s not going to be willing to give up that easily.
– – – –
HH: Let’s go back to this conversation about
Israel. Ahmadinejad has been here three years in a row. He says crazier things every time. At least this time he wasn’t feted by
Columbia
University. I don’t doubt that we’re in for a confrontation. Do you?
VDH: No, I’m afraid that we are, especially when he feels emboldened enough to go to the United Nations just a few blocks away from the Wall Street meltdown, and for the first time not just say the Israelis are culpable, but Jews in general, and talk about in Hitlerian terms an international Jewish banking conspiracy. It’s what he basically was saying, and he felt not only would he get applause, but there would be liberal people in the
United States, as happened, that would take him out to dinner in congratulations for that speech. So I’m very worried. I’ve never seen this level of anti-Semitism, I’ve never seen this level of appeasement among our elites. And he’s basically really read the Western mind. He’s basically said do you want a nuclear
Iran to threaten you? Do you want a missile that can threaten
Frankfurt? Because that’s what I’ll do unless you are nice to me, unless you call off George Bush and Dick Cheney, and then we can live together. And then once we get into that mindset, it’s going to be very easy to obtain that goal.
