Saturday, July 14, 2007

Saving the Village

Victor Hanson (tip to an email from Mad Minerva) slams the recent NYT editorial calling for our defeat in Iraq and what the editorial board assumes will be a subsequent slaughter of Iraqis.

Hanson leads off his rebuttal well:

On July 8, the New York Times ran an historic editorial entitled “The Road Home,” demanding an immediate American withdrawal from Iraq. It is rare that an editorial gets almost everything wrong, but “The Road Home” pulls it off. Consider, point by point, its confused—and immoral—defeatism.


The points are all excellent. He did what I wanted to do (but lacked the time to do).

But Hanson is quite wrong in the premise of his title:

The New York Times Surrenders:
A monument to defeatism on the editorial page

In fact the Times editorial was a bold ploy for victory. Hanson's mistake is assumig that the Times is focused on the same war as he is. The Times is ruthless when you remember that their objective is the White House:

Their eagerness to surrender is disgusting. But they'll deny that they want anything but victory. Just remember to ask them what war they are fighting.


And the Times will sacrifice any number of our troops or innocent Iraqi civilians, and inflict whatever damage to our country it takes, to accomplish their mission.

It's a total war as far as the New York Times is concerned.