Iraq and Memorial Day

By Victor Davis Hanson
(Courtesy of National Review Online)

I can't write like this so I thought some of you, and you know who "you" are, would like to read this excellent piece by a very gifted writer. If you want to read more by him, you can visit www.nationalreview.com.

There may be a lot to regret about the past policy of the United States in the Middle East, but the removal of Saddam Hussein and the effort to birth democracy in his place is surely not one of them. And we should remember that this Memorial Day.

Whatever our righteous anger at Khomeinist Iran, it was wrong, well aside from the arms-for-hostages scandal, to provide even a modicum of aid to Saddam Hussein, the great butcher of his own, during the Iran-Iraq war. Inviting the fascist Baathist government of Syria into the allied coalition of the first Gulf War meant that we more or less legitimized the Assad regime’s take-over of Lebanon, with disastrous results for its people.

It may have been strategically in error not to have taken out Saddam in 1991, but it was morally wrong to have then encouraged Shiites and Kurds to rise up—while watching idly as Saddam’s reprieved planes and helicopters slaughtered them in the thousands.

A decade of appeasement of Islamic terrorism, with retaliations after the serial attacks—from the first World Trade Center bombing to Khobar Towers and the USS Cole—never exceeding the occasional cruise missile or stern televised lecture, made September 11 inevitable. A decade was wasted in subsidizing Yasser Arafat on the pretense that he was something other than a mendacious thug.

I cite these few examples of the now nostalgic past, because it is common to see Iraq written off by the architects of these past failures as the “worst” policy decision in our history, a “quagmire” and a “disaster.” Realists, more worried about Iran and the ongoing cost in our blood and treasure in Iraq, insist that toppling Saddam was a terrible waste of resources. Leftists see the Iraq war as part of an amoral imperialism; often their talking points weirdly end up rehashed in bin Laden’s communiqués and Dr. Zawahiri’s rants.

But what did 2,400 brave and now deceased Americans really sacrifice for in Iraq, along with thousands more who were wounded? And what were billions in treasure spent on? And what about the hundreds of collective years of service offered by our soldiers? What exactly did intrepid officers in the news like a Gen. Petreus, or Col. McMaster, or Lt. Col Kurilla fight for?

First, there is no longer a mass murderer atop one of the oil-richest states in the world. Imagine what Iraq would now look like with $70 a barrel oil, a $50 billion unchecked and ongoing Oil-for-Food U.N. scandal, the 15th year of no-fly zones, a punitative U.N. embargo on the Iraqi people—all perverted by Russian arms sales, European oil concessions, and frenzied Chinese efforts to get energy contracts from Saddam.

The Kurds would remain in perpetual danger. The Shiites would simply be harvested yearly, in quiet, by Saddam’s police state. The Marsh Arabs would by now have been forgotten in their toxic dust-blown desert. Perhaps Saddam would have upped his cash pay-outs for homicide bombers on the West Bank.

Muammar Khaddafi would be starting up his centrifuges and adding to his chemical weapons depots. Syria would still be in Lebanon. Washington would probably have ceased pressuring Egypt and the Gulf States to enact reform. Dr. Khan’s nuclear mail-order house would be in high gear. We would still be hearing of a “militant wing” of Hamas, rather than watching a democratically elected terrorist clique reveal its true creed to the world.

But just as importantly, what did these rare Americans not fight for? Oil, for one thing. The price skyrocketed after they went in. The secret deals with Russia and France ended. The U.N. petroleum perfidy stopped. The Iraqis, and the Iraqis alone—not Saddam, the French, the Russians, or the U.N.—now adjudicate how much of their natural resources they will sell, and to whom.

Our soldiers fought for the chance of a democracy; that fact is uncontestable. Before they came to Iraq, there was a fascist dictatorship. Now, after three elections, there is an indigenous democratic government for the first time in the history of the Middle East. True, thousands of Iraqis have died publicly in the resulting sectarian mess; but thousands were dying silently each year under Saddam—with no hope that their sacrifice would ever result in the first steps that we have already long passed.Our soldiers also removed a great threat to the United States.

Again, the crisis brewing over Iran reminds us of what Iraq would have reemerged as. Like Iran, Saddam reaped petroprofits, sponsored terror, and sought weapons of mass destruction. But unlike Iran, he had already attacked four of his neighbors, gassed thousands of his own, and violated every agreement he had ever signed. There would have been no nascent new democracy in Iran that might some day have undermined Saddam, and, again unlike Iran, no internal dissident movement that might have come to power through a revolution or peaceful evolution. No, Saddam’s police state was wounded, but would have recovered, given high oil prices, Chinese and Russian perfidy, and Western exhaustion with enforcement of U.N. sanctions. Moreover, the American military took the war against radical Islam right to its heart in the ancient caliphate. It has not only killed thousands of jihadists, but dismantled the hierarchy of al Qaeda and its networks, both in Afghanistan and Iraq. Critics say that we “took our eye off the ball” by going to Iraq and purportedly leaving bin Laden alone in the Hindu Kush. But more likely, al Qaeda took its eye off the American homeland as the promised theater of operations once American ground troops began dealing with Islamic terrorists in Iraq.

As we near five years after September 11, note how less common becomes the expression “not if, but when” concerning the next anticipated terror attack in the U.S. Some believe that the odyssey of jihadists to Iraq means we created terrorists, but again, it is far more likely, as al Qaeda communiqués attest, that we drew those with such propensities into Iraq. Once there, they have finally shown the world that they hate democracy, but love to kill and behead—and that has brought a great deal of moral clarity to the struggle. After Iraq, the reputation of bin Laden and radical Islam has not been enhanced as alleged, but has plummeted. For all the propaganda on al Jazeera, the chattering classes in the Arab coffeehouses still watch Americans fighting to give Arabs the vote, and radical Islamists in turn beheading men and women to stop it.

If many in the Middle East once thought it was cute that 19 killers could burn a 20-acre hole in Manhattan, I am not sure what they think of Americans now in their backyard not living to die, but willing to die so that other Arabs might live freely. All of our achievements are hard to see right now. The Iraqis are torn by sectarianism, and are not yet willing to show gratitude to America for saving them from Saddam and pledging its youth and billions to give them something better. We are nearing the third national election of the war, and Iraq has become so politicized that our efforts are now beyond caricature. An archivist is needed to remind the American people of the record of all the loud politicians and the national pundits who once were on record in support of the war.

Europeans have demonized our efforts—but not so much lately, as pacifist Europe sits on its simmering volcano of Islamic fundamentalism and unassimilated Muslim immigrants. Our own Left has tossed out “no blood for oil”—that is, until the sky-rocketing prices, the U.N. Oil-for-Food scandal, and a new autonomous Iraqi oil ministry cooled that rhetoric. Halliburton is also now not so commonly alleged as the real casus belli, when few contractors of any sort wish to rush into Iraq to profit.

“Bush lied, thousands died” grows stale when the WMD threat was reiterated by Arabs, the U.N., and the Europeans. The “too few troops” debate is not the sort that characterizes imperialism, especially when no American proconsul argues that we must permanently stay in large numbers in Iraq. The new Iraqi-elected president, not Donald Rumsfeld, is more likely to be seen on television, insisting that Americans remain longer. A geography more uninviting for our soldiers than Iraq cannot be imagined—7,000 miles away, surrounded by Baathist Syria, Wahhabist Saudi Arabia, and theocratic Iran. The harsh landscape rivals the worst of past battlefields—blazing temperatures, wind, and dust. The host culture that our soldiers faced was Orwellian—a society terrorized by a mass murderer for 30 years, who ruled by alternately promising Sunni, Shiite, and Kurdish collaborationists that cooperation meant only that fewer of their own would die. The timing was equally awful—in an era of easy anti-Americanism in Europe, and endemic ingratitude in the Muslim world that asks nothing of itself, everything of us, and blissfully forgets the thousands of Muslims saved by Americans in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Somalia, and the billions more lavished on Jordanians, Palestinians, and Egyptians.

And here at home? There are few Ernie Pyles in Iraq to record the heroism of our soldiers; no John Fords to film their valor—but legions to write ad nauseam of Abu Ghraib, and to make up stories of flushed Korans and Americans terrorizing Iraqi women and children.

Yet here we are with an elected government in place, an Iraqi security force growing, and an autocratic Middle East dealing with the aftershocks of the democratic concussion unleashed by American soldiers in Iraq. Reading about Gettysburg, Okinawa, Choisun, Hue, and Mogadishu is often to wonder how such soldiers did what they did. Yet never has America asked its youth to fight under such a cultural, political, and tactical paradox as in Iraq, as bizarre a mission as it is lethal. And never has the American military—especially the U.S. Army and Marines—in this, the supposedly most cynical and affluent age of our nation, performed so well. We should remember the achievement this Memorial Day of those in the field who alone crushed the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, stayed on to offer a new alternative other than autocracy and theocracy, and kept a targeted United States safe from attack for over four years.

A Blessed Day

On Friday, May 19, my daughter walked in her graduation ceremony. The date is worth noting in another way as it was also my mother’s birthday, and if ever there were two souls tied together and separated by a generation, it was the two of them.

My mother would have easily understood Emily’s determination in making it to this moment and understood even more how easy it would have been for her to give up on several occasions. But like my mother, she pushed past every hurdle, never gave in to the short-term, simple path and gave herself a better long-term future. It wasn’t easy for her, but nothing worth the kind of effort it takes to graduate from college is supposed to be easy.

So this makes three college graduates in my family with me the odd man out. Not making our family four-for-four in graduates will pain me for life, but I take great solace in the fact that the Missus and I always made it a priority for both of our children to get the most out of life and the most out of what their native intellect required them to do. We pushed them since kindergarten so they always believed college was not only an option but something they owed themselves to complete. Yesterday was the proof in the pudding that our strategy worked. Or should I say mostly the strategy of Mrs. Laz as my contribution was generally to act as the example of what happens when you don’t graduate (an often overlooked value, I might add).

We were all very proud yesterday and we know all of the grandparents would have been ecstatic to have borne witness to a second grandchild dressed in a cap and gown.

Because some of you couldn’t make it, I thought it might be useful to give a running diary of events with apolgies to the Sports Guy. For those who think graduations are boring, then you either haven’t been to one recently and really paid attention, or haven’t been to one with Nick.

11:45 a.m. – We leave, just 15 minutes behind schedule. I take second car and park at a Denny’s so Em can go to Arco Arena after to accept her championship ring from the Sacramento Monarchs. Predictably, I take six cell phone calls. Good thing it’s a Friday or it could have been worse.

12:10 p.m. – Mrs. Laz and the Graduate arrive at Denny’s which is adjacent to a really nice Motel 6. Mrs. Laz is accosted by someone hoping to purchase a Grand Slam Breakfast and asks for funds toward that endeavor. Didn’t know the Grand Slam came with that kind of Coke. Mrs. Laz hands over $5 and dives in my car for safety and we drive the extra mile to limited on-campus parking. Seems we should have a permanent parking place on campus by now as we paid more than $1,000 in parking tickets.

12:11 p.m. – First crisis of the day as Emily receives a call from the friend she will be sitting next to during the ceremony. Friend is in tears and saying something about a former boyfriend and his new girlfriend and how she’s come to graduation. Did I mention this was college graduation?

12:13 p.m. – Emily is united with friend. They run off to solve the problem and get in line while we look for a spot to park. Make bad judgment and go straight instead of veering left and find ourselves in a mile-long reverse holding pattern. A quick and illegal maneuver puts us back on path to find a spot that only requires a one-mile walk to the ceremony.

12:21 p.m. – We meet up with Laz Jr. and the lovely Princess Ber of the Principality of Berfunkia. Ber’s mom is also with her. I’m sent to find a program to make sure Emily’s name is there, which I would rather do than sit in the hot sun and listen to the college band tune up. Well, maybe they weren’t tuning up, just terribly out of tune.

12:22 p.m. – See Nick with blond Mohawk and colorfully painted toenails heading up the stairs at Hornet Stadium. I tell him we’re on the 22-yard-line and we exchange rude remarks.

12:29 p.m. – The ceremony is close to starting and the air of excitement is palpable. We’re offered chocolate chip cookies from Nick who brought snacks. He graduates college in June. No kidding. Laz Jr. finds Emily’s name in the program and remarks, “Huh, I guess she wasn’t lying, she really is graduating.”

12:30 p.m. – The first be-gowned students work their way down the track. The crowd is on their feet and roaring. It may be the first time there was a roar of excitement in Hornet Stadium all season.

12:31 p.m. – We are all on our feet hoping to get a look at our graduate candidates. They have to say “candidate” because not all the grades have come out yet. Finger’s crossed the “candidate” part will shortly be removed.

12:33 p.m. – The students are walking down the track and filing into a seated area in the middle of the stadium. For some reason, some of the kids have more cords and sashes around their necks than Emily. I guess we should have bought Emily some of the extra stuff but didn’t see any for sale at the stadium entrance.

12:36 p.m. – Still no Emily in sight but I come up with an idea that Nick likes for his graduation attire: due to bad eyesight, I think one of the students is wearing an airline life jacket. Nick decides a life jacket is the perfect accessory for his graduation gown and further decides that water wings will add to the ensemble. He also decides to cut a hole in the top of his cap so his Mohawk will stand out better.

12:41 p.m. – Finally! We see our graduate candidate in a group of the final 25 or so students. We wonder how they were able to assemble the students by order of grade point average so quickly.

12:48 p.m. – The students have all been seated and now it’s time for all the official blowhards to take up a lot of time explaining how this day is about the students and not about them. If true, then how about just saying, “Good job kids, come get your graduate candidate certificate and go find your parents for the required photos?”

12:49 p.m. – First sign of political correctness as the truly awful band plays the Star Spangled Banner while a woman Signs for the crowd. It would have been good to be deaf in a certain sense as the singer and the band can’t keep the same rhythm. The Signer is so far away, those with a hearing impairment should have been reminded to bring binoculars to really know what was being said.

12:51 p.m. – The President of the College of Arts and Letter and the Alphabet starts his speech about this being about the kids. He speaks for 10 minutes about this. The hearing impaired can close their eyes.

1:01 p.m. – A host of people follow to explain how this day is about the kids. However, there was one good speech by the Alumni Director and a graduate of the school. She reads through her speech like George Bush on Haldol, mumbling in slow motion. I don’t see many people rushing to join the Alumni Association but do spot a few people in the stands stealthily covering up their alumni shirts. One speaker tells the students that what they have just accomplished is only the start. I am sure there was more than one graduate candidate who asked, “Weren’t we told that in high school too?”

1:12 p.m. – There is either a second politically correct moment or just an indication of how easy it must be to get a PhD from Harvard. The College President decides to quote Shakespeare – out of context, one might add – and says “What a piece of work is a man…” Either he decided to say “a man” so as not to offend “a woman” when defining “Man” as “Mankind” or he slipped the “a man” in there because he really didn’t know the quote. I flunked English because I couldn’t quote Shakespeare accurately and even I knew he had it wrong. Give me a PhD from Harvard, I say.

1:14 p.m. – The President announces the President’s Award to some girl who majored in Harpsichord and Latin. Do they still beat up kids like this in college? She has a short speech to the kids that went something like, “Ummm, this is really neat, I, ummm, am so happy to have this really, ummm, cool award. There are so many other students, ummm, who could have won this, but, ummm, I got it instead. I guess I’m just smarter than you all. Knib High Football rules!”

1:16 p.m. – The kids are ready to file past the various school leaders, have their names read, and get their fake diplomas. The crowd is instructed to wait until the final names have been announced before leaving the stadium. This turns out to be more of a suggestion than a rule, or there were more hearing impaired in the crowd than one would suspect.

1:17 p.m. – The students start to come forward and their names are announced. The students getting their Master’s Degrees go first. This takes a lot longer than one would hope. The sun is already burning my rapidly expanding forehead and there are about 400 kids ahead of Emily who is sitting in the last row. Now I know why I didn’t graduate college. Who wants to go through this?

1:25 p.m. – I’m looking for Nick to offer some entertainment but he actually looks intrigued. A student is given a Masters for Sanskrit. Didn’t that language die out 1,000 years ago?

1:38 p.m. – Yadda, yadda, yadda. The people in the crowd begin to file out after their student’s name is called, in total breech of school policy. Although it does thin out the parking lot a bit.

1:48 p.m. – Nick has a few more cookies and starts to shout for students he doesn’t know. Laz Jr. is beginning to remember why he didn’t walk for graduation.

1:51 p.m. – Big action moment: Emily gets up from her row and walks over to a table to get a glass of water. She drinks it and returns to her seat. I get several photos of this. Only wish I had a telephoto lens on my disposable camera.

1:58 p.m. – Finally, Emily’s row gets to stand up and get in line. It’s a long line but I get the camera ready anyway.

2:06 p.m. – Emily turns the corner and is ready to take her final steps as a student and become a graduate candidate. Soon, someone will say “plastics” to her.

2:09 p.m. – We hear the woman with the hoarse voice read Emily’s name. Emily raises her hands triumphantly and we suddenly realize what we’ve waited all this time for. There is nothing fake about her hands being raised. She feels triumphant and perhaps for the first time realizes what a remarkable achievement it has been to get to this moment. She gets her fake diploma and walks back to her seat with her hands raised in the air for a bit longer. This is the picture of contentment. Even Laz Jr. begins to wonder if it would have felt this good to go through his ceremony. We’re all beaming but not as much as Emily.

2:14: p.m. – The last name is read. This kid gets the biggest cheer because now we can get to our students and get the photo op done.

2:16 p.m. – We’re told this is about the students again and told they will file out of the stadium in an orderly fashion meaning Emily will be the last to leave.

2:27 p.m. – We catch up with Emily and suggest photographs with an appropriate background. We ask her what her favorite spot on campus is. She says it’s off-campus, take the damn pictures.

2:37 p.m. – We’re in our car and out-smarting others by finding a back exit. That’s the kind of thing you can do when you have a good education.

Congratulations Emily, from all of us. We are so very proud! Special thanks to Tom for the great photos as we got nothing like this on the disposable camera.

Memories of Betts

The events in my family fit awkwardly between bookends. One day we’re up and the next day we’re down. And so it is on May 12, one day following my birthday, that Mrs. Laz’s mother took her final breath. It also happened to be Mother’s Day that May 12 and Mrs. Laz was only hours from making the trip to San Diego to be with her mother when we got the call. Her death was not a total surprise but it’s always a kick in the stomach when it happens. Such is the finality my family has had to learn to live with.

My mother-in-law had called me to give me birthday well-wishes late in the day. I could tell she was struggling to speak and was very weak. I asked if she wanted to talk to her daughter but she said she was too tired. Mrs. Laz never got the chance to talk to her mother again, a point of frustration that lives with her still.

Mrs. Laz has taken to wondering aloud about the fairness of her mother passing away before she was able to say her final good-bye. I have always reasoned that her mother was so close to her that it would have been far too sad for her to say her final farewells. She was far too classy to put the two of them through a Terms Of Endearment moment. They really had nothing to settle between them and each had so much love and general fondness for the other that it almost seemed at times they were big sisters, not mother and daughter.

The boy and I were speaking today about the losses of his grandparents. He remembers less about my parents and Mrs. Laz’s father because he was only 12 when they died. But he was 20 when his grandmother died and they had one of those long, final conversations. She was definitely wanting a fix on what life held in store for him and asked him many questions about his future. According to him, she reveled in his plans and his hopes and dreams and she could actually feel comfort knowing he would be OK. I think that’s all parents and grandparents want to know before they pass. They want to know they have done everything within their power to ensure happy and productive lives for their loved ones.

It was also easy to see that she loved having a granddaughter that she could mold and bring up as she had her daughter. Mrs. Laz and Lazette even shared the same nickname of “Missy.” Lazette didn’t always follow the same path of her mother, but I know her grandmother had great plans for her, including the rather sumptuous irony that Lazette’s initials were E.R.A, a point that was often mentioned with glee.

She was one wonderful lady who endured many trials in her life with total dignity and elegance. She accepted my nutty ideas when she learned I was going to be joining the family and even tolerated my political views – at least those she could stomach. I was raised in La Jolla – a character flaw in her book and a source of teasing in mine – while she grew up on the rougher side of Chicago without much of a father around. She even accepted me arriving at her house for dinner with Alka Seltzer tablets in hand (yes, I really did that and she still let me marry her daughter).

Mrs. Laz’s bedroom was downstairs and her mother’s upstairs. When Mrs. Laz and I were first dating, and even in our first years of marriage, we would be engaged in a hot, passionate game of checkers or something. Her mom was quite curious about the lack of noise coming out of the downstairs bedroom so she would investigate from time to time. Since Mrs. Laz’s bedroom was directly below the stairwell, we could hear every step as her mother walked down. To avoid detection, her mother took each step with about five minutes wait in between to throw us off. It never worked as she never caught us playing “checkers.” My bet is she spent plenty of time devising the next method of catching us off guard. She was obviously just worried that her daughter would fall prey to this fast-talking kid who had his head in the sky and a box of gastro tablets in his pants pocket.

She battled cancer with every last remaining bit of strength and she died with the dignity that surrounded her life. She is our only parent that fought death into the 10th round hoping for a decision in her favor. But it’s difficult to beat the champ in a title fight and I think she knew when her time was coming. I think she knew when she didn’t speak to Mrs. Laz on the phone because, what do you tell your daughter and best friend at a time like that? I think she spared both of them a tragic scene at the end and left Mrs. Laz with the memories she will always preserve. I know Mrs. Laz has a giant hole in her heart where her mother used to reside. Hopefully she can fill it with the love her mother passed through her when she made her final stops before entering her lasting peace. In my mind, that’s a better gift than a difficult good-bye. Bettelu, may you rest in peace and be in our hearts forever.

The Big 5-0

So it's my 50th birthday. Bug wup. Now if this post was about someone other than me, I would write about memories, accomplishments, stories, etc. But if I wrote about me, then it would seem a trifle vain. And perhaps quite boring.

So I leave it up to you, dear fan(s), to post a comment about me. It doesn’t even have to be a nice memory or thought and it matters not if you have only a trivial story. I’m not begging for compliments, just a place to share stories of all the stupid things I did in my life. In the end we’ll add all the thoughts up and decide if it was worth having me around for the past 50 years. Of course my one remaining family member is the only one who has known me for this long and he doesn’t even know about the blog. Oh well.

Mrs. Laz, in case you’re tempted to write about that little mishap when you were in the hospital those three times and I decided to be elsewhere, there is no need as such stories may be judged as mean by the readers. Ditto the stuff on a few other capers I’ve pulled. Remember, this is a family blog….