Victor Davis Hanson, the neocons’ favorite historian, goes off on a wild ride that would surely make for good copy in government schoolbooks:
The United States has ridden — and tamed — the wild global tiger since the end of World War II. The frantic ride has been dangerous, to us, but a boon to humanity.
In other words, peace and trade were not chosen after World War II, but instead the U.S. decided to jump on a fictional “global tiger”. With a Federal Reserve ready to print up as much money as necessary, and a homeland unscathed from the ravages of the war, there was no way the power hungry in the U.S. could resist trying to conquer the world.
Hanson says that the U.S. “tamed” the tiger and that it’s been a blessing for humanity. I’m not sure of the exact figure, but the U.S. empire has killed millions of people throughout the many years. So, evidently Hanson means “a boon to humanity” minus those millions of individuals. Let’s not forget Madeleine Albright’s statement that 500,000 dead Iraqi children were “worth it”.
The crowning achievement of postwar American policy was the defeat of Soviet Communism.
This may be hard for many Americans to swallow, but the Soviet collapse was a complete surprise to the ruling class in the U.S. As the late Austrian economist Ludwig Von Mises pointed out: ‘Socialism cannot calculate’. Economics caught up to the Soviets. The collapse was not a result of U.S. “policy”.
Despite the occasional mishaps, setbacks, and errant strategies, U.S. leadership nonetheless ensured worldwide free commerce, travel, and communications.
Mishaps? Is that the euphemism for the trillion dollar disasters in both Afghanistan and Iraq? Just simple mishaps?
Commerce is nowhere in the vicinity of being free. Opening a lemonade stand or having a garage sale in the U.S. require a government license. Never have there been more regulations on business and employment than there are today.
Once-free travel has been reduced to the humiliation of taking off your shoes, having your intimate parts grabbed by some government employee, or being thrown into a porno-scanner for a nice shot of radiation.
And is Hanson seriously trying to say that there is free communication? Even after the NSA scandals? Everything is being monitored, all over the world, and Hanson has the gall to throw in the word “free”?
The Obama administration apparently has tired of the global order that American power created. The president seems determined that America should become unexceptional, and his five-year-long efforts are now bearing fruit.
Is Hanson talking about the same Obama who drones more people before breakfast than you can shake a stick at? The Obama that invaded Libya? The Obama that was a stone’s throw away from invading Syria? The Obama that might still invade Iran? This is the President that has grown tired of riding the “global tiger”?
In fact it is the American people who have grown tired of their government “riding the tiger,” a misadventure that poses a real threat to our future security. More and more, the American people are understanding that the price of empire is ultimately total economic collapse. They have started speaking up — as we saw with Syria this summer — and to his credit the president appears to be listening.
Riding the tiger’s back was always risky, but not as much as jumping off and allowing it to run wild. The world now wants someone to get back on — but is unsure about who, when, how, and at what cost.
I’m not sure which world Hanson is living in, or what the make believe tiger is doing, but the U.S. has the largest military empire in the history of the world. The empire has a military budget that is larger than the next 10 countries combined! This is in place…right now!
What the world desperately needs is peace. Unfortunately, with the military empire sprawled out like an octopus across the Earth, peace will continue to remain an impossibility.
