Hanson debates the war, while calling for an end to debate

Victor Hanson writing at NRO has a good line about the dilemma of multicultural America at war:

When you are at war and you care more about the sanctity of your enemies’ religious holidays than they do, you are in serious trouble.

Unfortunately, in the article as a whole, as is so often the case with him, Hanson is both overblown and contradictory, simultaneously triumphalist and (as seen in the above quote) deeply anxious. His central theme is that we’re in danger of losing the war because we are refusing to name our enemy (a point I have made repeatedly at VFR). But then he turns around and denounces those who are calling for a debate on the war. Though Hanson’s criticisms are directed at the quasi-traitorous Democrats who voted for the war resolution and are now pretending they didn’t, his rejection of the need for any debate runs up against his demand that we stop describing the enemy as terrorism and start calling it militant Islam. To bring about that radical change in our thinking and speaking (or rather in the Administration’s thinking and speaking) which Hanson says is desperately needed, a debate will be obviously be necessary, and Hanson himself is engaged in that debate; yet at the same time he acts as if everything has been decided, everything is on course, and everyone should just shut up and get with the program.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 07, 2003 12:36 PM | Send