September 7, 2004
BOTTOM'S UP:
George Bush, Our Uncommon Hedgehog: The advantages of "one big" idea. (Victor Davis Hanson, 9/07/04, Private Papers)
There are more problems than mere hypocrisy in the current critique of Bush as a dunce, and it involves the nature of intelligence itself. It was the ancient Greek elegiac poet Archilochus who posed the dichotomy of “the Fox and the Hedgehog”: “the fox knows many tricks, the hedgehog one—one big one.”While the poet’s exact meaning has been the subject of debate for over two millennia, the logical interpretation is the most natural: complex thinkers sometimes lose sight of the forest for the trees. Put simply: John Kerry can give 1,000 reasons why we should or should not stay in Iraq—or both at once. He will cite erudite foreign policy experts, and present it all as a sophisticated exegesis. George Bush cannot.
The President has instead this “one big” idea. It goes something like this. For a quarter-century Islamic fascists in the Middle East have transferred the impoverished Arab Street’s anger over its own endemic failure onto the bogeymen of the United States and Israel. And when terrorists, abetted by autocratic governments, struck the United States, they met mostly with habitual Western indifference and were further emboldened by outright appeasement. The problem with the sensitive, “don’t offend them” foreign policy of pre-September 11 is that it ensured September 11—as it would again.
Our hedgehog George Bush—hardly a fox-like Clinton, Gore, or Kerry—in both his gut and head concluded that a lot of people want to kill us for who we are, and they won’t stop until they are defeated militarily and the conditions that produced them are radically altered.
That single mindedness may seem trite or even scary to Bruce Springsteen, Madonna, and Gore Vidal; but it still seems pretty smart to most common Americans with uncommon hedgehog sense.
One of the reasons so much that's written about George W. Bush makes so little sense is that he's such a revolutionary figure that folks can't process how much of conventional wisdom he's stood on its head. So when you get to an essay, like this one, that's sensible it pays to look for its iconoclastic core. In this case it is that Mr. Hanson has correctly identified a truth that will appall the Old Right--George Bush's war is about attacking root causes. Posted by Orrin Judd at September 7, 2004 10:07 AM
I do wonder how Dubya's going to be able to tackle Chechnya. The place is an obvious breeding ground for terrorists but given how Russia's involved in the mess it's not somewhere he can operate with a free hand.
I hope the situation there isn't allowed to fester like Afghanistan.
Posted by: M Ali Choudhury at September 7, 2004 10:24 AMThere weren't any US or Russian troops in Afghanistan when the Taleban took over and let Al Qaeda move in.
There'll still be problems if Grozny remains a crater.
Posted by: M Ali Choudhury at September 7, 2004 10:42 AMStep number one: Round up all the Wahabist clerics, especially the imports from Saudi Arabia, and either kill them or give them a free one-way trip to a Siberian Labor Camp.
Step number two: Create a serious on the ground alternative to the Wahhabists. Why should an autonomous status like Kalmykia be rejected out of hand?
Step number three: Literally flood the place with soldiers. Search every house for terrorists and their paraphenalia, bulldoze the vacant structures, arrest or kill perpetrators, and don't worry about world opinion when you do.
Posted by: Bart at September 7, 2004 10:44 AMYou mean the utterly professional corps of Russian soldiers?
That'll go down well with whatever Chechens are still around.
Posted by: M Ali Choudhury at September 7, 2004 10:54 AMAli,
Let me tell you a little story about the Russians. When several Americans were taken hostage in Lebanon, and we had all kinds of angst, finger-wagging, soul-searching nonsense here, a Russian was taken hostage in Beirut. The KGB, through its on the ground contacts, grabbed the brother of the leader of the terrorist cell that kidnapped the Russian. They cut his penis and testicles off, shoved them down his throat, trussed him up like a chicken and threw him out of a speeding car in West Beirut. Within 24 hours, the Russian hostage was released unharmed.
Russians don't do Kerryesque sensitive anti-terrorism campaigns. If we simply 'Let the Russians, be Russians,' they will do what they feel they need to do to pacify the region. If the Chechens cooperate, the Russians will restrain themselves. If the Chechens give them a hard time, the Russians have no problem with killing every Chechen. Once that is made clear to the Chechens, they will get real and make an autonomy deal similar to the Kalmyk region.
Chechnya is a lot smaller, closer and easier to patrol than Afghanistan.
Frankly I think their tactics are what have got them into this situation in the first place.
And I don't think they'll be successful at all in getting them out of it.
Posted by: M Ali Choudhury at September 7, 2004 11:44 AM>You mean the utterly professional corps of
>Russian soldiers?
>
>That'll go down well with whatever Chechens are
>still around.
Worked in Berlin in '45.
"KUMM FRAU!"
Russia is a lot wealthier, and a lot more pissed off at the Chechens than they were in the first war. Gorbachev and Yeltsin were a lot more concerned about the opinions of foreigners than is the nationalist Putin.
It is a very different ballgame.
Posted by: Bart at September 7, 2004 12:54 PMIt's always going to be different next time and never is.
Posted by: oj at September 7, 2004 1:34 PMThe Russians took 30 million casualties to win WWII and this is the most pissed off they've been since WWII. Chechens are a race of thugs and gangsters and if the Tsar could whack them, Putin certainly can.
Posted by: Bart at September 7, 2004 1:44 PMWWII was defensive and Stalin had to shoot them to get them to fight.
Posted by: oj at September 7, 2004 1:50 PMRussians see this war as 'defensive' and your claim that Stalin had to shoot soldiers to get them to fight is a baseless slander.
There may have been instances of cowardice in the field, for which the appropriate punishment is execution after a drumhead trial. However, there was no point where any Russian general pulled a Joffre, killing thousands of his own men for cowardice.
Posted by: Bart at September 7, 2004 2:16 PMBart, don't put too much stock in the 30 million figure. Immediately after the war, Stalin claimed a much lower number (8 million, IIRC). The number climbed in later years as they realized that they could get sympathy and blame the Nazis for millions of Stalin's murders.
Posted by: PapayaSF at September 7, 2004 2:33 PMA defensive war to retain a runaway republic?
Stalin's mass murder of Soviet troops is well known and documented and the NKVD roamed among them executing waverers at will.
See for example Antony Beevor's Stalingrad-- I think the number he cites is 14,000 executions.
(Who'd a thought you could slander Stalin?)
Posted by: oj at September 7, 2004 2:34 PMThe Russians see it as an integral part of the Russian state not as a breakaway republic.
Posted by: Bart at September 7, 2004 2:42 PMNo, Putin sees it that way. Russians want to be rid of the problem.
Posted by: oj at September 7, 2004 2:53 PMBart:
Baseless slander?
And it is well known and documented that Stalin had returning POW's executed, even those that had escaped and fought their way back.
I agree, though, that Orrin is dismissing your Mother Russia argument too blithely.
Posted by: Peter B at September 7, 2004 2:56 PMRussia has already done the scorched earth number in Chechnya - if you now want them to kill every Chechen, well....
Being pissed off doesn't solve the problem - but it might get them to try something different (i.e., look southward and find out where the 'Arabs' in the Baslan massacre came from).
Putin may have the anger, but he does not have the operational art nor the material to do a whole lot outside of Russia's borders. I imagine there is going to be a strong debate within the US govt. about how much to help the Russians. A very strong debate.
And would JFKerry consider helping an ally? I doubt if Kerry says more than the absolute minimum on this point, even if asked about it during the debates.
Posted by: jim hamlen at September 7, 2004 5:18 PM>No, Putin sees it that way. Russians want to be
>rid of the problem.
Which is why we're probably going to see The Final Solution to the Chechnya Problem after this one.
Posted by: Ken at September 8, 2004 3:00 PMKen:
Which will be what? about their fourth bite at that apple?
Posted by: oj at September 8, 2004 3:05 PMOJ: Don't be obtuse. Ken means that the Russians will kill all of the Chechens, then they will plow Chechnya land and seed it with salt.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at September 10, 2004 11:50 AM