Scrambling

Pandagon has a little fun with this blatantly stupid article by Victor Hanson, bravely adding his nonsense to the scramble. Jesse's take on it is good, but brief. Hanson broke his argument down into parts and used all sorts of weaselly arguments, two strategies that are like chocolate to me. So, my turn:

Myth #1: America turned off its allies. His point is that NATO barely has any troops in Afghanistan, and um, there are lots of Coalition troops in Iraq. (For now.) This might almost work if you pretend as hard as you can that the Coalition is anything other than a BushCo figment that exists outside of NATO or UN approval. He refuses to address how the UN or our traditional allies regard this situation. And then he proves himself wrong:

Yes, the U.N. will return to Iraq — but only when the United States defeats the insurrectionists.

Let me get this straight: The UN refuses to support this invasion of Iraq because they refused to support it in the first place and this is proof of allied support. Sure, dude.

Myth #2: Democracy cannot be implemented by force. The major thrust of his argument is that we kicked ass in WWII. He manages to insult our ever-supportive allies by saying that European resistance was an utter failure without question. (One does wonder how well the war would have gone if it was just the U.S. fighting with absolutely no European resistance.) But anyway, apparently I learned about WWII and why we got into all wrong. Apparently we went to Europe to oust a bunch of tyrants that seized power under mysterious cirumstances and teach the backwards Europeans the Meaning of Democracy. That they are Democracies Now proves that it works. Let's pretend that, say, Hitler, wasn't democratically elected and this works great.

Myth #3: Lies got us into this war. Weasel words never get better than this:

Mr. Bush's lectures about WMD, while perhaps privileging such fears over more pressing practical and humanitarian reasons to remove Saddam Hussein....

What most of us would call "lied outright" turns into "privileging such fears". He forgot the word "unfounded", but c'mon, he's not being dishonest!
Next step--Clinton did it. He had to have been the one who lied! We all know that oral copulators are liars! Beginning and end of story!
He forgets that the there was reason to believe during Clinton's administration that there were WMD and that's why we cooperated with the evil UN to force Hussein to allow UN inspectors in to make sure he didn't. Of course, you remember that Clinton only dealt with the Middle East to distract from the Most Important Blow Job of All Time. Of course, why this means that the inspectors didn't do their job is unknown.

Myth #4: Profit-making led to this war. Seriously, the right needs to quit denying this. Why not start saying that there can be no "just" war without profiteering? The base is laid for that belief. It's believed that capitalism=freedom&democracy. Why not just start saying that it's impossible to wage good wars unless there is a profit motivation, just as there is no reason to do anything else if it isn't for profit? The best part about this argument is that it circumvents the argument from the left that if Iraq is a war of liberation, why not all un-liberated countries? You can fall back on the handy blame-the-victim argument: if the people of other countries want liberation, they need to offer something to us for their liberation, like oil. Un-liberated countries just haven't worked hard enough to get our attention, see?

Myth #5: Israel has caused the United States untold headaches in the Arab world by its intransigent policies. His point is that this isn't true because Palestinians are morons. I'm not sure how that means we don't have problems due to our support of Israel.
First, he complains that different Palestinians have different opinions.

Some Arab citizens of Israel, residing in almost entirely Arab border towns and calling themselves Palestinians, were furious about Mr. Sharon's offer to cede them sovereign Israeli soil and thus allow them to join the new Palestinian nation. Others were hysterical that two killers — who promised not merely the "liberation" of the West Bank, but also the utter destruction of Israel — were in fact killed in a war by Israelis.

I like his weasel word to even concede that "Palestinians" even exist: "calling themselves Palestinians". Apparently, it's their fault that they aren't Israelis. Israel treats them like crap because they somehow got it into their head that they don't belong for some reason.
Of course, his view of the whole situation, that Palestinians are causing their own problems, made me realize how simple it would be to fix the entire Middle East: all the Palestinians need to convert to Judaism! Then they would fit right in, no questions asked! It's simple to convert to Judaism, you know. They are famous for their open-door policy. I'm sure Mr. Hanson will convert today to set a good example.
While they're at it, it might be wise to start pretending that the House of Saud are Christian. Make a law against reporting the truth in the U.S. and watch the criticism dry up. Maybe.