Product Description

In his acclaimed collection An Autumn of War, the scholar and military historian Victor Davis Hanson expressed powerful and provocative views of September 11 and the ensuing war in Afghanistan. Now, in these challenging new essays, he examines the world’s ongoing war on terrorism, from America to Iraq, from Europe to Israel, and beyond.

In direct language, Hanson portrays an America making progress against Islamic fundamentalism but hampered by the self-hatred of elite academics at home and the cynical self-interest of allies abroad. He sees a new and urgent struggle of evil against good, one that can fail only if “we convince ourselves that our enemies fight because of something we, rather than they, did.”

Whether it’s a clear-cut defense of Israel as a secular democracy, a denunciation of how the U.N. undermines the U.S., a plea to drastically alter our alliance with Saudi Arabia, or a perception that postwar Iraq is reaching a dangerous tipping point, Hanson’s arguments have the shock of candor and the fire of conviction.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1350575 in Books
• Released on: 2004-02-10
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 8.01" h x .64" w x 5.14" l, .34 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Hanson (An Autumn of War), who has been compared to John Keegan as a historian of war, doesn't display the objectivity of a scholar here. These 39 previously published essays (35 from National Review Online) assessing the U.S. war on terrorism mostly focus on broad-brush denunciations of Europeans, Arabs, the U.N. and Muslims, reserving praise for the U.S. and Israel as beacons of democracy. America's pre-emptive war in Iraq is applauded and, Hanson says, Syria should be next. Saudi Arabia should be seen more as an enemy than an ally and actively subverted. His targets are mostly caricaturesâ€"he portrays Europeans, for instance, as reactionaries in their anti-Americanism. Hanson, a scholar of the ancient Greek military, does not appeal to research or direct experience in the Arab world, but merely to what one can infer from mass media accounts. He professes faith that U.S. arms and good intentions will bring secular democracy to Iraq, and then beyond, but his dark portrayal of Arab culture gives little cause for optimism. The volume might have been more interesting if Hanson had confronted the difficult issue of just how less corrupt secular democracies might take root in the Middle East, including the problems of previous democratic experiments in the Arab world (in Lebanon, Algeria and Iraq itself before Saddam). What went wrong? Will the presence of U.S. soldiers insure that things go right this time? Hanson thinks so, but his reasons are not spelled out.
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Review
“Victor Hanson is a national treasure. . . . Every American needs to learn from him.”
—Donald Kagan, author of On the Origins of War and the Preservation of Peace

About the Author
Victor Davis Hanson was educated at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, and received his Ph.D. in Classics from Stanford University. He farmed full-time for five years before returning to academia in 1984 to initiate a Classics program at California State University, Fresno. Currently, he is Professor of Classics there and Coordinator of the Classical Studies Program.









Hanson has appeared in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Daily Telegraph, International Herald Tribune, American Heritage, City Journal, American Spectator, National Review, Policy Review, The Wilson Quarterly, The Weekly Standard, and the Washington Times, and has been interviewed on numerous occasionas on National Public Radio and the BBC, and appeared with David Gergen on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. He writes a biweekly column about contemporary culture and military history for National Review Online. He has written or edited eleven books, including The Western Way of War, The Soul of Battle, and Carnage and Culture. He is a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institute, Stanford University.