The Half-Won, Half-Lost War

Victor Davis Hanson

... First, the good news. For all the talk of a recent Tet-like offensive in Basra, the Mahdi Army of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr suffered an ignominious setback when his gunmen were routed from their enclaves. This rout helped the constitutional government of Prime Minister Maliki renew its authority, and has encouraged Sunnis to re-enter government. Two great threats to Iraqi autonomy — Iranian-backed Shiite militiamen and Sunni-supported al-Qaida terrorists — have both now been repulsed by an elected government and its supporters.

And that brings us to the bad news. We still censor ourselves in fears of terrorist threats, mortgaging the Enlightenment tradition of free and unfettered speech. Our State Department is advising its officials to avoid perfectly descriptive terms for our enemies like “jihadist” and “Islamo-fascist” in favor of vague terms like “violent extremist” or “terrorist” -- as if we could just as easily be fighting Basque separatists.

Even more worrying, Americans cannot find a substitute for imported oil. The result is that $110[124$]-a-barrel petroleum is slowing our economy, weakening our international financial clout -- and sending billions in capital into the hands of our otherwise unproductive enemies.

The way to shut down Iran's reactor or its subsidies for Hezbollah is not necessarily through bombing but by getting oil back down below $50 a barrel, which would cut the value of Iranian petroleum production by nearly $100 billion a year and weaken an already weak economy...

[our insane energy policy effects virtually everything - all to our detriment - as usual with VDH, Recommended > ]

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