Is Left Ever Right?

Writing in today's National Review Online, Victor Davis Hanson "gets it" right again, first recalling the anti-war arguments:

Remember the invective about perpetual American intervention? Tens of thousands of our troops poured into the Middle East after the "excuse" of September 11. Right-wingers alleged that we had turned from republic to a garrison empire in a new global ego trip. Leftists assured us that we were greedy colonialists replicating the British raj -- perhaps keen to corner the Iraqi date market or exploit at slave wages the skilled workforce around Tikrit. Arab fundamentalists prattled on about the American Crusaders and Zionists out to steal holy lands and desecrate shrines -- no doubt convinced that Billy Grahamites, if not blowing up ancient Buddhist statuary, would soon be attaching crosses to minarets.

Of course, nothing of the sort occurred since the fall of Saddam.

Hanson next examines sophisticated "post-colonial" arguments:

Surely one of the most astounding intellectual trends in our lifetime has been this transmogrification of religious fascists and Middle East autocrats -- the minions of Saddam, Arafat, Khaddafi, or the Iranian mullahs -- into some sort of exploited peoples worthy of Western forbearance for quite horrific dictatorships, theocracies, and all the assorted pathologies that we have to come to associate with the modern Middle East. . . Let's examine, instead, what really happened. While fellow Arabs did little or nothing to free the Iraqi people -- but apparently both cheated on and profited from the U.N. embargoes -- Americans set up a consensual government.

Finally, Hanson cautions against relying on allies from "Old Europe" (i.e., the chocolate producing nations):

[A] few thousand troops in Afghanistan doesn't cut it from a continent with a larger population than that of the United States, which in turn does the dirty work to ensure Europe's security. Unilateral, multilateral, U.N., no U.N., Balkans, Iraq -- it doesn't matter: The Europeans are never going to risk lives and treasure for much of anything. The predictable NATO rule: The stationing of troops is to be determined in direct proportion to the absence of both need and danger.

Liberals loved Marxists, and hysterically opposed confronting the Soviets. They prophesied famine, resource scarcity and overpopulation. Of course, they protested war in Afghanistan in Iraq.

The left was dead wrong about Marx: Reagan won the Cold War, Cuba's starving and, as soon as they could, Nicaraguans voted Danny Ortega off the island. Global food production increases every year; there's still (always!) 20 years of proven oil reserves; and the birthrate in countries from Europe to Singapore has fallen below replacement levels. Iraq--where hundreds of thousands were murdered or tortured up until a year ago--now has a interim constitution, the beginnings of democracy and a booming economy.

Next time you debate a liberal, ask this: Since Watergate, have your ever been right?