HANSON Even those who chant that mantra know it is synony- mous with calls to destroy the Jewish people from the Jordan River to the Mediter- ranean. From time to time, Iranian mullahs talk of Israel as a “one-bomb” state or allude to the fact that concentrating 11 million Jews in such a small place simplified their desire to destroy world Jewry. And not even humanitarian, left-wing college presidents stop such calls for genocide of their campus, often from guest students from the Middle East on generous Gulf-sup- plied scholarships. Existential destruction is very possible today, given modern tools — nuclear, bio-chemical, gain-in-function viruses, and artificial intelligence — make mass destruction much easier than with muscular labor. And, of course, morality has not much if any at all evolved, as we saw on Octo- ber 7, when both Hamas gunmen and Gazan civilians in a nanosecond reverted to premodern savagery and the grotesqueness of beheading, mass raping, mutilation, incineration, torture, and hostage-taking at a time of peace. Small, vulnerable peoples like the Kurds, Armenians, Greeks, and Jews and Israelis have suffered widescale death and destruction by hostile neighbors. And oddly, from time to time, we still hear calls for eliminationist wars from the likes of Russian parliamentarians, unhinged Chinese communist generals, and President Erdogan of Turkey.
FOWLER What are the signs that America takes comfort in the idea, “It can never happen here?” HANSON We’ve become a very rich, leisured, insular, self-congratulatory, and self-deluded society that believes we are eternal, even as we run up $36 trillion in debt and are dangerously short of munitions and a deterrent military as in the past. The country is divided and perhaps more sectarian than at any time since 1860. There is a new Russia/China/Iran/North Korea axis, and old allies like Qatar and Turkey act like new enemies. The military is short recruits and has been politically weaponized along DEI lines, even after it suffered utter humil- iation in Afghanistan and saw US foreign policy collapse in Ukraine, the Middle East, and the Red Sea. Each new weapon system, from hypersonic nuclear-tipped weapons to viruses and satellite killers, inches us toward Armageddon — if enemies feel we’ve lost deterrence and therefore dare to try something stupid. Victor Davis Hanson is a military histo- rian, classicist, political commentator, and farmer. He is Senior Fellow in Residence at the Hoover Institution at Stanford Univer- sity and a Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College. Hanson is the author of hundreds of articles, scholarly papers, and newspaper editorials on matters ranging from ancient Greek, agrarian and military history to foreign affairs, domes- tic politics, and contemporary culture. His website is victorhanson.com .
Thebes that pointed to their inevita- ble destruction? HANSON I’ve been to both cities several times. The land wall at Constantinople still amazes one with its stoutness and apparent impenetrability (had the Byzantines had 20,000 defenders on them instead of 7,000 on May 23, 1453, they would easily have held out). The Theban walls are harder to see, given the Macedonians a few years after the destruction built a new city on top of the ancient one. Both the cities are surrounded by rich farmland and on important transit routes. And of course, Constantinople was felt to be the European gateway to Asia and the East and controller at the Bospo- rus and Dardanelles of all east–west naval commerce. FOWLER Is “from the river to the sea” a code phrase for the annihilation of Israel and the Jewish people?
24 • AMAC Magazine
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