VDH Gets It Right Again #4,552,983

From Victor Davis Hanson's column today at NRO...

Moreover, who knows what a successful strike against Iranian nuclear facilities might portend? We rightly are warned of all the negatives — further Shiite madness in Iraq, an Iranian land invasion into Basra, dirty bombs going off in the U.S., smoking tankers in the Straits of Hormuz, Hezbollah on the move in Lebanon, etc. — but rarely of a less probable but still possible scenario: a humiliated Iran is defanged; the Arab world sighs relief, albeit in private; the Europeans chide us publicly but pat us on the back privately; and Iranian dissidents are energized, while theocratic militarists, like the Argentine dictators who were crushed in the Falklands War, lose face. Nothing is worse for the lunatic than when his cheap rhetoric earns abject humiliation for others.

In our Western civilization today, we are so far removed from the days when armies might suddenly appear without warning over the horizon and burn our villages and carry away our women and children. We are so far removed from the days when scratching a life out of the dust of the earth required sweat and tears and we were one bad crop away from hunger.

The masses spend their mental energy on American Idol, instant messaging, iPods, cell phones. Who, from day to day, fears what is over the horizon?

We have that luxury because brave men and women have gone over the horizon on our behalf, to hold off the forces that seek to destroy. Except for one terrible day in September 2001, those forces never visit us. The threat is not visible for many.

As Hanson points out, though, rather than let the knee twitch the media and its echo chamber on the Left will have govern our foreign policy, let's not forget the benefits that might come from strong action against Iran.

Hanson closes with this thought.

So, please, Mr. Ahmadinejad, cool the rhetoric fast — before you needlessly push once reasonable people against the wall, and thus talk your way into a sky full of very angry and righteous jets.