An Apologia for Victor Davis Hanson
And the Jewish World Review

William A. Cook

      Now that the President and the Congress have corrected our Bill of Rights to remove the articles that prevented securing the nation against “terrorists,” articles V, VI, and VII, rights that interfered with our government’s ability to search and seize what they know must be “terrorist” related documents secured within our homes, as well as the necessity to convene a grand jury to hear charges brought against a citizen and to bring the accused before an impartial jury, inconvenient problems when time is of the essence, and, finally, to declare habeas corpus null and void, the country can move with alacrity to ensure that our freedoms are protected, freedoms as defined by President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff. Thank God. These rights, designed and created by our forefathers at the founding of the nation, rights they conceived as protective against the British Crown, come out of a different age, an age without the insight now evident in our leaders.

      Unbeknownst to most Americans, but even more significant to the securing of America against the infidels that threaten our way of life, was the inclusion of the “Insurrection Act” in that same signing of the Military Commission’s Act on September 28. That allows our President to take complete control of our National Guard and deploy federal troops to quell any insurrections within the United States, a move that not only ensures that we will be protected by the wisdom of our President acting alone without the encumbrance of the outdated Posse Comitatus Act that prevented our Chief Executive from deploying troops within the U.S. or from consulting with the Congress that could subvert his decisive actions against those he has determined are “terrorists.”

      All true patriots must applaud these actions that reconsider the value of ancient laws and behavior that purportedly protected individual rights when in fact they prevented our President from protecting us against unseen terrorists in our midst. Indeed, all such restrictions that limit executive power by forcing inefficient and cumbersome processes on his authority must be repealed. Our modern civilization with its advanced technology and immediacy of communication necessitates application of contemporary responses to actions that in prior ages, especially those that were prevalent in the Dark Ages, be expunged and our more civilized procedures implemented.    

      Recently, our brothers in arms against world terrorism, the American Israeli Political Action Committee through one of its many pro-American publications supportive of America’s threatened position, pointed to other examples of outdated behavior that have been resurrected and employed against the western forces of good as they attempt to bring our civilized democratic form of government to recalcitrant and feudal governments that dominate the mid-east.

      All of us raised in this postmodern world that has stripped the mask of apparent rationality away from contemporary life are indebted to the Jewish World Review for providing us the opportunity to read Victor Davis Hanson’s insightful essay, “The Dark Ages – live from the middle East.”

      Indeed, as Hanson bemoans, we are stunned and sickened as students of history to witness a return to the barbarous practice of beheading as resurrected by Iraqi “terrorists,” a horrible throw back to ancient Rome and the Reformation, days of superstition and theological dispute when truth was absolute and power wielded by those entrusted with a God given mission. Certainly we have evolved from such barbarity as Israel’s practice of extrajudicial execution attests, a clear case of pre-determined justice and one adopted by our President, since the politically elected Prime Minister or President can assert his divinely prescribed status as God’s law enforcement officer by expeditiously ridding the world of a known “terrorist” without the encumbrance of arresting the criminal, charging him with a crime or bothering with a trial.

      I would mark as a particularly stunning example of such civilized postmodern practice the assassination of Sheik Yassin in March of 2004 when the world witnessed an unarmed, half-blind, crippled, 67 year-old paraplegic summarily executed with two missiles from F-16 warships, a decided improvement over the messy, blood strewn hacking necessitated by the butcher that beheads a victim before the digital camera.

      Unfortunately, in this instance, the act had to take place on a crowded street as the Sheik emerged from a mosque resulting in bystanders being slaughtered and their blood, along with that of the victim, strewn all over the cobble stones. Circumstances sometimes detract from the progress made by the Israelis since 1947. However, we must not overlook the civilized way in which this execution removed the hangman from the scene, a decided advantage over the Dark Age practice where the viewer must watch the butcher slit the throat of the guilty party. We can rest assured that the pilot of the F-16, no doubt a Lieutenant in the Israeli Air Force, not a hooded Hangman, did not see the victim that he slaughtered nor the bloody mess he left behind.

      Victor Hanson does not stop with beheading; he presents a veritable litany of Medieval practices reinstituted by our current crop of infidels including censorship, sexual inequality, anti-Semitism, displaying heads on poles for public display, threatening a minority like Jews in places like Paris, closing down theatrical productions deemed offensive to Muslims, and numerous other atrocities brought back from the Dark Ages. Thank God we live in an enlightened age when such barbarism is not tolerated by the civilized nations of the west, particularly the United States and Israel, our displaced self living precariously in the Islamic fascist mid-east.