by Jeff Huber

The late William F. Buckley, political conservative icon and founder of National Review, must be clawing at his coffin lid.The print version of National Review, while Buckley held the reins, was often an over-the-top exposition of the more unsavory facets of the political right, but Buckley managed to keep it semi-respectable.National Review Online, however, always seemed to be written by the sort of thugs you’d find in a Berthold Brecht musical.

In a recent NRO piece, military historian and former classics professor Victor Davis Hanson comes across like a rabid war mongrel.Frothing over the recent Somali pirate caper involving a U.S. flagged merchant ship, Davis insists that, “To end Somali piracy, disproportionate measures against the shore should be taken—for every one pirate assault, a lethal air assault should immediately follow.”It’s perhaps understandable that Hanson doesn’t mention what Somalia offers in the way of suitable air strike targets; underdeveloped nations like Somalia don’t have any.Hanson probably doesn’t understand that, because like so many hawkish military historians, he doesn’t understand anything about the military.He doesn’t know much about warfare theory, either.He calls for extreme (though ineffectual) military measures in response to something he admits “may not be a matter of American national security” committed not by a peer competitor or a group of global extremists but by “two-bit pirates.”When a giant purposely crushes an anthill, he’s not pursuing a political objective; he’s feeding his perversions.That, like waterboarding someone 183 times, is not the sort of thing a global hegemon needs to be doing, Victor. Continue reading →