Debate Is Only Good if You Agree With Me

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Victor Davis Hanson, in his latest backbone-stiffener, issues this dire warning about the 9/11 commission and our current public debate:

But the tragedy is that if we are paradoxical, self-incriminatory, and at each other's throats, our enemies most surely are not. They know precisely what they want from us ? an Islamic world of the 8th century, parasitic on the resources and technology of the 21st, by which all the better to destroy a supposedly soft and bickering West. And if the present chaos here at home continues, they are apparently on the right track.

In other words, if you criticize Bush's handling of the wars against Al Qaeda and Iraq, you're contributing to the mullahfication of America. Color me delusionally optimistic, but I have a little more faith in America, and in the virtues of open debate, than all of that.