A Classicist takes the pulse of the modern Middle East

Victor Davis Hanson, an expert on the Ancient Greeks, and a senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution, opines in today's NRO:

On the debacle in Iraq he writes:

...the United States is taking an enormous toll on jihadists, and despite the terrible cost in blood and treasure, has not given up on a constitutional government in Iraq.

As to what's going on in Kurdistan:

...Kurdistan is emerging as a success few envisioned, refuting some conventional wisdom about the incompatibility of capitalism and constitutional government with Middle Eastern Islam.

On the Sunni Arab states:

The Sunni front-line states, who subsidized jihadists and still enjoy our misery in Iraq, but they are now terrified that these killers, in league with the Iranians, will turn on them. The net result is not just that some Sunnis are helping us in Iraq, but that they are being urged to for the first time by those in the Arab world, who would prefer to see the Iraqi government, rather than the terrorists, succeed.

And on Iran's quest for regional hegemony:

Theocratic Iran is not exactly as “empowered” as is generally alleged, but in the greatest crisis of its miserable existence. As the mullahs up the ante in the region, they could very soon not only lose Iraq, but also their own dictatorship. Trying to oppose the West in Iraq, Lebanon, and the West Bank is taking an enormous financial toll, as is the general isolation from the world community.

With oil prices at an all-time high, Iran can't provide gasoline for its own people, who resent the billions spent instead on Arab terrorists abroad. If oil were to dip from near $70 to $50-55 a barrel, the regime would face abject bankruptcy.

Next on Syria, Iran's loyal client-state:

Syria for all its terror still can't overthrow the government in Lebanon, but has managed the impossible: Not only does the Arab world seek to isolate it, but France and the United States are cooperating to thwart it in Lebanon.

On Hamas coup d'etat so to speak:

Hamas is high on victory in Gaza for now, but all it has accomplished is to further concentrate its nexus of terror into one small miserable — and quite vulnerable — locale in the midst of Jordan, Israel, and Egypt, while sacrificing the Palestinians greatest advantage: deniability of culpability. It will be harder now for the tired good cop/bad cop excuses, “militant wing,” etc. and all the other justifications for terror that the Palestinians use. Since Hamas bragged that it had routed (it matters less whether true or false) the Palestinian Authority from Gaza, the next barrage of rocket attacks from there, rightly or wrongly, will liberate Israel in its response from the past worries of collateral damage.

And finally, how the "Hezbollah victory" in Lebanon must look in hindsight from the perspective of the victors:

For all the talk of losing the Lebanon War, it is Iran and Syria, not Israel, that are stuck with billions in reconstruction costs for their battered Shiite pawns on the front lines.

Self-criticism: A sign of weakness or strength?

Is the Winograd report that criticizes Israel's performance during the early part of this summer's Hezbollah War, the definitive evidence that Israel lost this latest Israeli-Arab battle?

Gaza correspondent for the Jerusalem Post, Khaled Abu Toameh, has an interesting perspective here:

While most Arabs viewed the scathing report as a sign of Israel's "defeat," a few took a different stance by looking at the positive aspects of Israel's democratic system.

"By establishing commissions of inquiry after wars and holding those responsible for failure accountable, Israel is showing how strong it is," said newspaper columnist Hassan Khader. "We in Palestine and the Arab world are weak because we have failed to stop our governments, establish commissions of inquiry, point a blaming finger at our leaders and draw conclusions from our mistakes."

He said that had the Palestinians established a mechanism of supervision in the past decade, they would have been in a much better situation today.

"We failed to establish commissions of inquiry into the way decisions were being made or the way money was being wasted," Khader said. "That's why we have reached a stage where gangs and militias are popping up as fast as mushrooms and are hijacking our cause."