Iraq or California
Hanson, a professor at Fresno State. See his credentials at the end of the article.
Eye of the Beholder by Victor Davis Hanson - The American Enterprise Online
War torn Iraq has about 26 million residents, a peaceful California perhaps
now 35 million. The former is a violent and impoverished landscape, the
latter said to be paradise on Earth. But how you envision either place to
some degree depends on the eye of the beholder and is predicated on what
the daily media appear to make of each.
As a fifth generation Californian, I deeply love this state, but still imagine
what the reaction would be if the world awoke each morning to be told that
once again there were six more murders, 27 rapes, 38 arsons, 180 robberies,
and 360 instances of assault in California yesterday, today, tomorrow, and
every day. I wonder if the headlines would scream about "Nearly 200 poor
Californians butchered again this month!"
How about a monthly media dose of "600 women raped in February alone!"
Or try, "Over 600 violent robberies and assaults in March, with no end in sight!"
Those do not even make up all of the state's yearly 200,000 other violent acts
that law enforcement knows about.
Iraq's judicial system seems a mess. On the eve of the war, Saddam let out
100,000 inmates from his vast prison archipelago. He himself sat in the dock
months after his trial began. But imagine an Iraq with a penal system like
California's with 170,000 criminals - an inmate population larger than those of
Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Singapore combined. Just to house
such a shadow population costs our state nearly $7 billion a year or about the
same price of keeping 40,000 Army personnel per year in Iraq. What would be
the image of our Golden State if we were reminded each morning, "Another
$20 million spent today on housing our criminals"?
Some of California's most recent prison scandals would be easy to sensationalize:
"Guards watch as inmates are raped!" Or "Correction officer accused of having
sex with under-aged detainee!" And apropos of Saddam's sluggish trial, remember
that our home state multiple murderer, Tookie Williams, was finally executed in
December 2005 - TWENTY SIX years after he was originally sentenced.
Much is made of the inability to patrol Iraq's borders with Iran, Jordan, Kuwait,
Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Turkey. But California has only a single border with a
foreign nation, not six. Yet over 3 million foreigners who sneaked in illegally now
live in our state. Worse, there are about 15,000 convicted illegal alien felons
incarcerated in our penal system, costing about $500 million a year. Imagine the
potential tabloid headlines: "Illegal aliens in state comprise population larger than
San Francisco!" or "Drugs, criminals, and smugglers given free pass into California!"
Every year, over 4,000 Californians die in car crashes - more than the number of
Americans lost so far in the years of combat operations in Iraq. In some sense,
then, our badly maintained roads, and often poorly trained and sometimes
intoxicated drivers, are even more lethal than IED's (Improvised Explosive Devices.)
Perhaps tomorrow's headline might scream out at us: "300 Californians to perish
this month on state highways! Hundreds more will be maimed and crippled!"
In 2001, California had 32 days of power outages, despite paying nearly the highest
rates for electricity in the United States. Before complaining about the smoke in
Baghdad rising from private generators, think back to the run on generators in
California when they were contemplated as a future part of every household's line
of defense.
We're told that Iraq's finances are a mess. Yet until recently, so were California's.
Two years ago, Governor Schwarzenegger inherited a $38 billion annual budget
shortfall. That could have made for strong morning newscast teasers: "Another
$100 million borrowed today - $3 billion more in red ink to pile up by month's end!"
So is California comparable to Iraq? Hardly. Yet it could easily be sketched by a
reporter intent on doing so as a bankrupt, crime-ridden area with murderous highways,
tens of thousands of inmates, with wide-open borders.
I myself recently returned home to California, without incident, from a visit to Iraq's
notorious Sunni Triangle. While I was gone, a drug-addicted criminal with a long list of
convictions broke into our kitchen at 4 a.m. was surprised by my wife and daughter,
and fled with our credit cards, cash, keys, and cell phones. Sometimes I wonder who
really was safer that week. - - - - - - -
©2006 Victor Davis Hanson
____
Victor Davis Hanson is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University,
a Professor Emeritus at California University, Fresno, and a nationally syndicated
columnist for Tribune Media Services.
He was a full-time farmer before joining California State University, Fresno, in 1984
to initiate a classics program. In1991, he was awarded an American Philological
Association Excellence in Teaching Award, which is given yearly to the country's top
undergraduate teachers of Greek and Latin.
Hanson was a National Endowment for the Humanities fellow at the Center for
Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, California (1992_93), a
visiting professor of classics at Stanford University (1991_92), a recipient of the
Eric Breindel Award for opinion journalism (200 2), and an Alexander Onassis
Fellow (2001) and was named alumnus of the year of the University of California,
Santa Cruz (2002).
He was also the visiting Shifrin Chair of Military History at the U.S.Naval Academy,
Annapolis, Maryland (2002_3).
Hanson, a professor at Fresno State. See his credentials at the end of the article.
Eye of the Beholder by Victor Davis Hanson - The American Enterprise Online
War torn Iraq has about 26 million residents, a peaceful California perhaps
now 35 million. The former is a violent and impoverished landscape, the
latter said to be paradise on Earth. But how you envision either place to
some degree depends on the eye of the beholder and is predicated on what
the daily media appear to make of each.
As a fifth generation Californian, I deeply love this state, but still imagine
what the reaction would be if the world awoke each morning to be told that
once again there were six more murders, 27 rapes, 38 arsons, 180 robberies,
and 360 instances of assault in California yesterday, today, tomorrow, and
every day. I wonder if the headlines would scream about "Nearly 200 poor
Californians butchered again this month!"
How about a monthly media dose of "600 women raped in February alone!"
Or try, "Over 600 violent robberies and assaults in March, with no end in sight!"
Those do not even make up all of the state's yearly 200,000 other violent acts
that law enforcement knows about.
Iraq's judicial system seems a mess. On the eve of the war, Saddam let out
100,000 inmates from his vast prison archipelago. He himself sat in the dock
months after his trial began. But imagine an Iraq with a penal system like
California's with 170,000 criminals - an inmate population larger than those of
Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Singapore combined. Just to house
such a shadow population costs our state nearly $7 billion a year or about the
same price of keeping 40,000 Army personnel per year in Iraq. What would be
the image of our Golden State if we were reminded each morning, "Another
$20 million spent today on housing our criminals"?
Some of California's most recent prison scandals would be easy to sensationalize:
"Guards watch as inmates are raped!" Or "Correction officer accused of having
sex with under-aged detainee!" And apropos of Saddam's sluggish trial, remember
that our home state multiple murderer, Tookie Williams, was finally executed in
December 2005 - TWENTY SIX years after he was originally sentenced.
Much is made of the inability to patrol Iraq's borders with Iran, Jordan, Kuwait,
Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Turkey. But California has only a single border with a
foreign nation, not six. Yet over 3 million foreigners who sneaked in illegally now
live in our state. Worse, there are about 15,000 convicted illegal alien felons
incarcerated in our penal system, costing about $500 million a year. Imagine the
potential tabloid headlines: "Illegal aliens in state comprise population larger than
San Francisco!" or "Drugs, criminals, and smugglers given free pass into California!"
Every year, over 4,000 Californians die in car crashes - more than the number of
Americans lost so far in the years of combat operations in Iraq. In some sense,
then, our badly maintained roads, and often poorly trained and sometimes
intoxicated drivers, are even more lethal than IED's (Improvised Explosive Devices.)
Perhaps tomorrow's headline might scream out at us: "300 Californians to perish
this month on state highways! Hundreds more will be maimed and crippled!"
In 2001, California had 32 days of power outages, despite paying nearly the highest
rates for electricity in the United States. Before complaining about the smoke in
Baghdad rising from private generators, think back to the run on generators in
California when they were contemplated as a future part of every household's line
of defense.
We're told that Iraq's finances are a mess. Yet until recently, so were California's.
Two years ago, Governor Schwarzenegger inherited a $38 billion annual budget
shortfall. That could have made for strong morning newscast teasers: "Another
$100 million borrowed today - $3 billion more in red ink to pile up by month's end!"
So is California comparable to Iraq? Hardly. Yet it could easily be sketched by a
reporter intent on doing so as a bankrupt, crime-ridden area with murderous highways,
tens of thousands of inmates, with wide-open borders.
I myself recently returned home to California, without incident, from a visit to Iraq's
notorious Sunni Triangle. While I was gone, a drug-addicted criminal with a long list of
convictions broke into our kitchen at 4 a.m. was surprised by my wife and daughter,
and fled with our credit cards, cash, keys, and cell phones. Sometimes I wonder who
really was safer that week. - - - - - - -
©2006 Victor Davis Hanson
____
Victor Davis Hanson is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University,
a Professor Emeritus at California University, Fresno, and a nationally syndicated
columnist for Tribune Media Services.
He was a full-time farmer before joining California State University, Fresno, in 1984
to initiate a classics program. In1991, he was awarded an American Philological
Association Excellence in Teaching Award, which is given yearly to the country's top
undergraduate teachers of Greek and Latin.
Hanson was a National Endowment for the Humanities fellow at the Center for
Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, California (1992_93), a
visiting professor of classics at Stanford University (1991_92), a recipient of the
Eric Breindel Award for opinion journalism (200 2), and an Alexander Onassis
Fellow (2001) and was named alumnus of the year of the University of California,
Santa Cruz (2002).
He was also the visiting Shifrin Chair of Military History at the U.S.Naval Academy,
Annapolis, Maryland (2002_3).
