Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words” from Daily Signal senior contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to Victor Davis Hanson’s own YouTube channel to watch past episodes.
Jack Fowler: Douglas Murray’s a friend, a great writer. He’s written this essay for The Free Press, “The 9/11 Failure That Still Haunts America,” and here’s one paragraph from it, Victor:
“Like many people, I used to spend considerable amounts of time following the progress of the dozens of Al-Qaeda detainees originally held in an American military prison in Guantanamo Bay. The first of them was brought into what was then called Camp X-Ray in 2002. The first images released of these, of the prisoners shackled and in orange jumpsuits caused a significant backlash in public opinion as audiences recoiled at their sometimes harsh treatment. But the U.S. could have quickly overcome any unease about these detentions if the terrorists had swiftly faced the full force of American justice. The families of their victims were promised that they would live to see that resolution. But after 25 years and five presidential administrations in Washington, most of the accused are still unbelievably in the pretrial phase.”
I don’t see what there is to argue with that —
Victor Davis Hanson: Disappointment. If
Jack Fowler: Disappointment, it’s a weak word, but what are your thoughts, Victor?
Victor Davis Hanson: Well, we know in the left-wing mind, it’s unhinged. There’s something wrong with it. So the same mental tendencies that make you want to identify with Lindsay, the same sympathies you have for Lindsay Clancy. And when you say things like she’s already suffered enough because she’s not going to have the comfort of her children anymore. Think of that statement.
That same tendency applies to the American legal system. No matter how horrific, and we’re talking about Luigi Mangione, people like Tyler Robinson who blew the neck off of Charlie Kirk, the people who tried to kill Donald Trump, that same attitude of the Left is deeply ingrained.
And so when they see people who murdered 3,000 people, their little brains go victim? Check. Nonwhite? Check. Middle East Muslims? Check. They are victims? Check. I will get notoriety. I will get virtue signaling. I will square my moral circle and feel good about myself. I’m gonna use the full weight of the American legal system to subvert it and delay justice and wait, wait until a whole generation comes of age that wasn’t even alive when 9/11. They have no memory of it. They don’t know the feelings, the passions, the trauma, and I’m going to be famous and get him off and I’m gonna feel so good about myself that I’m morally superior. And that’s what you have.
They don’t ever think about what they— And remember, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed wanted to do, he wanted to get a lot of airlines. Was it 11 in the Philippines? Blow them up. He wanted to kill a lot more people. And they had a big—
Jack Fowler: Over the Pacific, right?
Victor Davis Hanson: They had a big argument over the Capitol or the White House, and they were very angry they didn’t have five planes. And they finally, I think Bin Laden said the Capitol dome would do more damage than the White House. And that, that had not been stopped over Pennsylvania. They could have killed a lot more people than 3,000.
And, so, that tendency to feel so good about yourself when you defend, like it’s, when Zohran Mamdani handed that honorific pen through Jessica Tisch, and she’s the police commissioner, the NYPD overseer, and she’s Jewish, and he said, would you hand this? Okay, little servant, ha ha ha, little NYPD representative, ha ha, which I said was basically a criminal organization years ago and should be defunded, and which I said I’m going to arrest the president, the prime minister, president of Israel when he comes, ha ha. Would you hand that over to my chief legal counsel, who, by the way, defended the brother-in-law of one of the 9/11 killers?
And that’s what Douglas Murray is talking about. How did we get to this place? After 9/11. I thought we were going to remember it forever. And I don’t understand that.
There have been some shocking, in a related development, I don’t know if you saw these clips that some filmmakers have left out, have started to publish some of the 9/11 incidents. Excuse me, the October 7th. And they are horrific, with people shot, kicked, beheaded, etc.
And we forget all of that October 7th, that you take away October 7th, 12,000 people brutally murdered, raped, decapitated, mutilated, children destroyed, tortured. Two hundred forty-something hostages taken, 40 Americans, most of them killed. You take that away, and there wouldn’t be… Gaza would be fine today.
There wasn’t any Jews in Gaza. There will never be any Jews in Gaza. They didn’t want to go in there. They didn’t want anything to do with Gaza. They put, they supplied the fuel and the power and the water and the sewage for Gaza, but they didn’t want it. They begged the Egyptians to take it. They begged the Jordanians to take— nobody wanted it.
And we wouldn’t have had any of this problem had they not decided to go kill Jews, and they would have killed a lot more if it had not been for about two or three hundred, very heroic people within the kibbutz and within the IDF that came there and fought them off.
Jack Fowler: Right.
Victor Davis Hanson: And they don’t get that.
Well, you know, and by the way, when they say genocide, genocide, genocide, they don’t really talk about October 8th. Three weeks before the Israelis went in, and they did not want to go in there, three weeks before that, they were talking about, how wonderful October 7th was.
And when Israel— and I asked somebody at Stanford once when I was walking by this, I said, “What would you have done if somebody had done this and gone in and killed 12,000 and butchered in a time of peace?” And I said, “Would you have asked for the perpetrators?” Yes. I said, “Israel did. Would you ask for extraditions?” Yes. Turn over the perpetrators. “Would you ask for trials of these people?” Yes. “Would you go to the UN?” Yes. Well, they did all of that. And the Gazans were so celebratory in their bloodlust. They were so happy.
And by the way, when they talk about the poor collateral damage, nobody wants civilians, but they never break down how many people were in Hamas or were supporters or were aiding and abetting Hamas or cheering them on or were used as human shields.
And they never ask two questions. What would you do if that happened to your country and you had to go, deal with the perpetrators who refuse to give back hostages and refuse to turn over the culpable people?
Well, I know what we would do. I remember World War II. I can tell you what we did over Japan and what we did over Germany. I can tell you what we did in Fallujah. I flew right over Fallujah in a helicopter. I went to Taji. I went to a lot of those cities in Iraq twice. And we went into those cities.
And I don’t think that the U.S. Marines, heroic as they are and as humane as they are, ever even thought in their wildest imagination they were going to get the phones of all of the Al-Qaeda and sons of Saddam terrorists in those buildings who had them booby-trapped waiting for them, and text to them a message and said, “We’re coming. Would you please get out in 10 minutes?” And that’s what the IDF did on so many occasions.
So it really gets numbing that the majority of the country, and you mentioned that poll, Jack, where Israel has almost no supporters. It’s got like 35% of the population.
Jack Fowler: Yeah. Well, Victor, these videos you mentioned are so powerful and disgusting, but to the made-up mind of the ideologue, I just don’t, I don’t know that there’s anything you can show them, any hard evidence, that they will say is a lie.
And you and I were talking yesterday about a conspiracy theory related to Charlie Kirk’s murder. Here he is, he’s murdered right in front of you. You see it, you know? He’s shot, but yet people have these-
I investigated. I investigated. I went online when a person told me this, explained this conspiracy theory, and I didn’t know there’s a lot of podcasters. I don’t know if Tucker’s one of them, but they do believe that his security detail were Mossad agents, and Tyler Robinson either had nothing to do with it, even though we have him on tape, even though he admitted to his trans lover that he had killed Charlie Kirk, and even though his parents had admitted it, and even though we know the gun he used came from his grandfather’s arsenal.
We know all of that, but they still believe that Mossad, packed … I guess the one I saw the most, they packed a microphone with explosives, and then they had someone shoot it, and the fragments, carotid artery of Charlie’s was hit by shrapnel, and then this other guy was a dupe they either hired or they just shot in the air or something.
Victor Davis Hanson: To take the mental effort to craft that entire conspiracy is such that you have to be filled with a lot of hate of Jews and Israel, and to come up with such an elaborate conspiracy when all of the facts say otherwise, and they’re out there in the public domain.
Jack Fowler: As Pontius Pilate once said, “What is truth?” And a lot of people don’t care what the truth is because it disrupts the narrative.
Victor Davis Hanson: Quid verum. Yeah, quid veritas est?
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