If-fing

In addition to op|pulp|ed fiction -- that wonderful genre in which hack columnists conjure up an endless variety of unidentified characters and unsourced direct quotations that just too perfectly mesh with a column's thesis -- I loathe if-fing.

Here's a brief sample of if-fing from Victor Davis Hanson's NRO column, "The Politics of American Wars: Islamists Have Proved Adept at Winning Liberal Exemption From Criticism."

If President Bush were a liberal Democrat; if he were bombing a white Christian, politically clumsy fascist in the heart of Europe; if al Qaeda and its Islamist adherents were properly seen as eighth-century tormenters of humanists, women, homosexuals, non-Arabs, and non-Wahhabi believers; and if Iraq had become completely somnolent with the toppling of Saddam's statue, then the American people would have remained behind the effort to dismantle Islamic fundamentalism and create the foundations to ensure its permanent demise. [emph added]

Here is my response to Victor Davis Hanson, military historian and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution: Prove it.