The Review
Some addtional reasons
(
Review) In Reason Magazine, Charles Freund lays out an alternate set of reasons for whacking Saddam Hussein.
Creating poverty is hard work
(
Review) Ronald Bailey advises prospective world leaders on how to keep their countries in poverty.
More on Gore
(
Review) Jonah Goldberg gives us his take on The Gore Speech.
By the way, I think that's the way we will come to remember it. The Gore Speech. Everyone will know what you're talking about when you mention it.
The wisdom of Zell
(
Review) The best response to Tom Daschle's weepy little session on the Senate floor comes from one of his fellow Democrats, Zell Miller.
And as sure as night follows day, when catastrophes occur, the U.S. Senate will be held accountable if we fail to give the President the tools to do his job.
Why are the people back home always ahead of the politicians? Because most politicians - especially at our level - don't get out among them anymore.
Oh, we think we do. A town hall here, a senior center there. A focus group or two, perhaps. But we don't really. We don't talk to real people anymore. We're too busy holed up in a room dialing for dollars. And the only horror we can grasp from that experience is some fat cat telling us they've already maxed out.
Why are we even in this debate? How will it be recorded in years to come when the historians write their accounts of these days in the U.S. Senate in September 2002?
How will our actions be judged by the people who go to the polls this year on November 5?
Frankly, I think it will be one of our sorriest chapters, certainly the worst in my short time here. A chapter where special interests so brazenly trumped national interests.
Too bad the rest of his party doesn't feel this way.
Larry Miller nails it
(
Review) Larry Miller analogizes the debate on Iraq to a comedy tour he made in England with some other American comedians. One of the comedians was doing awfully. Lerry tells the story:
Anyway, this poor comic would stink up the place and then dart off to the nearest pub and drink like Hindley Earnshaw. (So did I, come to think of it, but never mind that now.) The thing about the guy was that he was a very good comic, and I instantly knew what the problem was, and not just because I know my business. You could've seen the problem, too. He devoted his entire act, twenty minutes, to one long, involved, specific piece on the hit game show "Wheel of Fortune," which was, probably, a killer bit for him in the States. Unfortunately--Can you see this coming?--"Wheel of Fortune" wasn't broadcast in England. There wasn't one Brit in the entire country who had even heard of it. So this lunkhead would walk out there every night and might as well have been speaking Martian.
The first night he did it, I turned to the old guy running the curtains and said, "Do you get 'Wheel of Fortune' in England?" And he said, "'Wheel of What?'" And I turned back to the stage and watched an otherwise good performer shake like an air raid victim.
Now, I didn't know him very well, and there's an unwritten code among comics that, for good or ill, we don't comment on someone else's act. But by the fourth night, when he got off, I couldn't resist stopping him and saying, "Uh, you know, I don't think they get 'Wheel of Fortune' here." He stood blinking for a few seconds, and then, in a stunning denial, said, "Nah, it's just a tough crowd tonight." And he spent the rest of the two weeks doing the same bit, and getting the same reaction.
And this is our problem today with Iraq. The folks on the left have seen, over and over, Saddam Hussein refuse to allow weapons inspections, and then they insist we try it again. They have seen him, over and over, perpetrate the most evil slaughters he can manage, and then they insist we wait and see what he does. They have railed for ten years against the "horrors" of our economic sanctions, and then they insist we give sanctions a chance. And in each instance, we conservatives, moronically loyal to the theory that people can always be swayed by logic and proof, smile back at them and restate our case.
Well, it's time to move forward. They don't get it, and they never will. Which is fine, most of the time, but this time it involves our lives, the lives of our allies, and, just incidentally, the future of civilization. On September 10 on Fox, Rep. Nancy Pelosi said, "Going to war would show our power, but not going to war would show our strength." She followed this with the vacant smile usually associated with a village idiot, which, by the way, is just about what she is.
All of them, Daschle, Biden, Leahy and the rest of the not-so-loyal opposition, know the truth and have always known it, but for whatever the reason--ambition or stupidity--have decided to blink and say, "Nah, it's just a tough crowd tonight." And it's time we shrug, let them run out of the theater, straighten our collars and shoot our cuffs, and enter from the wings to do exactly the job we know needs to be done.
Well said.
The real reason Democrats are upset
(
Review) Peter Brown writes in the Orlando
Sentinel that we shouldn't forget that the real reason Democrats are holding up the Homeland Security Bill is to ramrod through some special favors for their union buddies in it.
Iraq is becoming another "Brutal Afghan Winter"
(
Review) Nick Kristoff writes that Iraq may prove to be a quagmire. Oh, he doesn't use that word in the piece, but it's clear that's what he means.
*Sigh*
Why is it always a quagmire with these people? Oh, yeah, it's because they don't know jack about military operations.
More on politicization of the war
(
Review) Jonathan Last writes:
If Democrats were serious this summer about wanting consultation, they should be overjoyed now. That they're throwing tantrums in the well of the Senate suggests that they have been the ones keeping politics in mind all along.
Very true.
Just like Ed Muskie...
(
Review) John Podhoretz has more on Tom Daschle's crying jag on the Senate floor this week.
Gephardt weighs in
(
Review) House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt please for the president to stop "politicizing" the war.
But now there's no denying it. President Bush himself has decided to play politics with the safety and security of the American people. It started in New York two days after the one-year anniversary of Sept. 11. Injecting politics into the debate on Iraq, the president told reporters that "if I were running for office, I'm not sure how I'd explain to the American people, say, `Vote for me and, oh, by the way, on a matter of national security, I think I'm going to wait for somebody else to act.' "
Four times in the past week Mr. Bush has echoed these words. On Monday, he went so far as to say that the Democrat-led Senate is "not interested in the security of the American people."
Well, no, that's not what the president said. That's merely what the sloppy reporting of the lazy Dana Milbank indicated.
That notwithstanding, it is not "politicizing the war" to tell the American people the truth about the "peace wing" of the Democratic party. They are, after all, the primary reason why Americans tend to distrust the Democrats on National Security issues. That is not the fault of the President, but rather of those Democrats who support policies that are outside the mainstream of America.
What Gephardt is really asking for is a pass for Democrats. He wants the freedom of allowing Democrats to stand as far outside the mainstream as they want, without having to pay any political consequences at the polls. It's hard to imagine a more anti-democratic desire.
So, it upsets them when the president characterizes their positions, because those positions are so often far outside what the electorate considers prudent. I'm sure it would be nice to live in a world where you don't have to face the consequences of your decisions, so I understand the Democrats' desires.
In a recent speech in Kansas, Vice President Dick Cheney also entered the act, saying that our nation's security efforts would be stronger if a Republican candidate for Congress were elected.
This is, of course, absolutely untrue. Cheney said: "President Bush and I are very grateful for the opportunity to serve our country. We thank you for your support not just for our efforts, but for candidates like Adam Taff, who will make a fine partner for us in the work ahead."
No matter how hard I look, I can't find Gephardt's characterization in that statement. Not that I'm surprised. Daschle had a complete "Muskie Moment" breakdown on the Senate floor over something the President never said, either.
Like many Democrats, I share the administration's goals in dealing with Iraq. Some in my own party have criticized me for that support.
Yes, and they are the very people the President is talking about.
Eleven years ago, the Persian Gulf war debate on Iraq took place after an election, which helped keep politics out of it.
Yes, and oddly enough, Democrats voted against it, almost to a man. That's what Cheney is talking about when he says a Republican candidate would be better for national security than a Democrat. At the end of the day, the Democrats can be trusted to avoid addressing national security in any serious way until it's absolutely necessary to save their political skins.
Today's Democratic party is
not the party of FDR, Truman, and Kennedy. They are all dead, just as their party died in the 1960's. Today's Democratic party is a party of progressivism (i.e. watered-down Marxism) and pacifism, whose mental processes are stuck somewhere in Berkeley in 1968.
The voting public, fortunately, has moved quite a bit beyond that.
People who live in glass houses...
(
Review) Charles Krauthammer ponders the Gore Speech.
Dear President Hillary...
(
Review) Eugene Volokh offers us speculation about a future letter from Saddam Hussein to President Hillary Clinton.
Not like the last time
(
Review) Victor Davis Hanson says that this war will not be Gulf War II.
An ambush on Estrada
(
Review) Well, we now know what the Democrats are going to use to torpedo the nominbation of Miguel Estrada to the Federal bench.
These attacks by political hacks in the Democratic party are disgraceful, especially since, by every measure, their confirmation in a full senate vote would be assured. Instead, Democrats are killing these nominees in committee, without allowing even the possibility of a full Senate vote.
If the Democrats lose the Senate in the upcoming election, the President should renominate every single one of these judicial candidates.
The Buffy nation
(
Review) Jonah Goldberg discusses the US and the UN in a Buffy the Vampire Slayer metaphor.
We're Buffy.
Now about US-based anti-americanism?
(
Review) Norah Vincent writes in the LA
Times that, in addition to fighting anti-American movements abroad, perhaps we should also start fighting the anti-Americanism rampant on US college campuses.
The death of a policy
(
Review) Pete DuPont writes in the
Wall Street Journal that we are seeing the death of two American policies that have been constants for the past 50 years: Containment and liberal multilateralism.
That's a
good thing, by the way.
A good lefty, or, at least, a not entirely bad one
(
Review) Even Christopher Hitchens is on the "kill Saddam" bandwagon. Which might, by the way, have something to do with why he's no longer with
The Narion.
Ken Pollack Speaks
(
Review) Hmm. Just a few minutes after I saw the Kurtz piece on Ken Pollack's book, I see that Ken Pollack himself has an article in today's NY
Times about why Iraq can't be contained.
Methinks the Democrats protest too much
(
Review) The editors of
National Review make an important point about the Democrats vis a vis Iraq.
How can the Democrats be taken seriously on Iraq? One day they demand a debate on Iraq, the next day they accuse Bush of "wagging the dog" for having a debate on Iraq. One day the Democratic chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee says we should be confronting the terrorist regimes of Iran and Syria before going after Saddam. The next, Democrats (including Gore) criticize Bush's proposed Iraq resolution because it might leave open the possibility of confronting Iran and Syria. The fact is that pressure, and perhaps even military action, against those regimes may eventually be warranted. One purpose of the intervention in Iraq is to create a new international standard that such radical regimes cannot be trusted with weapons of mass destruction. As Paul Johnson points out in this issue, action against Saddam represents the civilized world's reasserting itself, and pushing back against the piratical regimes in the Middle East that have perversely been taken to be an acceptable part of the international order for 30 years.
Tom Daschle can moan and cry all he wants about how Democrats are being insulted by President Bush. But the fact remains that the Democrats are perceived to be weaker on national security issues, a state of affairs for which they have no one to blame but themselves.
Crazy Like a Fox
(
Review) By the way, I have another column on TechCentralStation this week. In this column, I address Iraqi Inspections.
The Threatening Storm
(
Review) Stanley Kurtz reviews Kenneth Pollack's book on Iraq,
The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq. In his review, Kurtz notes an important point, which happens to be the same point I make in my
TCS column this week.
Pollack explains all this by presenting a detailed, balanced, and persuasive portrayal of Saddam's decision making. What emerges is a frightening pattern of "bizarre decisions, poor judgment, and catastrophic miscalculations," of deeply dangerous moves made with "no assessment of risks or costs." Pollack traces this pattern back decades into the past, to incidents that predate well-known cases like the Gulf War or the war with Iran. The account of Saddam's 1974 abrogation of his agreement with the Kurds, his attack on Kurdistan, and his baseless belief that the shah of Iran would not intervene against him, for example, is very powerful.
I can only begin to touch on Pollack's nuanced and well-supported portrait of Saddam, but the point of all this is that Saddam cannot be deterred. Yes, Pollack does believe that the one line Saddam is relatively unlikely to cross is direct and unprovoked attack on Israel or the United States. Although even here Pollack acknowledges important circumstances in which such attacks may indeed occur.
But what Pollack stresses is the terrible danger that, once in possession of nuclear weapons, Saddam will take this as a license to invade Kuwait, and otherwise terrorize the Middle East. The real danger from Saddam's possession of nuclear weapons is the conviction they will create in Saddam that he can act with impunity in the region, safe in the knowledge that the U.S. or Israel will not dare attack him (for fear of risking nuclear annihilation of their troops).
Containment simply won't work against this guy. His history is specific, and the nature of one-man totalitarian states in general, make this abundantly clear.
It's in the Dossier
(
Review) James S. Robbins takes a look at the Blair government's dossier on Iraq, and, in passing, takes a few swipes at Iraq's PR hack Scott Ritter.
Former UNSCOM inspector Scott Ritter has lately been making a career of being a gadfly on the disarmament issue. He has consistently denied the existence of the threat the white paper seeks to explicate. His argument rests on two premises: First, the original inspection and disarmament effort destroyed around 95 percent of Iraqi WMD R&D and production capabilities. Second, since 1998 when the inspectors were ejected, Iraq has not been able to import the materials necessary to reconstitute this capability. Therefore, no new WMD threat can have emerged. A logical conclusion — if you accept the highly questionable premises.
Take the first one. How can you know for certain when you have destroyed a given percentage of a covert program? If your initial estimate of what constituted 100% was wrong, you would not know it. As Dr. Robert L. Pfaltzgraff Jr. of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy used to tell us in class back in the Cold War days, "we have never uncovered a successful Soviet deception operation." The statement is tautological — and indisputable. In the case of Iraq we can more reliably say that UNSCOM dismantled 95 percent of the weapons programs it knew about, and left behind 100 percent of that which the Iraqis managed to conceal.
Now the second premise. How can you know whether or not Iraq has illegally and covertly imported the banned and tightly controlled materials it needs for weapons development? Ritter's answer: He has examined the customs forms. Based on that reasoning, I can confidently state that illegal narcotics imports to the United States have totally dried up or been blocked — the customs paper trail discloses seizure after seizure. No documents show the drugs getting through. Ultimately Ritter's second assumption falls to the same reasonable skepticism as the first — things which by their nature are likely to be hidden cannot be assumed nonexistent just because you can't easily find them, especially if you are only looking at shipping manifests.
The best arguments against the dossier are still tripe.
Democrats looking for a reason
(
Review) The nomination of Miguel Estrada to the Federal Bench is shaping up to be a knock-down, drag-out fight about...nothing.
Democratic behavior in the Senate Judiciary Committee is disgraceful.
Why People don't trust the Democrats on National Security
(
Review) Tom Daschle is upset that President Bush is slamming Democrats for their lack of interest in National Security, or rather, their willingness to make it a secondary concern to ensuring that their special interests are satisfied. The president's willingness to tell the truth about this is "politicizing" the issue in Mr. Daschle's view.
I say the issue should be politicized. That's what living in a democratic society is all about.
Fisking Al Gore
(
Review) Al Gore's Speech before the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco is too long to fisk in its entirety. But the key points of the speech should be addressed, in order to demonstrate Mr. Gore's complete unfitness for the office of the presidency.
Like all Americans I have been wrestling with the question of what our country needs to do to defend itself from the kind of intense, focused and enabled hatred that brought about September 11th, and which at this moment must be presumed to be gathering force for yet another attack. I'm speaking today in an effort to recommend a specific course of action for our country which I believe would be preferable to the course recommended by President Bush. Specifically, I am deeply concerned that the policy we are presently following with respect to Iraq has the potential to seriously damage our ability to win the war against terrorism and to weaken our ability to lead the world in this new century.
Leadership, Mr. Gore, consists of determining a direction, then encouraging others to follow. You do not lead by finding out what the UN or the "international community" wants to do, and then following their desires. Whatever else that may be, it is not leadership.
The plain truth is that you do not want America to lead. You prefer an America that stays comfortably in the middle of the pack of world opinion. Trouble with that idea arises, however, if world opinion desires something that is contrary to the best interests of the American people. Europeans, for instance, want American taxes raised to European levels, so that the price of their goods will become more competitive as tax costs drive the price of American goods higher. Acceding to such demands would probably not define "leadership" in such a way as to be acceptable to the American people.
The argument you make raises legitimate questions about whether you are more interested in defending American interests than in submitting to the desires of the world community when those two factors are in conflict.
To begin with, I believe we should focus our efforts first and foremost against those who attacked us on September 11th and have thus far gotten away with it. The vast majority of those who sponsored, planned and implemented the cold blooded murder of more than 3,000 Americans are still at large, still neither located nor apprehended, much less punished and neutralized. I do not believe that we should allow ourselves to be distracted from this urgent task simply because it is proving to be more difficult and lengthy than predicted. Great nations persevere and then prevail. They do not jump from one unfinished task to another.
Maybe you haven't been keeping up with current events, Mr. Gore. The Taliban has been destroyed. Al-Qaida's bases in Afghanistan have been demolished. Hundreds of Al-Qaida's members have been killed and the remainder driven into hiding. Osama bin Laden has been suspiciously out of sight for months. A number of Senior Al-Qaida officials, and hundreds more of their members, now reside in prison camps in Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere.
Surely, you remember all that activity in Afghanistan, don't you, Mr. Gore? You know, the place where we were going to get bogged down in a quagmire during the Harsh Afghan Winter?
To define removing the current Iraqi regime as a "distraction" is so obtuse as to defy credulity. We already know that Hussein is hand in hand with Al-Qaida and other terrorist groups. Indeed, it has long been recognized that state sponsorship, such as that provided by Iraq, is indispensable for terrorist networks to survive over the long term. Regime change in Iraq is a key element in the war against terror.
And you should know that. You used to. Please review some of your speeches during the 2000 election campaign, when you pledged that Regime Change in Iraq would be one of your key policies for the region.
We are perfectly capable of staying the course in our war against Osama Bin Laden and his terrorist network, while simultaneously taking those steps necessary to build an international coalition to join us in taking on Saddam Hussein in a timely fashion.
I don't think that we should allow anything to diminish our focus on avenging the 3,000 Americans who were murdered and dismantling the network of terrorists who we know to be responsible for it. The fact that we don't know where they are should not cause us to focus instead on some other enemy whose location may be easier to identify.
You know, it's kind of hard to follow these inconsistencies when they come at you in such a whiplash fashion. If we are "perfectly capable" of taking on both Al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein at the same time, then how does doing so "diminish our focus"? Either we are perfectly capable or we are not. We can't be both.
Nevertheless, President Bush is telling us that the most urgent requirement of the moment - right now - is not to redouble our efforts against Al Qaeda, not to stabilize the nation of Afghanistan after driving his host government from power, but instead to shift our focus and concentrate on immediately launching a new war against Saddam Hussein.
Well, what would you have the military be doing right now against Al-Qaida, Mr. Gore? I notice your speech is a bit deficient with such suggestions, and I also know why.
If Al-Qaida has scattered to the winds as a result of our campaign in Afghanistan, then tracking them down becomes more of a police matter, requiring a very small number of troops. It's not like III Armored Corps has to be standing by just in case we discover an Al-Qaida cell in downtown Islamabad. A squad of rangers will be more than enough.
If there is no longer a cohesive Al-Qaida military force hanging about anywhere—and despite your protestations of impotence in dealing with Al-Qaida, there isn't any more—then it seems to me like the military as a whole is now free to go in other directions if the President elects to do so.
And he is proclaiming a new, uniquely American right to pre-emptively attack whomsoever he may deem represents a potential future threat.
Yes, he is. He conceives it to be his primary duty to defend the interests of the United States. Obviously, you believe the chief duty of the president to be something different. That is why, to borrow from Hunter S. Thompson, the sun will set in a blazing red sky to the east of Casablanca before you ever become president.
Moreover, he is demanding in this high political season that Congress speedily affirm that he has the necessary authority to proceed immediately against Iraq and for that matter any other nation in the region, regardless of subsequent developments or circumstances. The timing of this sudden burst of urgency to take up this cause as America's new top priority, displacing the war against Osama Bin Laden, was explained by the White House Chief of Staff in his now well known statement that "from an advertising point of view, you don't launch a new product line until after labor day."
Well, if the representatives of your party in Congress really believes that, then they can just vote against such a resolution. Problem solved, huh?
But, of course, we know as well as you do that that isn't the problem. The real problem is that your party's representatives in general oppose an attack on Iraq, but they know that a vote against action in Iraq will cost them votes in the election. The real reason they are upset is because they are afraid to submit their actual views to the electorate.
Nevertheless, Iraq does pose a serious threat to the stability of the Persian Gulf and we should organize an international coalition to eliminate his access to weapons of mass destruction. Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to completely deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power. Moreover, no international law can prevent the United States from taking actions to protect its vital interests, when it is manifestly clear that there is a choice to be made between law and survival. I believe, however, that such a choice is not presented in the case of Iraq. Indeed, should we decide to proceed, that action can be justified within the framework of international law rather than outside it. In fact, though a new UN resolution may be helpful in building international consensus, the existing resolutions from 1991 are sufficient from a legal standpoint.
Huh? I mean, what the &#%$ is the POINT of this paragraph?
"We can't deter Saddam Hussein. He will continue to seek WMD. We don't need UN approval to defend our vital interests. So we need UN approval to disarm Iraq. But we don't need UN approval, because we already got it in 1991."
Jesus, do
you know what the &#%$ you're trying to say?
We also need to look at the relationship between our national goal of regime change in Iraq and our goal of victory in the war against terror. In the case of Iraq, it would be more difficult for the United States to succeed alone, but still possible. By contrast, the war against terror manifestly requires broad and continuous international cooperation. Our ability to secure this kind of cooperation can be severely damaged by unilateral action against Iraq. If the Administration has reason to believe otherwise, it ought to share those reasons with the Congress - since it is asking Congress to endorse action that might well impair a more urgent task: continuing to disrupt and destroy the international terror network.
One of the key ways to destroy international terrorism is to destroy the states that support it. Al-Qaida isn't going to create a nuclear bomb on their own in a cave somewhere. If they get one, it will be because a rogue state like Iraq will supply them with one freely. You cannot bifurcate the war on terror out from a war on states that sponsor terrorism. State sponsorship is effectively the source of terrorism. Destroy the source, and the remaining dregs will be much easier to kill. Pretending otherwise is a prescription for an interminable war against the symptoms, rather than the disease.
I was one of the few Democrats in the U.S. Senate who supported the war resolution in 1991. And I felt betrayed by the first Bush administration's hasty departure from the battlefield, even as Saddam began to renew his persecution of the Kurds of the North and the Shiites of the South - groups we had encouraged to rise up against Saddam.
Really, Al? That's funny, because on April 18, 1991, in a speech before the Senate, you said: "I want to state this clearly, President Bush should not be blamed for Saddam Hussein's survival to this point. There was throughout the war a clear consensus that the United States should not include the conquest of Iraq among its objectives. On the contrary, it was universally accepted that our objective was to push Iraq out of Kuwait, and it was further understood that when this was accomplished, combat should stop."
So, the question is, were you lying then, or are you lying now?
It is worth noting, however, that the conditions in 1991 when that resolution was debated in Congress were very different from the conditions this year as Congress prepares to debate a new resolution. Then, Saddam had sent his armies across an international border to invade Kuwait and annex its territory. This year, 11 years later, there is no such invasion; instead we are prepared to cross an international border to change the government of Iraq. However justified our proposed action may be, this change in role nevertheless has consequences for world opinion and can affect the war against terrorism if we proceed unilaterally.
Oh. So you admit it's justified.
So, let's see if I get this straight. Regime change would be a good thing. It is a vital American interest. We already have the legal authority to do it from the UN. But we can't, because people might get mad at us.
So that's what you mean when you talk about "leading the world" in the 21st century, huh, Al? A leadership where world opinion is more important than vital American interests?
If that's your platform, then
please run for president in 2004. Pretty please! Because I haven't seen a 48-state landslide since 1980, and I think it would be neat to see one again.
Secondly, in 1991, the first President Bush patiently and skillfully built a broad international coalition. His task was easier than that confronted his son, in part because of Saddam's invasion of Kuwait. Nevertheless, every Arab nation except Jordan supported our military efforts and some of them supplied troops. Our allies in Europe and Asia supported the coalition without exception. Yet this year, by contrast, many of our allies in Europe and Asia are thus far opposed to what President Bush is doing and the few who support us condition their support on the passage of a new U.N. resolution.
Well, that's not entirely true. Our European allies are, in fact, split on the matter. Germany and France are against it. But many other European states support our position. And of those who don't support unilateral action, most would support action under a UN mandate.
Third, in 1991, a strong United Nations resolution was in place before the Congressional debate ever began; this year although we have residual authority based on resolutions dating back to the first war in Iraq, we have nevertheless begun to seek a new United Nations resolution and have thus far failed to secure one.
The implication of this paragraph, which is so disingenuous to count as an outright lie, is that we have been unable to obtain the support of the UN, because they have rejected our policy. That is, of course, entirely untrue.
As far as a Security Council resolution goes, we have "thus far failed to secure one" because we have "thus far" failed to ask for one. There has not been a Security Council vote on the matter "thus far". We've just begun working through the UN process. And "thus far" what we have seen "thus far" is Iraqi acquiescence to our demands through the UN.
We are, however, working with the Russians and the French on a draft for such a resolution. When in due course, we get a vote on it, your argument will be inoperative.
Fourth, the coalition assembled in 1991 paid all of the significant costs of the war, while this time, the American taxpayers will be asked to shoulder hundreds of billions of dollars in costs on our own.
Yes, just like the American public was forced to shoulder the cost of the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, the First World War, the Second World War, The Korean War, and the War in Vietnam.
There is an odd little rule, which evidently comes as a complete surprise to Mr. Gore, that when the United States goes to war to defend American interests, the people of the United States get to pay for it. That's why Congress is supposed to approve such wars.
The Gulf War was indeed a good deal. It was the exception, rather than the rule, however.
Although, what relevance this point has to…well…anything, is beyond me.
Fifth, President George H. W. Bush purposely waited until after the mid-term elections of 1990 to push for a vote at the beginning of the new Congress in January of 1991. President George W. Bush, by contrast, is pushing for a vote in this Congress immediately before the election. Rather than making efforts to dispel concern at home an abroad about the role of politics in the timing of his policy, the President is publicly taunting Democrats with the political consequences of a "no" vote - even as the Republican National Committee runs pre-packaged advertising based on the same theme -- in keeping with the political strategy clearly described in a White House aide's misplaced computer disk, which advised Republican operatives that their principal game plan for success in the election a few weeks away was to "focus on the war."
Yeah, that just sucks, doesn't it? Forcing the democratically elected representatives of the American people to defend their views before the electorate. How crass! How dare he!
As every good Democrat knows, it the inalienable right of Democrats to hide their views from the electorate, in order to deceive them into electing Democrats to office. It never occurs to Democrats that if they can be taunted by the political consequences of their opinions, then it is their opinions that are at fault, since they are in conflict with the opinions of the voters they are elected to represent.
What more clear evidence does one need to show the utter contempt the Democrats have for the wishes of the electorate?
Vice President Cheney, meanwhile indignantly described suggestions of political motivation "reprehensible." The following week he took his discussion of war strategy to the Rush Limbaugh show.
Oh, no! Rush Limbaugh! As is well know, anything that Limbaugh talks about is clear evidence that Satan is involved. Indeed, Rush Limbaugh may BE Satan.
That aside, many of believe that what is truly reprehensible is the unwillingness of the Democrats to honestly set their views before the electorate.
The foreshortening of deliberation in the Congress robs the country of the time it needs for careful analysis of what may lie before it. Such consideration is all the more important because of the Administration's failure thus far to lay out an assessment of how it thinks the course of a war will run - even while it has given free run to persons both within and close to the administration to suggest that this will be an easy conquest. Neither has the Administration said much to clarify its idea of what is to follow regime change or of the degree of engagement it is prepared to accept for the United States in Iraq in the months and years after a regime change has taken place.
The "foreshortening" of the debate has been going on since January. The president's position has been that a free and democratic Iraq is the goal of the administration, whatever it may take to accomplish it. If the Democrats still don't know what the President's position is on the issue, then they never will.
By shifting from his early focus after September 11th on war against terrorism to war against Iraq, the President has manifestly disposed of the sympathy, good will and solidarity compiled by America and transformed it into a sense of deep misgiving and even hostility. In just one year, the President has somehow squandered the international outpouring of sympathy, goodwill and solidarity that followed the attacks of September 11th and converted it into anger and apprehension aimed much more at the United States than at the terrorist network - much as we manage to squander in one year's time the largest budget surpluses in history and convert them into massive fiscal deficits. He has compounded this by asserting a new doctrine - of preemption.
Well, as someone else wrote, and I can't for the moment remember who, if it takes the deaths of 3,000 Americans to acquire such solidarity, and it can be squandered so easily, then it is a coin that is hardly worth our while to obtain. Moreover, fear of America among the tin-pot dictators of the Third World is not a bad thing. Quite the reverse.
As far as the squandering of the surplus goes, one notes that the Democrats don't appear especially willing to make spending cuts to eliminate it. Their solution, as always, is to confiscate ever greater amounts of wealth from the American people.
The doctrine of preemption is based on the idea that in the era of proliferating WMD, and against the background of a sophisticated terrorist threat, the United States cannot wait for proof of a fully established mortal threat, but should rather act at any point to cut that short.
The problem with preemption is that in the first instance it is not needed in order to give the United States the means to act in its own defense against terrorism in general or Iraq in particular. But that is a relatively minor issue compared to the longer-term consequences that can be foreseen for this doctrine. To begin with, the doctrine is presented in open-ended terms, which means that if Iraq if the first point of application, it is not necessarily the last. In fact, the very logic of the concept suggests a string of military engagements against a succession of sovereign states: Syria, Libya, North Korea, Iran, etc., wherever the combination exists of an interest in weapons of mass destruction together with an ongoing role as host to or participant in terrorist operations. It means also that if the Congress approves the Iraq resolution just proposed by the Administration it is simultaneously creating the precedent for preemptive action anywhere, anytime this or any future president so decides.
Yes. That's exactly right. Either we are engaged in a war on terrorism or we are not. If we are, then states that sponsor terrorism are legitimate targets.
One notes, again, the Mr. Gore does not offer an alternative strategy. Mainly, I suspect that's because his strategy would be to wait until Detroit, or Chicago, or Los Angeles is immolated in nuclear fire before doing anything. Assuming, of course, that he would do anything, even then.
The Bush Administration may now be realizing that national and international cohesion are strategic assets. But it is a lesson long delayed and clearly not uniformly and consistently accepted by senior members of the cabinet. From the outset, the Administration has operated in a manner calculated to please the portion of its base that occupies the far right, at the expense of solidarity among Americans and between America and her allies.
I don't know about Mr. Gore, but when I look at the polls, I see an overwhelming amount of support for an attack on Iraq. As far as our allies go, I suggest that it is the duty of the government to protect the lives and property of the American people, rather than the feelings of our allies. Moreover, as I addressed previously, our allies are not as uniformly opposed to US action in Iraq as Mr. Gore pretends.
But, one gets the dominant impression that protecting the lives of American citizens and property really isn't the chief concern of Mr. Gore, so this shouldn’t come as an real surprise.
Americans 2 - Germans 0
(
Review) The Houston
Chronicle's Cragg Hines reminds the Germans that we've already learned how to deal with them when they get troublesome.
The Bush White House, which is intimately acquainted with ham-fistedness, is perfectly justified in seeing Schroeder's last-minute whooping it up in opposition to a military attack on Iraq as excessive. The White House had made it clear to Schroeder that he would not be asked to take a position on Iraq in advance of the election, which also makes his America-bashing gratuitous.
That means, as one analyst was quoted as saying, Schroeder could have gotten through the election with "but, but, but" instead of "no, no, no." But "but" might not have appealed viscerally enough to the cloud-cuckooland passivism of a significant slice of the German electorate. (OK, OK, so maybe that's better than the cloud-cuckooland militarism of a former significant segment of the German electorate. We wouldn't want to be seen as suggesting a sense of balance to our good friends, would we?)
As Winston Churchill once said, "The Hun is either at your feet or at your throat."
Mikey Doesn't like it
(
Review Michael Kelley describes the All Gore speech of a few days ago as "a despicable speech from a contemptible man".
Gore's speech was one no minimally decent politician could have delivered. It was entirely dishonest, cheap, low. It was utterly hollow. It was bereft of policy, of solutions, of constructive ideas, very nearly of facts — bereft of anything other than taunts and jibes and embarrassingly obvious lies. It was breathtakingly hypocritical, a naked political assault delivered in smarmy tones of moral condescension from a man pretending to be superior to mere politics. It was wretched. It was vile. It was contemptible. But I understate.
Wow. He dislikes Al Gore even more than
I do.
Iraq needs inspections with teeth
(
Review) Pejman Yousefzadeh writes that the Iraqi dictator's inspection agreement is disingenuous and dangerous.
Al Gore is a liar, but, then, we already knew that
Al Gore, in his speech to the Commonwealth Club two days ago, said that, when the Bush Administration ended the war in the Gulf back in 1991, he felt "betrayed". Really? That's odd. As Brit Hume pointed out on FOXNews earlier this hour, back in April of 1991, in a speech from the Senate floor, then-Senator Gore, praised the Bush (41) administration, and defended the decision not to go to Baghdad as the right decision.
Once again, the celebrated inventor of the internet, also known as the protagonist of "Love Story", seems to have difficulty remembering his own past.
This guy will do anything, or say anything to be elected president.
UPDATE: The FOXNews story on this can be found
here.
Unconditional?
(
Review) Iraq's government now says they will offer "unfettered" access to weapons inspectors. We'll see.
Another judge strikes down the death penalty
(
Review) US District Court JUdge William Sessions has ruled the 1994 federal death penalty act to be unconstitutional due to lack of procedural safeguards.
It'll take more than that, Gerhard
(
Review) Bundeskanzler Gerhard Schroeder has fired two cabinet ministers who offended President Bush. Now that he won the Chancellorship by blasting the Bush Administration for everything but he common cold, now he wants to start buddying up again.
We'll wait for a chancellor from the CDU, thank you very much.
They just don't get it
(
Review) Joinah Goldberg explains that much of the world just doesn't get what makes the US tick.
The smoking Gun
(
Review) The full draft of the UK government's dossier on Iraq can be found here.
Will wonders never cease?
(
Review) Even the editors of the LA
Times are taking a hard line on Iraq.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan was elated when he announced last week that Iraq would readmit weapons inspectors. Oops. Turns out that Iraq says it won't abide by any new U.N. resolution permitting monitors to enter key presidential compounds, which, of course, are some of the sites that may contain the worst of Iraq's weapons. The truth is that Iraq has turned any weapons inspections into an exercise in futility. Hussein apparently thinks he can go back to his old tricks--promise one thing one day, another the next. Once the inspectors arrive, he blocks their efforts.
Annan was absolutely right to warn the Iraqis on Monday "not to hedge on their acceptance" of weapons inspections or any new Security Council resolutions. Now the U.N. Security Council needs to reach a quick resolution that leaves Hussein no outs.
If the Security Council fails to act, the UN will have sunk into Leage of Nations irrelevance.
Tony Blair makes the case
(
Review) Tony Blair has made the case in parliament for disarming Iraq, come what may. Using information from the Joint Intelligence Committee, whose work is usually secret, Blair laid out precisely what efforts Saddam Husein is making to arm himself with WMD. He says the information proves that it is time to act.
Why now? People ask. I agree I cannot say that this month or next, even this year or next, that he will use his weapons. But I can say that if the international community having made the call for his disarmament, now, at this moment, at the point of decision, shrugs its shoulders and walks away, he will draw the conclusion dictators faced with a weakening will, always draw: That the international community will talk but not act; will use diplomacy but not force; and we know, again from our history, that diplomacy, not backed by the threat of force, has never worked with dictators and never will work.
If we take this course, he will carry on, his efforts will intensify, his confidence grow and at some point, in a future not too distant, the threat will turn into reality. The threat therefore is not imagined. The history of Saddam and weapons of mass destruction is not American or British propaganda. The history and the present threat are real.
And if people say: why should Britain care? I answer: because there is no way that this man, in this region above all regions, could begin a conflict using such weapons and the consequences not engulf the whole world.
If Britain had this man as Prime Minister in 1935, history might have taken a far different turn.
Another inspector's point of view
(
Review) Dick Spertzel, United Nations' chief biological weapons inspector in Iraq from 1994 to 1998, doesn't appear to agree with Iraqi tool Scott Ritter at all. In fact, he thinks, as I do, that Iraq's agreement to allow inspectors to return is a sham.
Wellcome to a totalitarian country
(
Review) US Rep Nick Rahall (D-WVa) writes in the NY
Times that, despite being an opponent of war against Iraq, and travelling to Iraq as part of a Lefty "peace group" his meeting with Saddam Hussein was cancelled, as was his speech before the Iraqi National Assembly.
The Iraqis wanted to take him to one of their "Nuclear Sites" so that he could declare that nothing untoward was going on there. In Rahall's words:
Our hosts wanted to take us immediately to a facility that had been identified as a possible nuclear weapons factory--they wanted to prove that the charges were false. I declined, stating that I was not a weapons inspector and was not going to be put in the position of vouching for anyone's innocence. The rest of the group refused to go, too.
Things went downhill from there.
Rep. Rahall was evidently shocked--
shocked!--to learn that the Iraqi regime wanted to use his visit for propaganda purposes, and that, once he declined, no one in the Iraqi regime was particularly interested in having his group around.
Welcome to the real world, Nick. In the real world, totalitarian dictators are cynical and ruthless, and their only real interest in people of your ilk is in their role as useful idiots. A role, by the way, that far too many people on your side of the political spectrum are positively giddy to play.
Welcome to Bizarro-World
(
Review) Greg Buete thinks he knows why the regime of Saddam Hussein has supporters like Scott Ritter. They're from Bizarro World.
Containment Won't Work
(
Review) My TCS column is up. This week, I talk about containment, and why it could work against the USSR, but not effectively against a regime like that in Iraq.
Megan Rocks
If you don't belive me, check out
this and
this. Absolutely, wonderfully done.
Al weighs in
(
Review) Former Vice President Al Gore weighed in in Iraq today, and put himself firmly in the pacifist camp. Thank God this weasel didn't become president.
A lawyer's obligation
(
Review) As we now know, Stephen Feldman, the lawyer for David Westerfield, knew his client was guilty as sin. Feldman was working an a plea deal with the San Diego DA where Westerfield would plead guilty, tell the DA where 7 year-old Danielle Van Damm's body was, in return for escaping the death sentence. The deal fell through literally minutes from completion because searcher's found Van Damm's body.
Yet, during the Westefield triel, Feldman not only did everything he could to cast doubt on the prosecution's evidence, but presented an alternative theory to the jury, in an effort to show that the Van Damm parents' unconventional lifestyle could have introduced their dughter's killer into the home.
This was a lie, and Feldman knew it to be a lie. Westerfield jurors were shocked and stunned when they learned, after the trial, the details of this plea agreement, and realized that Feldman knowing lied to them.
So the question--and it is an important one--is this: What is a lawyer's duty when he knows his client is, in fact, guilty?
Wanting the wrong war
(
Review) Joe Biden is all for war against Iraq, just not the war President Bush wants.
Morally confused, Siruation normal
(
Review) David Brooks has written a powerful article about the moral confusion of thge Left over the issue of Iraq. One should not, of course, be surprised at the idea of moral confusion on the Left, since they have, after all, been wrong on every major foreign policy issue of my lifetime.
Brooks catalogues the current evasions of the left, the "Fog of Peace" that is largely of their own making. A few snippets:
For example, on September 19, a group of peaceniks took out a full-page ad in the New York Times opposing the campaign in Afghanistan and a possible campaign in Iraq. Signatories included all the usual suspects: Jane Fonda, Edward Said, Barbara Ehrenreich, Tom Hayden, Gore Vidal, Ed Asner, and on and on. In the text of the ad, which runs to 15 paragraphs, Saddam Hussein is not mentioned. Weapons of mass destruction are not mentioned. The risks posed by terrorists and terror organizations are not mentioned. Instead there are vague sentiments, ethereally removed from the tensions before us today: "Nations have the right to determine their own destiny, free from military coercion by great powers. . . . In our name, the government has brought down a pall of repression over society. . . . We refuse to be party to these wars and we repudiate any inference that they are being waged in our name." The entire exercise is a picture perfect example of moral exhibitionism, by a group of people decadently refusing even to acknowledge the difficulties and tradeoffs that confront those who actually have to make decisions about policy.
...
Reviewing Noam Chomsky, legal scholar Richard Falk, a member of the editorial board of the Nation, observes that while he agrees with much of what Chomsky writes, he is troubled by the fact that Chomsky is "so preoccupied with the evils of U.S. imperialism that it completely occupies all the political and moral space."
That is exactly what you see in the writings of the peace camp generally--not only in Chomsky's work but also in the writings of people who are actually tethered to reality. Their supposed demons--Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Doug Feith, Donald Rumsfeld, and company--occupy their entire field of vision, so that there is no room for analysis of anything beyond, such as what is happening in the world. For the peace camp, all foreign affairs is local; contempt for and opposition to Wolfowitz, Perle, Rumsfeld, et al. is the driving passion. When they write about these figures it is with a burning zeal. But on the rare occasions when they write about Saddam, suddenly all passion drains away. Saddam is boring, but Wolfowitz tears at their soul.
...
This is the dictionary definition of parochialism--the inability to consider the larger global threats because one is consumed by one's immediate domestic hatreds. This parochialism takes many forms, but all the branches of the opposition to the war in Iraq have one thing in common: Iraq is never the issue. Something else is always the issue.
...
This explains the strange passivity that has marked much of the Democratic response to Iraq. The president must "make the case," many Democrats say, as if they are incapable of informing themselves about what is potentially one of the greatest threats to the United States. Tom Daschle's entire approach to the Iraq issue has been governed by midterm considerations.
On September 18, as the U.N. was consumed by debate over Iraq, as the White House was drafting a war resolution on Iraq, Daschle delivered a major policy address. The subject? The tax cut Congress passed over a year ago. The speech, the New York Times reported, was "the beginning of a party-wide effort to turn attention away from Iraq and back to the domestic agenda." The United States is possibly on the verge of war, and Tom Daschle is trying to turn attention away from it. He's running around Capitol Hill looking for some sand to bury his head in. This is parochialism on stilts.
...
For a third branch of the parochialists, Iraq is not the issue, America is the issue. The historian Gabriel Kolko recently declared, "Everyone--Americans and those people who are the objects of their efforts--would be far better off if the United States did nothing, closed its bases overseas, withdrew its fleets everywhere and allowed the rest of the world to find its own way without American weapons and troops." For peaceniks in this school, the conditions of the world don't matter. Whether it is Korea, Germany, the Balkans, or the Middle East, America shouldn't be there because America is the problem. This is reverse isolationism: Whereas the earlier isolationists thought America should withdraw because the rest of the world was too corrupt, these isolationists believe that America should withdraw because the United States is too corrupt.
...
When you get deep enough into the peace camp you find fog about the fog. You find a generation of academic and literary intellectuals who have so devoted themselves to questioning meanings, deconstructing texts, decoding signifiers, and unmasking perspectives, they can't even make an argument anymore. Susan Sontag wrote a New York Times op-ed about metaphors and interpretations and about the meaning and categories of war. It filled up space on the page, but it didn't go anywhere.
Powerful stuff.
The Democrats' UN tradition
(
Review) Terence Jeffrey asks if Democrats will put the interests of the UN over those of the US. In his article, he recounts how Harry Truman got the US involved in Korea, without congressional authorization, in order to bolster the collective security theory behind the creation of the UN.
The UN, thanks to Truman and other internationalists, is now a fact of life in world politics. It will not go away any time soon. But as long as it survives there are two possibilities: The U.S. can serve as the UN’s instrument or the UN can serve as ours. President Bush has made clear who will call the tune as long as he is President. We shall soon see whether the Democrats dance with him—or with the UN.
Let's hope it's the former.
Duty-dodging Democrats deserve to lose
(
Review) Atlanta Journal-Constitution editorial page editor Cynthia Tucker has a few sharp words for the Democrats, and deservedly so. If they aren't willing to submit their votes on an attack on Iraq to the public before an election, they deserve to lose.
Those darn germans
Review) Tim Hames has the post-mortem on the weekend's elections in Germany.
It is too soon to tell whether the consequences of this extraordinary election outcome will be merely dismal, or disastrous. For, as the contest showed, the Chancellor has absolutely no idea what to do about the dire state of his national economy. His first term was marked by a feeble set of alleged “reforms”, coupled with a damaging new set of deadening “initiatives”. His instincts will be to shine a small torchlight on the German body politic when a huge electric shock is needed. His political accomplices, the Greens, did not even seem to want to remain in government six months ago — now they may have to put their sandals behind their desks again.
If this is an awful election outcome for Germany, it is at least a pretty decent one for Britain. For as long as both Jacques Chirac and Herr Schröder hang on to their jobs, the old Franco-German axis that once dominated the EU will not function effectively. They all but loathe each other and cannot operate together. The French political elite was openly desperate to see Herr Stoiber win this election.
The personal antipathy between the French and German leaders is largely, perhaps, because they are so similar (although, unlike the French President, Herr Schröder has the touching, if financially ruinous, habit of periodically marrying his mistresses). They are like rival lounge lizards circling around a disco full of teenagers. Neither of them would know a political philosophy if it stood in front of him, bathed in neon light and bearing a big badge blazing the words “Hi, I’m a political philosophy” (but if said outlook were blonde, decked out in a short skirt and wearing fishnet stockings, matters might just be different). Compared with these rogues, Tony Blair looks like a cross between King Solomon and St Francis of Assisi.
Getting to bash both a German
and a French leader. For a British journalist, this must be something close to heaven.
Pressure on Arafat
(
Review) The Israelis aren't going to kill the guy, but they are trying to do everything they can to force him into exile.
Not "unconditional" after all
(
Review) Saddam Hussein has decided that he will not accept any new UN resolutions vis a vis the disarming of Iraq. As Donald Rumsfeld
says:
“Anyone who has watched the past decade has seen the Iraqi government ... change their position depending on what they thought was tactically advantageous to them and kind of jerk the United Nations around,” he said on CNN. “So it is no surprise at all.”
No, it isn't. As
The Economist points out in this week's leader on the issue, Saddam Hussein already knows he will avoid inspections that get close to uncovering evidence of a WMD program. The only thing he doesn't know is when the avoidance will have to begin, and how far he will have to go when doing so.
Meanwhile, Iraq's newest PR hack Scott Ritter says:
"Iraq has agreed to laws that are in place and have been in place for a long time," he said.
"You cannot now go back once Iraq has agreed and change the laws.
"This is nothing more than Bush wanting a war with Iraq at any cost," added Mr Ritter.
Actually, if the UN wishes to incorporate an authorization for force if Iraq doesn't comply with inspections, they can. Iraq is already non-compliant. An authorization of force to enforce the existing resolutions is perfectly acceptable.
I have an abiding hatred for totalitarian regimes, and it extends to people like Ritter, who knowingly shill for them.
