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November 20, 2005
American Crack-Up
By David Warren
I begin to understand why the Bush administration so hesitated to defend itself, from the wild charges being made against its Iraq policy. Commentators, at least on the Right, were pulling their hair in frustration. And even on the pro-Bush Left: Christopher Hitchens told me, the other evening, that the reason he goes to such provocative lengths to defend the U.S. President and his foreign policy is that the guy "doesn't seem to do it himself".
Mr. Hitchens, and Salman Rushdie, though the most famous, are incidentally far from the only supporters the Bush Doctrine has had on the Left. Nor, as Mr. Hitchens is also wont to explain, is President Bush short of enemies on the Old Right, from the Brent Scowcroft Beltway school of "realpolitik", to the isolationist heartland. The view that Americans had better leave tar-babies alone, and that "stability" is the only value they should pursue in the oil-bearing Middle East, is rife not only outside the government, but throughout State Department and CIA. Whereas Mr. Hitchens, who describes himself as "not necessarily not still a Marxist", applauds Bush and Blair for being "on the right side of history", carrying the torch of democracy and secular modernity to the world's most intransigent states.
Neither a Marxist, nor a neoconservative (whatever that means), but still a militant Tory, I don't believe in sides of history. It's just one gigantic palpitating mess beyond the possibility of human comprehension, but we try to make the best of it as we go along. Principles there are, and none are relative, but there is the frequent embarrassment of competing principles, and sorting through their hierarchy of the moment requires something like prudence or tact. From the beginning, a major and sometimes necessarily military effort to eliminate radical Islamism from the available pool of the world's ideological resources, has struck me as both prudent and wise. (It was ditto with Nazism and Communism.)
What I'm getting at here, is that the Bush Doctrine of physical intervention against the worst evils, while seeding democracy on Mesopotamia's irrigated plain, can be defended or attacked from several points of view. The doctrine's principal defence has lain with its author, however, and over the last few years, he has done a good job of keeping it to himself.
In the last week, both Mr. Bush and his vice president have, suddenly, counter-attacked their domestic opponents. They have called the Democrats on the floor of Congress for using facts and arguments against the U.S. intervention in Iraq which are neither true nor, strictly speaking, sane. Their idea that Mr. Bush dragged his unwilling country into war, by means of some fraudulent intelligence data, is absurd. He in fact made good on a Clinton administration policy (get rid of Saddam), and on the basis of pretty much the same murky intelligence we all had. Moreover, many of the same Democrats (and now, a couple of unhinging Republicans) who supported him every step of the way, now claim either they didn't, or they were fooled. Take your pick, either claim is false.
There are other issues clouding the political field; but in the main, the administration's current effort to call the Democrats' bluff has not caused the latter to crawl back into their holes. It has instead driven them further into cloud cuckooland, with the mainstream media chasing behind. It has resulted in a level of shrieking the like of which I cannot recall in the august Senate chamber. And this, perhaps, was the reason Messrs Bush and Cheney hesitated to try it on before. They thought, perhaps, that just "being presidential" might finally carry the day. Better, anyway, than provoking a kind of bipartisan nervous breakdown.
I look at this business from abroad. I note that polls now show the American isolationist impulse being triggered. On both Right and Left, something approaching half the electorate want to take their marbles and go home. For some unaccountable reason, Americans sometimes respond to being abused and slandered all over the world by turning in on themselves. And this, in the present unsettled state of the world in question, would be nearly the worst thing that could happen. It would leave all of America's allies -- corresponding very roughly to the side of the angels -- up a certain creek without a propulsive device.
The world has left the United States to do too much heavy lifting. It is an urgent matter for countries like Canada to stop mouthing off and heave ho.
Senate adopts 'exit strategy' from reality
November 20, 2005
BY MARK STEYN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
A busy time in the U.S. Senate, the "world's greatest deliberative body." Judging from the 2006 conference report, the Senate subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Education -- Chairman Arlen Specter (R), ranking member Tom Harkin (D) -- has been deliberating especially hard:
"Sec. 221. (a) The Headquarters and Emergency Operations Center Building (Building 21) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is hereby renamed as the Arlen Specter Headquarters and Emergency Operations Center.
(b) The Global Communications Center Building (Building 19) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is hereby renamed as the Thomas R. Harkin Global Communications Center."
Good to see that even in the viciously partisan atmosphere of today's politics, Republicans and Democrats can still work together to carry out the people's business. In the same spirit, I wonder whether the Senate chamber itself should not be renamed the Abu Musab al-Zarqawi United States Senate. With increasingly rare exceptions, just about everything that emerges from the chamber tends to support the Zarqawi view of Iraq -- that this is a psychological war in which the Great Satan is an effete wimp who can be worn down and chased back to his La-Z-Boy recliner in Florida.
Last week, the Republican majority, to their disgrace and with 13 honorable exceptions, passed an amendment calling on the administration to lay out its "plan" for "ending" the war and withdrawing U.S. troops. They effectively signed on to the Democrat framing of the debate: that the only thing that matters is the so-called exit strategy. The only difference between Bill Frist's mushy Republicans and Harry Reid's shameless Democrats is that the latter want to put a firm date on withdrawal, so that Zarqawi's insurgents can schedule an especially big car bomb to coincide with the formal handover of the Great Satan's cojones.
"Exit strategy" is a defeatist's term. The only exit strategy that matters was summed up by George M. Cohan in the song the Doughboys sang as they marched off to the Great War nine decades ago:
"And we won't come back
Till it's over
Over there!"
And that's the timetable, too. If you want it fleshed out a bit, how about this? "The key issue is no longer WMD or even the role of the U.N. The central issue is America's credibility and will to prevail.'' That's Goh Chok Tong speaking in Washington last year. Unfortunately, he's not a U.S. senator, but the prime minister of Singapore, and thus ineligible to run, on the grounds that he's not a citizen of Blowhardistan. What does the Senate's revolting amendment tell America's enemies (Zarqawi) and "friends" (Chirac) about her will to prevail?
Any great power -- never mind the preeminent power of the age -- should be engaged with the world. That means, among other things, that it has a presence in those parts of the globe that are critical to its interest. For two years, the Democrats have assiduously peddled the line that Bush "lied" about Iraq. A slightly less contemptible class of critic has sneered that the administration never had any plans for postwar Iraq, hadn't a clue what it was getting into, couldn't tell the difference between a Sunni and a Shia and a Kurd if they were painted different colors and had neon signs flashing off the top of their heads. If there's anything to this feeble second-guessing, it's that the U.S. government simply didn't know enough about Iraq -- and, in a crude sense, they're right. U.S. taxpayers would be justified, for example, in feeling they're not getting their $44 billion worth from the intelligence community.
But the only way to know the country is to be there on the ground, in some form or other. I'm all for "Iraqification" -- though those Democrats urgently demanding everything be done by the locals will be the first to shriek in horror once the Iraqis start serious score-settling with the foreign insurgents. But, even with full-scale Iraqification, America would be grossly irresponsible if not clinically insane not to maintain some sort of small residual military presence somewhere in the western desert.
Sorry, but that's part of the deal of being the world's hyperpower. To pretend otherwise is an exit strategy from reality. If you're worried about the ''cost,'' stop garrisoning your wealthiest allies -- Germany, Japan et al. -- and thereby absolving them from stepping up to the traditional responsibilities of nationhood.
One expects nothing from the Democrats. Their leaders are men like Jay Rockefeller, Democrat of West Virginia, who in 2002 voted for the war and denounced Saddam Hussein as an "imminent threat" and claimed that Iraq could have nuclear weapons by 2007 if not earlier. Now he says it's Bush who "lied" his way into war with a lot of scary mumbo-jumbo about WMD.
What does Rockefeller believe, really? I know what Bush believes: He thought Saddam should go in 2002 and today he's glad he's gone, as am I. I know what, say, Michael Moore believes: He wanted to leave Saddam in power in 2002, and today he thinks the "insurgents" are the Iraqi version of America's Minutemen. But what do Rockefeller and Reid and Kerry believe deep down? That voting for the war seemed the politically expedient thing to do in 2002 but that they've since done the math and figured that pandering to the moveon.org crowd is where the big bucks are? If Bush is the new Hitler, these small hollow men are the equivalent of those grubby little Nazis whose whining defense was, "I was only obeying orders. I didn't really mean all that strutting tough-guy stuff." And, before they huff, "How dare you question my patriotism?", well, yes, I am questioning your patriotism -- because you're failing to meet the challenge of the times. Thanks to you, Iraq is a quagmire -- not in the Sunni Triangle, where U.S. armed forces are confident and effective, but on the home front, where soft-spined national legislators have turned the war into one almighty Linguini Triangle.
It's easy to laugh at the empty shell of a Jay Rockefeller, bragging about how he schmoozed Bashar Assad, dictator of a terrorist state, about Bush's war intentions. But look at the news from France and ask yourself what that's really about? At heart, it's the failure of Europe's political class to grasp the profound and rapid changes already under way. This Senate is making the same fatal error. I'd advocate throwing the bums out if there were any alternative bums to throw in. But maybe the Thomas R. Harkin Centers for Disease Control could persuade them to be the first deliberative body to donate itself to medical science.
© Mark Steyn, 2005
We read that differently, I don't think he was saying the defense was bad, should have started a whole lot earlier.Abbey Normal said:Interesting article, Kath. Thanks for posting it.
I still think it is better that Bush has defended his policy on Iraq. The shrieking and outrageous name-calling from the left happens sooner or later anyway. It's just their "toddler having a tantrum" style of discourse.
And just as with toddlers, we must not give in to the tantrums and give them that piece of candy or toy they are too young for. We must continue parenting them rationally and looking out for their best interests, since they are incapable of seeing what those are themselves.
Kathianne said:We read that differently, I don't think he was saying the defense was bad, should have started a whole lot earlier.
The dems are not going to just 'roll over' now that there is some pushback. They've controlled the spin and Bush/War in Iraq are seriously on the ropes. Al Queda must be emboldened and nearly 1/2 of the legislators don't care.
If we pull out now, US credibility will take nearly another 1/4 of a century to rebuild, if Vietnam is any measure. My hope is that the administration has seriously woken up to their duty to explain to the people WHY we are there and not here. They need to listen about the borders-polls really do serve some purpose and on this issue the administration really should be looking.
