Month: March 2003

In some ways, worse than the anti-war left. Good for David Frum and Jonah Goldberg for finally unleashing the assault on these rancid haters.

Great news from the Times of London: mass defections from the military, and the flight of one of Saddam’s top advisers.

Here’s an email that cheered me:

As a gay man, it took no effort for me to detest the collectivist ideology of the theocratic thugs of the far Right. But it was quite a while before I began to see something that I had long been feeling: that the victimist egalitopians of the Left are just as much in the thug category. You only need to cross them to find out that Noam Chomsky and Pat Robertson are twins. I live in San Francisco. My mildest dissents from the party line have most often been met with a two-pronged response: “You are far too intelligent to consider such a thing” and “Is something going wrong in your emotional life?”. I am in fact far too intelligent not to notice the combined condescension and abdication of thought therein expressed. And my emotional life is indeed in difficulty: Muslim terrorists want to destroy the civilization that makes my very existence possible and they blew a hole in my home town.
I come from a strong Catholic background, was a lifelong Democrat and I am a 60’s boomer. So appeals to “Justice and Peace” seemed to me only the Natural Form of Righteousness. Now I see that what is lacking there, and in almost all the Left, is “Freedom”. I have watched with increasing dismay as most of the idiots and the savants of the Left have lined up against President Bush’s response to 9/11. Not that his strategy is unassailable and without risk (what, in this world, could be?). But the smug and self-satisfied contempt with which they respond, especially to him as a person, has pulled the mask off. (Apparently cultural sensitivity does not extend to Texans and the maligned standard of IQ suddenly is back in vogue). None of them show anything near such a feeling for the Islamist thugs who slaughtered 3000 of their countrymen and women in a single morning.
I am afraid that my generation learned too well to love their enemies without ever learning how to stop hating their fathers. So that now, hatred of the father takes the form of love of the enemy. And inside all that is a toxic self-hatred that appalls me.

Maybe out of this horror, some new kind of Western self-understanding will emerge.

Hope springs up at Salon:

Today, the political counterculture and the antiwar movement in the West often seem to be one and the same. Instead of fighting fascists or other genocidal tyrants as it might have during the Spanish Civil War or World War II or even during the Central American conflicts of the 1980s, the modern left fights war; because the United States is the world’s most significant military agent, and because it has so often used military power to support anti-democratic governments, the left understandably fights the United States. Such opposition to war is reflexive, and too often outweighs its outrage on behalf of the oppressed.

That’s why today’s American left is the most important ally of some of the most depicable dictators and mass-murderers in the world. I guess the Cold War trained them well.

“Pardon the sardonic giggle: It arises from the thought that George W. Bush, the unelected President, is going to teach democracy to the Iraqis. When it comes to rigging or stealing elections, Mr. Bush and Saddam Hussein are brothers, or at least cousins, under the skin. The difference between the two is that Saddam gets 99.9 percent of the vote and Mr. Bush gets 49 percent, but they both get the job. Election returns giving the winner 99.9 percent-especially if there is but one candidate in the race-give rise to rumor and talk. By introducing the hanging chad to American-sponsored Iraqi democracy, Mr. Bush can show future Saddams how to look good when winning while losing.” – Nicholas von Hoffman, the man who predicted disaster in Afghanistan, amazingly still published, in the New York Observer.

Saddam uses chemical weapons? I’ve been thinking about that for weeks. There’s no doubt that U.S. and U.K. forces will prevail against them. But what of American public opinion if such horrors occur? Will there be a wobble? My view is that it will only confirm the justice of this intervention and its timeliness. I also believe that Saddam, if he wants to wound the United States, could not do anything more destructive to the cause of our enemies. Americans will feel one thing if such an atrocity occurs: rage. And more than Saddam will feel the ultimate consequences of that anger. There’s nothing we can do about it now, of course, except pray. So I’m praying – for an overwhelming, swift and casualty-scarce victory; that the worst won’t happen; that we haven’t waited too long; that the young men and women defending us know deeply that we are all behind them. God bless and save them. I’m inspired by the words of a soldier captured by Mike Kelly in Kuwait right now: “A thousand things can happen to make life absolutely miserable for us. There is not one thing that can happen to stop us.”

Those of you who read my postings and extracts yesterday of Tony Blair’s magnificent speech to the Commons will be aware of exactly how momemntous an occasion this was. This is how the New York Times spun it. That’s all you really need to know. Compare it with the fiercely anti-war newspaper in Britain, the paper that publishes Robert Fisk, the Independent. This is what their editorial says today:

Mr Blair has not shrunk from debate. He has taken the argument to all quarters of his restive party. He has allowed the Commons its say. And despite all the doubts about this war, Mr Blair has shown himself in the past few days to be at once the most formidable politician in the country and the right national leader for these deeply uncertain times.

Gracious; principled; smart. How different from the yuppie mewling of others.

As usual, Jon Rauch makes a huge amount of sense on the next pressing issue after Saddam.

EVEN THE GUARDIAN …: … notices how out of touch the BBC has become:

“[T]he impression has been given, on the BBC in particular, that public and expert opinion is strongly and almost exclusively opposed to military action. This expectation has entered the cultural stratum that the majority of broadcasters exist in, and so dominates that it has become that most dangerous of wisdoms – not so much orthodox, as axiomatic.

Could be describing Planet Raines as well.

A RIVETING RADIO EXCHANGE: A “peace” activist is confronted by an Iraqi exile on live radio.

FROM THE MOUTHS OF BABES: “Just thought I’d pass along a conversation that took place at our breakfast table yesterday. My daughter, who just turned seven in January, saw a picture of a women holding up a “No War” sign on the front page of our newspaper. She asked why the women was holding the sign. My wife told here that some people believe that you don’t have to fight wars in order to solve the world’s problems.
My daughter’s response? ‘Then how do you get the bad guys?'” – more reader comment, including a defense of Hans Blix, a critique of Oriana Fallaci, and a job offer for Jimmy Carter, on the Letters Page.

Dan Drezner notices an interesting surge of pro-U.S. sentiment in the far east.

BEGALA AWARD NOMINEE: “‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ describes a totalitarian future in a fundamentalist America, where young women are kept as reproductive slaves by aging patriarchs of the religious right and their barren wives, and ritually raped by both spouses. (The conceit seemed flimsy to me when the book was first published. Recent history has given it a faintly prophetic glimmer.)” – Judith Thurman, “The Wolf at the Door,” New Yorker, March 17.

THE SPIN FROM JENNINGS: A useful report from the conservative Media Research Center on the differences between ABC News’ coverage of the build-up to war with Iraq and that of CBS News and NBC. No surprise that Peter Jennings is clearly hostile to the Bush administration. But a bit of a surprise that he has had such a hard time concealing it. One simple example: a comparison between the networks’ description of the British Marxist Tony Benn’s fawning interview with Saddam Hussein:

CBS’s Bob Simon stood apart by describing Benn as “a 79-year-old British politician and lifelong left-wing activist.” NBC’s Andrea Mitchell explained Saddam “told an anti-war British politician he has no links to al-Qaeda and no illegal weapons.” But ABC tried to disguise Benn’s left-wing perspective as Peter Jennings intoned: “The Iraqi President, Saddam Hussein, has given his first television interview today, to a non-Iraqi, in 12 years. It was conducted by a former member of the British Parliament, Tony Benn, one of Britain’s most famous and outspoken politicians.” He couldn’t even identify Benn with the Labor Party, which would have informed at least the political junkies. Only late in the story did reporter Dan Harris reveal that Benn “said he conducted this interview to stop the war.”

I’m sorry to say I can’t watch Peter Jennings any more. But Nightline has been, in contrast, consistently superb.

I hope the editors of the New York Times absorb Tony Blair’s speech to the House of Commons this afternoon. It outlines in excruciating detail exactly what happened in the last couple of weeks. There is no question that it was France that scuppered any deal, any ultimatum, any attempt to get U.N. support for final pressure on Saddam. Not Cheney. Not Wolfowitz. Not Bush. France:

We then worked on a further compromise. We consulted the inspectors and drew up five tests based on the document they published on 7 March. Tests like interviews with 30 scientists outside of Iraq; production of the anthrax or documentation showing its destruction. The inspectors added another test: that Saddam should publicly call on Iraqis to cooperate with them. So we constructed this framework: that Saddam should be given a specified time to fulfil all six tests to show full cooperation; that if he did so the inspectors could then set out a forward work programme and that if he failed to do so, action would follow.

So clear benchmarks; plus a clear ultimatum. I defy anyone to describe that as an unreasonable position.

Last Monday, we were getting somewhere with it. We very nearly had majority agreement and I thank the Chilean President particularly for the constructive way he approached the issue.

There were debates about the length of the ultimatum. But the basic construct was gathering support.

Then, on Monday night, France said it would veto a second resolution whatever the circumstances. Then France denounced the six tests. Later that day, Iraq rejected them. Still, we continued to negotiate.

Last Friday, France said they could not accept any ultimatum. On Monday, we made final efforts to secure agreement. But they remain utterly opposed to anything which lays down an ultimatum authorising action in the event of non-compliance by Saddam.

Just consider the position we are asked to adopt. Those on the security council opposed to us say they want Saddam to disarm but will not countenance any new resolution that authorises force in the event of non-compliance.

That is their position. No to any ultimatum; no to any resolution that stipulates that failure to comply will lead to military action.

The failure of diplomacy is not the Bush administration’s fault. And the attempt to make that argument must deal with Blair’s chronology. The people of this country see it. It’s the partisan elites who are still blind to reality.

NO RUSH TO WAR: Blair also spelled out with stunning clarity the absolute vacuousness of the notion that we have been engaged in a “rush to war.” This wasn’t a Churchillian speech. It was a lawyer’s brief, backed by a Christian faith, a faith mocked by many, but a faith that can still see evil where others prefer not to look:

Our fault has not been impatience.

The truth is our patience should have been exhausted weeks and months and years ago. Even now, when if the world united and gave him an ultimatum: comply or face forcible disarmament, he might just do it, the world hesitates and in that hesitation he senses the weakness and therefore continues to defy.

What would any tyrannical regime possessing WMD think viewing the history of the world’s diplomatic dance with Saddam? That our capacity to pass firm resolutions is only matched by our feebleness in implementing them.

That is why this indulgence has to stop. Because it is dangerous. It is dangerous if such regimes disbelieve us.

Dangerous if they think they can use our weakness, our hesitation, even the natural urges of our democracy towards peace, against us.

Dangerous because one day they will mistake our innate revulsion against war for permanent incapacity; when in fact, pushed to the limit, we will act. But then when we act, after years of pretence, the action will have to be harder, bigger, more total in its impact. Iraq is not the only regime with WMD. But back away now from this confrontation and future conflicts will be infinitely worse and more devastating.

Can anyone honestly say he’s wrong about that?

THEN THE CLINCHER: “11 September has changed the psychology of America. It should have changed the psychology of the world. Of course Iraq is not the only part of this threat. But it is the test of whether we treat the threat seriously.” This speech is one of the finest any prime minister has given in the House of Commons. Period.