David Gelernter says it all in The Weekly Standard--and it's sad, isn't it, that it takes a conservative Republican and a partisan political journal to state the blindingly obvious?
I HEAR AND READ ALL THE TIME about Democratic fury; evidently, enraged Democrats are prepared to do whatever it takes to rid the country of George W. Bush's foul presence. Somehow Republican rage doesn't seem quite as newsworthy (and when it does show up, the storyline is usually "Republicans Angry at Bush"). To be fair, Republicans do control the presidency and both houses of Congress, and ought to be far gone in euphoria. But they are not. There are lots of unhappy and quite a few furious ones out there, and they are not all mad at the president. Some reporters will find this hard to believe, but quite a lot of them are actually mad at the Democrats.Yeah. And let me add a simple question: is there anything more stunningly, jaw-droppingly shallow than people who say, "North Korea is worse than Iraq, how come we don't invade North Korea, huh?"Consider Iraq. By overthrowing Saddam, we stopped a loathsome bloody massacre--a hell-on-earth that would have been all too easily dismissed as fantastic propaganda if we hadn't seen and heard the victims and watched the torturers on videotape. Now: There is all sorts of latitude for legitimate attack on the Bush administration and Iraq. A Bush critic could allege that our preparation was lousy, our strategy wrong, our postwar administration a failure, and so on ad infinitum . . . so long as he stays in ground-contact with the basic truth: This war was an unmitigated triumph for humanity. Everything we have learned since the end of full-scale fighting has only made it seem more of a triumph.
But Democratic talk about Iraq is dominated not by the hell and horror we abolished or the pride and joy of what we achieved. Many Democrats mention Saddam's crimes only grudgingly. What they really want to discuss is how the administration "lied" about WMDs (one of the more infantile accusations in modern political history), how (thanks to Iraq) our allies can't stand us anymore, how (on account of Iraq) we are shortchanging the war on terror. But don't you understand, a listener wants to scream, that Saddam's government was ripping human flesh to shreds? Was consuming whole populations by greedy mouthfuls, masticating them, drooling blood? Committing crimes that are painful even to describe? Don't you understand what we achieved by liberating Iraq, what mankind achieved? When we hear about Saddam and his two sons, how can we help but think of the three-faced Lucifer at the bottom of Dante's hell?--"with six eyes he was weeping and over three chins dripped tears and bloody foam," Con sei occhi piangea, e per tre menti / gocciava 'l pianto e sanguinosa bava, as he crushes human life between his teeth.
I could understand the Democrats' insisting that this was no Republican operation; "we were in favor of it too, we voted for it too, and then voted more money to fund it; we want some credit!" Those would be reasonable political claims. But if you talk as if this war were one big, stupid blunder that we are stuck with and have to make the best of--you are nowhere near shouting distance of reality; people would suspect your sanity if you were not a politician already. Instead of insisting that the war belongs to them, too, Democrats are running top speed in the other direction. Howard Dean led the way on this flight from duty, honor, and truth, but it didn't take long for most of the nation's prominent Democrats (with a few honorable exceptions) to jump aboard the Dean express--which is now, absent Dean, a runaway train.
People ask, why this big deal about Saddam? "Isn't X evil too, and what about Y, and how can you possibly ignore Z?" But we aren't automata; we are able to make distinctions. Some evil is beyond our power to stop. That doesn't absolve us from stopping what we can. All cruelty is bad. Yet some cruel and evil men are worse than others. By any standard we did right by overthrowing Saddam--and do wrong by denying or belittling that fact.
WHAT PART OF "THEY HAVE NUCLEAR WEAPONS" DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND, PEOPLE?!?
[Whew!]
Okay, with that out of the way, go read the rest of Gelernter's piece. It's all right on the money.
You want to talk angry? Every day, in every way, I grow more disgusted an appalled by Democrats and their behavior. I keep waiting for the Liebermans, Bidens, and Clintons, and sensible leaders like our Governor Granholm here in Michigan, to save their party from the madness. But the sane ones seem to be permanently sidelined. The Democratic leadership has swilled down the Howard Dean Kool-Aid, and is pulling the rest of the party into their madness.
The Republic will survive either way. And yes, the Democatic Party will come back to sanity eventually--these periods of insanity hit both parties periodically. But Christ, it's hard to watch. Especially when we're in the middle of a freaking war.
Yes, we've gone through worse as a nation. A lot worse. It's just sickeningly disappointing.
* Update * I forgot to thank Mal for the link. Mal also suggested that I like Ron Rosenbaum's 'Goodbye, All That'. I've linked it a couple of times before, but it's definitely worth linking again. Everyone should read it.
Kim has Nukes?!? Well, in that case, nevermind....Mop 3 suits and body armor are no match for THOSE kind of WMD's.
I heard a rumor that France had nukes too, we better not piss them off anymore. China and Russia Ditto.
I wouldn't invade any nation with nuclear weapons. Would you?
"I keep waiting for the Liebermans, Bidens, and Clintons, and sensible leaders like our Governor Granholm here in Michigan, to save their party from the madness."
They can't, Dean. Whatever virtues these people may possess, they have neither the strength nor the courage to resist the headlong rush to ruin. This is a cycle that will have to run its course, a reflexive, involuntary spasm that cannot do anything but come to its own exhausted, flaccid conclusion.
Regarding North Korea, the high probability of their having nuclear weapons is just one of the factors which lead to us postponing a showdown with them.
And postponing it is ALL we've done.
The Democratic leadership has swilled down the Howard Dean Kool-Aid, and is pulling the rest of the party into their madness.
[ waving hands off-stage, whispering frantically: "Pssst! Howard Dean isn't the nominee! It's John Kerry. Kerry is the nominee!" ]
That article goes well with this older article .
http://www.nyobserver.com/pages/story.asp?ID=6434
This ties into one of my great frustrations, which is hearing people say and write, "we don't care if this person is qualified or a better choice, we have GOT to have a Democrat back in the office!"
I've run into too many people who think that way, who have demonized one party so badly that suggesting a vote for someone of that party is like walking into their church and peeing on the altar. Therefore, anything someone of that party did by definition cannot be good; it HAS to be bad and downright evil.
I realize that this is a bit off the actual subject, but I get really frustrated by this crap.
Dave D.:
"Regarding North Korea, the high probability of their having nuclear weapons is just one of the factors which lead to us postponing a showdown with them."
Um...could the fact that NK doesn't happen to sit on top of an ocean of oil have, maybe, just a little to do with it?
No Mark,it doesn't.
Actually, Mark, (and contra Hunt) I'd say yes, it does have something to do with it.
And your point is?
Actually, it's not the NK nukes I'm worried about. It's the 5,000 or so artillery pieces they've got aimed at stationary targets across the DMZ, including Seoul. Someone sneezes, and we're talking casualties numbered in the tens of thousands within the first 24 hours.
That's why I'm slightly more hesitant to condemn the South Koreans. If anything happens, it happens in their neighborhood, not ours. Only slightly, though, because that does nothing to justify the self-delusional nationalism that rationalizes the brutality of Kim's regime, and somehow puts the blame for it on the U.S. And I can't for the life of me figure out how someone who claims to believe in 'One Korea' can be so indifferent to the conditions in the North.
They want us angry. It keeps us off-balance. How could otherwise seemingly intelligent people say some of the things they're saying?
They think it is a game.
"It's all about the oil."
Damn, Mark (Adams)! I thought even the DU and MoveOn.org had dropped that shabby old myth...
"No blood for oil!"
Here's some other classics you might want to run by the next anti-Amerikka demonstration:
"One, Two, Three, Four,
We don't want your dirty war!"
"Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Min!"
"US out of Vietnam, NOW!" (oops, they're using that one, albeit substituting Iraq for Vietnam)
"Baby Killers!"
That's "racist war", of course. Whenever lefties oppose something it's always racist. I think I'll start referring to it as "wrapping yourself in brown skin", to coopt their charge of "wrapping ourselves in the flag".
What I find the most disingenuous is the constant carping that Iraq had no WMD stockpiles. This is irrelevant for two reasons.
First, with regard to the danger Hussein posed, actual stockpiles are not significantly different from the ability to create them. The facts remain that he had the ability to make WMD's and the willingness to use them, combined with a proven record of agression both against the US and other states. It is this combination that made his rule unacceptable in the lower tolerable-risk environment after 9/11.
Secondly, we went to great lengths to explain that WMD's weren't the only reason we were going to war. He constantly violated the cease-fire arrangements by interfering with the inspection process and firing on our military.
Why we are letting Democrats now claim the only reason we went to war was because Hussein had stockpiles of weapons?
Secondly, we went to great lengths to explain that WMD's weren't the only reason we were going to war.
You failed.
We're letting them claim it because they don't, and didn't, want to listen to the others because they might have to approve of them?
Followup - if I tell someone, over and over, that 2 + 2 = 4, and they, over and over, say "No, 2 + 2 = 5!", who's in the wrong? Is it my fault they don't agree with me?
"You failed."
Your inability to understand English is your failure, not mine.
The reasons we went to war were?
Let's see:
WMD are there, buried in the sand, nonexistent
wait - WMD program, in full swing, limted, nonexistent
wait - WMD capabilites to start a program or the desire to start because of the Niger documents - oops those were forgeries
Tyrant to his own people - evidenced in 1988 - what took so long?
Terrorist connection, um only sketchy evidence to date is Ansar Islam with a Kurdish faction that was in the US controlled north.
Invasion of Kuwait? Oops wrong decade.
War with Iran. See above.
Trying to maintain Iraqi sovereignty in opposition to US led inspections. Wrong or right. Obviously the UN will NOT tell America what to do but we and the UN can and will tell others what to do.
Wrong or right. One can fall on either side of this argument and be both wrong and right.
I can't recall the other reasons.
Iraq was not a democracy?
Wolfowitz more or less said they had a number of reasons, but they decided that WMD was the best that could be put forward as a reason that would gain international support. Sounds like the marketing majors have hit the big time in their careers.
Truth in advertising holds some water in our land of law or it used to.
Hey observer? Clearly you've learned the most important lesson of the anti-war left: You can prove anything you want if you just make up your facts.
You appear to have mastered this lesson, for not only do you ignore half the reasons we went, but you put a vicious and distorted spin on the other half.
God, I hope you guys get the electoral beat-down you deserve come November. You're so vicious and intellectually dishonest, you deserve very little else.
Hey Dean?
What facts did I make up?
I also did say that I can't recall any others.
Will you please elucidate the significant half that I'm missing?
What vicious spin is there?
What have I distorted and how?
Iraq WAS a democracy?
For an "observer" you seem pretty unobservant.
You left out a slew of reasons for our Iraq action, and glossed over the reasoning for the arguments you did bother addressing. Go look carefully at the record, at something other than one-sided sources, and try to actually understand those who advocated this war in something other than shallow stereotypes, m'kay? We who advocated this action have heard all your arguments before, have analyzed them, have put endless effort into trying to carefully explain to you folks, and all we get are snotty stereotypes in response.
I've been writing about this for two fucking years now and have answered all these goddammned questions. So has the Bush administration. So did countless members of the Clinton administration before Democrats suddenly got amnesia.
Go look at the war resolution Congress voted on overwhelmingly to give the President permission to act. It mentions several reasons you don't even bother to mention, and squarely addresses in much less shallow fashion some of the ones you did. There are also at least three valid and thoughtful reasons that no one in the govenrment mentioned, but which all sorts of people, left, right and center, have brought up thousands of times. It's gettng pathetic, and I'm very tired.
Do your own fucking homework, Observer. Have the intellectual honesty to thoroughly review the record, reading what people OTHER THAN THOSE WHO AGREE WITH YOU have to say, and try to at least get yourself to a point of maturity where you believe that, just MAYBE, a very well-informed, thoughtful, decent person might actually have possibly concluded that this was the right thing to do.
God knows, I have respect for the people who do all that and still say they disagree with it. They're few and far between though, and instead we get shallow idiocy like the crap you posted--which says more about you than anything or anyone else.
“But Democratic talk about Iraq is dominated not by the hell and horror we abolished or the pride and joy of what we achieved.
1) Saddam monster. Good Saddam gone.
2) It is the cost serious Democrats are talking about (we actually pay attention to those when we calculate the cost/benefit of going to war and deal with its aftermath – go figure). The cost in young American lives, in much needed resources for self-defense and strengthening the homeland, in prestige, trust and support in the international community, in whatever lack of hostility towards us was left among Arabs and, perhaps worst of all, in lost faith with the Commander-in-Chief because he wasn’t honest about why we should pay such a cost. To add insult to injury, he deferred those costs to our kids and grandkids without asking even those who could easily afford to contribute something, to defer a tax cut.
“But as we learned more about Saddam's crimes, and Democrats grew less convinced that the war was right and was necessary . . . their response took on a far more sinister color. It started to resemble the Holocaust Shrug.”
John Kerry say (of finishing Iraq): “That means completing the tasks of security and democracy in that country – not cutting and running in order to claim a false success for the sake of the 2004 election.”
“The Democrats' refusal to acknowledge the moral importance of the Coalition's Iraq victory felt, at first, like the Clinton treatment--more relativistic, warped-earth moral geometry in which the truth gradually approaches infinite malleability.”
John Kerry says capturing Saddam:
“… is an opportunity for America to reclaim the best of our historic role overseas and to once again lead the world toward progress and freedom.”
Bill Clinton says:
“Saddam Hussein's capture is a tribute to the skill and bravery of our troops and the good work of our intelligence officers," Clinton said. "I know President Bush is very proud of our troops today. I congratulate him and them.”
“Stop fighting about the Iraq conflict. Saddam Hussein is gone, which is a good thing.”
Hillary Clinton says:
“I was thrilled that Saddam Hussein had finally been captured…We owe a great debt of gratitude to our troops, to the president, to our intelligence services, to all who had a hand in apprehending Saddam. Now he will be brought to justice, and we hope that the prospects for peace and stability in Iraq will improve."
Even Howard Dean says:
“The capture of Saddam Hussein is good news for the Iraqi people and the world. Saddam was a brutal dictator who should be brought swiftly to justice for his crimes. His capture is a testament to the skill and courage of U.S. forces and intelligence personnel. They have risked their lives. Some of their comrades have given their lives. All Americans should be grateful.”
Otherwise, Democrats aren’t typically given to triumphalism and we don’t think that’s a bad thing.
Dean Esmay says:
“You want to talk angry? Every day, in every way, I grow more disgusted an appalled by Democrats and their behavior.”
Get some help, Dean.
Actually you seem like more of a self-help guy. Play the Hendrix album in which the title of your post is the first word of the title song. Repeat.
I love it when liberals bicker. ;-)
shep, Kerry's comment about "cutting and runnng" is EXACTLY part of the problem, and you should be ashamed of your political leanings just to bring it up.
The Democratic party has been pushing for withdrawal and self-rule for Iraq almost since the Ba'athist government fell (the "mission" that was "accomplished, regardless of all y'all leftists attempt to twist the meaning), and we have set a date for Iraqi self-rule, but we are not cutting and rnning and shown no plans to.
Your dishonesty is disgusting, but to be expected. "Say anything to get A.B.B. elected, regardless of the truth. " *YAWN* tired of it, got old a year ago, its pushing up daisies now.
Intellectual dishonesty? I somehow find that it works both ways.
I don't care what the 'right' says or what the 'left' says. As much as you , Dean, espouse being a liberal in the classical sense i.e., what is not 'left' these days, I would think that you would not resort to the same kind of 'left vs right' branding. I don't buy into any 'leftist' argument. If it looks that way than so be it. I do read everything I can despite that most of what I read seems to be the natives fighting amongst each other!
I've done my homework, I've watched and I've listened. I do not have to justify who I am to you who is as anyomous as you are to me, but I choose to do so because I choose to comment here.
As I wrote once before somewhere else, I like your blog, I mean no ill will. I pepper much with sarcasm -[you like sarcasm, no?] and some irony.
Chicago boy that you profess, you must have loved Royko, no? Or did you want to throw him out too when the 'culture' changed?
So okay then. I'll debrief:
HJ Res. 114
1. Whereas in 1990 in response to Iraq's war of aggression
against and illegal occupation of Kuwait, the United
States forged a coalition of nations to liberate Kuwait...
2. Iraq agreed to a cease-fire and agreed to eliminate its WMD, programs and its support for international terrorism
3. the discovery of a large scale WMD program that was in 'flagrent violation of the cease-fire' and they thwarted the efforts of the inspection team until 1998 when the team left
4. 1998 -Congress concluded that Iraq's WMD program threathened US interests and must be brought into compliance
5. Iraq poses a continuing threat to US national security.. possesses and develops significant WMD, actively seeks nuclear.. and supports and harbors terrorist org.
6. continues to brutally repress its population thereby threatening international peace
7. has already demonstrated its willingness to use WMD
8. attempted to assasinate Bush 1 and fired on coalition forces
9. al Qaida is known to be in Iraq
10. continues to aid other terrorist...
11. September 11, 2001
12. Because Iraq has demonstrated that it will use WMD and there is a risk that they will use against the US or provide them to terrorists underscores the justification for the US to defend itself using UN resolution 678, 660, 687, 688, 949 plus numerous Security Council Resolutions. [I'm not listing them]
And so congress decides, based on the above, that because of September 11, we can justify regime change in Iraq.
only 4 points really.
WMDs or programs
repression of civilians
support for terrorists
non-compliance with inspectors
Held up to scrutiny and hard evidence?
Repression of civilians.
As I wrote earlier, that case was made long ago. What took so long?
If this adminstration, which IS the adminstration that took the action to engage war with Iraq was upfront and straight forward about their motives then I would have no problem. PNAC suggests the ultimate motive and reason. If this adminstration could stand there and say with conviction that we went into the Iraq to establish once and for all that America will not stand by and wring their hands while the Middle East implodes into one big suicide bomb then I'd buy it. I may not like it but there are hard choices in the world. Your wife's grandparents might know something about that.
But no.
They market what adds up to some kind of bullshit: the all-consuming sound bite. WMD. Easy to say. Simple to understand. This adminstration focused on it in the beginning. It was the game they played and now they're foucusing on other reasons. Don't they focus on the most important one first?
And face it- Saddam was killing his own people. Going into Iraq with that as the reason wasn't going fly. I'm not making a judgement that it wasn't good enough, but I'm cyncical enough to know that the world, in general, isn't motivated to do anything unless it threatens their own security.
Hence the Tutsi and Hutus.
Bosnia is different because you have this Macedonia, Greek, Turk thing going back and that threatens NATO.
So tell me again, what reason have I ignored or given short shrift to? Did I type it the wrong way? Or was it the non-compliance that became compliance and then paraded as non-compliance again because it just wans't believeable and it appears to me to have just been cover for what was going to take place anyway?
I remember that all I thought was that we were just going through the motions.
Intellectual dishonesty? Puh-leese.
I think that those who question the reasons are questioning the intellecutal dishonesty of this adminstration. Look around you.
It's not just the administration.
It's everywhere. Didn't Shell just decide to come clean and be a little bit more honest about their lack of oil reserves? It ain't left or right here at all. It's a chutzpah culture that thinks that it can sell you the coat off you're own back if they word it the right way.
You can make this personal Dean, but I'll give you the benefit.
I can jump in with sarcasm, with irony, and you welcome it with accusations of leftist rantings?
6 months before the election and you've already made your mind up. Why? Are you impatient? Can't you keep an open mind until the 'moment' that it matters?
And by the way , I'm not unhappy that Saddam is gone. What concerns me more is what this might unleash [ I hope nothing more than what it has til now], and the precedent this sets; both in terms in how it was presented and how it sets the stage for the next scufflow.
That doesn't strike me as being intellectually dishonest.
Nice acquittal of yourself observer. How about this rant for intellectual dishonesty from what His Majesty has discarded as a mere leftist bot:
(Hi Rosey, Mom's doing better and I'm back home and in form, all full of coffee and road fatigue, but I did see a bald eagle a bit west of Cleveland on the way, awesome).
***????*****
Oh, there's that pesky exit strategy I was looking for. I knew it had to be somewhere. It was right under the the Thank You card from all the Imans and Sheiks praising us for finally bringing peace to the entire Middle East.
That's what it will take folks, nothing less than American enforced peace and stability from Kashmir to Casablanca. Anything less is cutting and running and we can't afford to do it piecemeal. Which means never exiting as long as there are substantial US interests in the area to protect, and yes that means oil, among other things, including favorable Status of Forces agreements which will hedge against any future beligerence by up-start bullies in the area or a resurgence of Russia, but most importantly for the long run, to check any westward expansion of Chineese influence past the Hindu Kush.
The candor that is lacking is that the best argument for a permanent powerful US presence in the Middle East is the one so few on the right will even whisper. Nearly all other arguments in support of POTUS's actions are merely short term fringe benefits in comparison. We are, to steal a phrase, the unipower, and at this time in history we have unique opportunity if not obligation, to secure the planet as a nursery for continuation of our way of life and to prosper by it.
Dean, this IS intellectual honesty by the truckload. There is indeed a veritable cornucopia of valid and virtuous rationale for our Iraq engagement, any one of which justifies our actions. But the politics of pursuasion by this shotgun approach smells disingenuous. You have listed and listed ad nausium reason after reason why the Iraq invasion is a good thing. One cannot escape the suspicion that no single explanation would have sufficed or you would not have to keep throwing out more.
Dr. Rice is accurate in describing Clarke's view as more narrowly focused on terrorism. The Kool Aide is believing that this is simply a war on terror. The adminstration's entry into Iraq exposes them as having much, much grander ambitions. I am not trying to be faceious here. Now that we stepped into the desert, we've got to keep dancing or we'll get caught in the quicksand.
I get it, got it long ago. Charles Krauthammer explains the grand sceme with eloquence. Bill Kristol does it with humor. I actually find the neo-con agenda both persuasive and appealing, if not a little arrogant, neferious, and impossible to sell to either the congress or their constituents. (I'm not bothering to do your homework either. The sites are out there, most of you know them, try google.)
I also find the Kool Aide sours in my mouth when we cynically use the world's fears and emotions aroused by 9/11 to begin implementation of a world-wide transformation of our global hegemony into outright domination. My opinion (which I'm fully entitled to) is that this is sheer opportunism. But unless taken advantage of, there might never be another window of opportunity like this again, so I do understand it. Just doesn't sit well.
My very real objection is that in the final analysis I just don't approve because I don't believe the plan will work, and the risk of backfire and the cost of failure is potentially enormous. I disagreed with the means and the goal precisely because the pacification of Iraq, as part of the grand strategy to transform the entire region into American friendly territory, sounds so sinister because it is sinister. Clarke's swatting at al Queda flies seemed a far easier task, with more measurable results, than complete subjugation and pacification of the most notoriously hostile piece of the globe.
Policy decisions of this scope and duration should be open to discourse and oversight. Unfortunately this administration seems to fear it cannot be done in an open and forthright manner. To open the strategy to debate exposes their full sceme to our enemies who will then rally their followers to resist what they will allege as the seemingly imperial aims of our nation, not acknowledging that they will greatly benefit as part of a new commonwealth of prosperous trading partners. It is a simple fact that the prosperity of the Saudis (versus the stagnation of Iran and Iraq over the past several decades) is a direct result of a mutually beneficial open trading policy with the west, and specifically the US. This fact will be completely lost in the uproar on the Arab street resisting our efforts due to their perception that we are mere exploiters and conquerors should any such grand global strategy be openly debated on the American street.
They already use this as a recruitment tool and will have to start mass producing explosive vests to keep up with demand if the US Congress actually debated the merits of, let alone approved, the desirability of using any means necessary to commercialize and secularize them for our own purposes, regardless of the benefits they will get in the end. What they will not give us credit for is that the United States is not an imperial power in the traditional sense. Like Krauthammer says, we don't send the marines to steal their oil and secure bases in their territory, we don't need to. We'll buy the oil and rent the property from them. We need the marines to make sure we can do this without violent interference. Bullets and bombs are bad for business.
My suspicion is that the very fact that the grand sceme is not the most often cited rationale as THE best reason for sending and keeping the troops in Iraq, exposes the theory's weakness.
There is something fundamentally unsound about a policy plan to distribute democracy to the world which cannot be democratically debated because of the fear that the exercise itself will doom the endeavor. Not much of a plan if it cannot hold up to public scrutiny and still work.
I believe the fostering of Pax Americana is fantastically optimistic but a grand dream nonetheless. Marx was also a dreamer. Hitler and Napoleon likewise believed that the world would be a better place if unified under their supervision.
The plan was exposed and published by more than a few neo-conservatives. The Kool-Aid makers had it right in attempting to gain adherents through the force of their pursuasive logic. Bush and Dr. Rice have completely blown their window of opportunity to openly embrace the Kristol manifesto's simple, bold brilliance and lead us there. Instead their incompetence has left them on the defensive and pathetically resorting to the usual politics of personal destruction.
With Bush unable or unwilling to fully appreciate the full nuances of the Project for a New American Century, (like he actually sat down a read the thing) he has acted as nothing more than an amature political hack seeing what parts of Uncle Dick Chaney's sceme he might get away with.
On the other hand, maybe he does fully understand and appreciate the grand sceme and I should give him the respect and benefit of the doubt I would allow any political scientist in the midst of a crash course in government reality. If this is the case, however, his failure to properly communicate and advocate the advantages and sacrifices involved do not indicate his lack of understanding, but rather his lack of conviction in the ultimate success of his vision and his doubts in his ability to garner necessary support.
That my friends is not leadership. This is not statesmanship. And it certainly is not veracity. For my part, those are the three essential ingredients I desire in a President.
Thank you Sir, for your service. You are relieved. We'll take it from here.
Mark,
I agree that there's a serious danger that this whole project could explode in the US's face, but how is it an attempt at domination. Dumping an awful lot of money in to 2 Asian countries just isn't world domination (I've always pictured domination as having money flowing in the opposite direction, and far more countries)
Welcome to phase one, this is merely the begining. These guys think on a grand scale and are masters at the art of the possible. Watch, wait, and tell your kids what to look for when you're gone.
They are trying to bring peace to the middle east for goodness sakes. They think REAL big, and long term.
Dean wrote:
"I wouldn't invade any nation with nuclear weapons. Would you?"
Nope. That's kind of the point of having nuclear weapons, no? However, it's not enough to have them sitting in silos, bombers, and submarines. Any enemy must be made to know that we will use them if they attack us.
Unfortunately, one enemy didn't think we had such will, and they acted accordingly.
If an enemy nation has nuclear weapons, we can't invade them. But we certainly don't have to trade with them, aid them, flatter them and coddle them. President Reagan didn't launch a single missle (contrary to the hysterical predictions of the freezeniks), but he did stand up to the Soviets, called them an Evil Empire, and told Mr. Gobachev to "tear down this wall".
And that goes double for an enemy that does not have nuclear weapons but uses the deadliest weapon of all.
"It is a simple fact that the prosperity of the Saudis (versus the stagnation of Iran and Iraq over the past several decades) is a direct result of a mutually beneficial open trading policy with the west, and specifically the US."
That is our biggest, deadliest mistake by far. As long as we keep propping up our #1 Enemy abroad, we will see no end to the terror. Saudi Arabia will keep on flinging terrorists at us until we finally submit to the will of Allah. What next? The Sears Tower? The Washington monument? The Space Needle? How many more buildings, cities, and people do we want to lose while we keep subsidizing our deadliest, most insidious enemy abroad? Why do we keep feeding the rabid dog that bites us? They are using against us a weapon deadlier than any nuke: what Ayn Rand called "the sanction of the victim". The withdrawal of our sanction from them will bring down their tyranny even without detonating a single nuclear bomb. It's time for Atlas to shrug.
Mark Adams: eloquent
PNAC doesn't sit well with me but it is a GRAND scheme. Reagan's approach to the Soviet evil empire pales in comparison to what this document sets out.
Interesting though, the trickle down of the communist implosion wreaks a slew of crises and who knows/ The GRANDEST plan may leave the world with a dearth of evil to fight against.
Only time...
Y'know, Mark (Adams) and observer do a wonderful "Chip & Dale" act. Maybe they should go on the road?
You two spend any more time complimenting each other, and you'll have the election won by July! Heh.