Musharraf has made his choice, perferring power and stability over democracy and liberty. It's time for us to make ours, or suffer the consequences of hypocrisy. The situation in Pakistan is both serious and complicated, but one certainty is that enemies, allies and fence-squatters alike are watching how the United States reacts.
For many years the Bush team has made the argument that the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were necessary to reverse the Cold War stategy whereby Western nations chose stability over liberty in the Middle East.
"Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe," President Bush said in November 2003, "because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty." Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice reiterated in September 2005, "For 60 years, we often thought that we could achieve stability without liberty in the Middle East. And ultimately, we got neither."
They were right then. It's time to be right now.
One understands the dilemma and contradictory view, most recently aired by Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, that should Musharraf fall it may not bring in an era of Bhutto-led democracy, but rather empower the very Islamic fascists with whom we're at war. But given a choice in this no-win scenario, at least stay true to your founding values. We have far more to lose than a strongman in Central Asia.
Here's a related commentary from the Wall Street Journal:Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf says he imposed a state of emergency to limit terror attacks. Then why is he arresting so many nonterrorists?
Beginning Saturday, the main targets of police have been human rights workers and Mr. Musharraf's political opponents. While precise figures are hard to come by, more than 1,500 people -- mostly lawyers who participated in anti-Musharraf protests -- are thought to be incarcerated, either in their homes or in jails.
Topping the detainee list is Asma Jahangir, the Lahore-based head of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. Ms. Jahangir, a lawyer who is also a United Nations' special rapporteur on freedom of religion, agitated publicly for an independent judiciary and has represented the families of "disappeared" political dissidents. She was placed under a 90-day "preventative" house arrest on Saturday in Lahore.
Next comes Aitzaz Ahsan, president of the Supreme Court Bar Association, a member of Parliament and a former law minister. Mr. Ahsan, who defended former Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry earlier this year when Mr. Musharraf sacked him, stood up at a press conference Saturday and denounced the state of emergency. Mr. Ahsan is now in Adiala Jail near Rawalpindi.
Then there's Ali Ahmed Kurd, another lawyer for former Chief Justice Chaudhry, who human rights groups claim is now under the supervision of the Inter-Services Intelligence agency. Other lawyers in that case, including Munir Malik and Tariq Mahmood -- both former presidents of the Supreme Court Bar -- have also been arrested.
Other detainees include Javed Hashmi, the acting president of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's party; Imran Khan, a famous cricketer and leader of a new, small political party; and hundreds of workers for Jamaat-e-Islami, a large religious party. Mr. Khan managed to give the slip to his minders at his home and is now on the run.
If Mr. Musharraf wants to fight terrorism and move Pakistan toward democracy, arresting democrats and lawyers is an odd way of doing so. By targeting members of civil society, he's weakening the very forces that would have supported him had he moved forward with a power-sharing arrangement with Benazir Bhutto. Instead, he's angering the country's middle class and empowering militants.
Labels: Afghanistan, al qaeda, bhutto, defending liberty, National Defense, pakistan
Founder of what I would call the best voice of conservatism, The National Review, William F. Buckley called it quits citing aging more than anything else. The NY Times says Buckley’s departure “represents the exit of one of the forefathers of modern conservatism.” I wouldn’t agree with that. He’s well respected and certainly a forefather of conservatism, but the term “modern” is relative. Modern to the Reagan movement, yes. Modern to the post 9-11 world, no. Despite my recognition of Buckley as one of the great conservative writers and thinkers I do have a problem with people who accepted this war in Iraq but now try to distance themselves from it (Andrew Sullivan, among others, seems to do this from time to time, although Buckley’s comment is much more sure):
As for conservatism today, Mr. Buckley said there was a growing debate on the right about how the war in Iraq squared with the traditional conservative conviction that American foreign policy should seek only to protect its vital interests. "With the benefit of minute hindsight, Saddam Hussein wasn't the kind of extra-territorial menace that was assumed by the administration one year ago," Mr. Buckley said. "If I knew then what I know now about what kind of situation we would be in, I would have opposed the war."
Asked whether the growth of the federal government over the last four years diminished his enthusiasm for Mr. Bush, he reluctantly acknowledged that it did. "It bothers me enormously," he said. "Should I growl?"
Criticize Bush on spending, by all means. Too much of his daddy in him there, and, I suppose, it only goes to show you how much Dick Morris’ “triangulation” – taking your opponents issues away – during the Clinton years will, unfortunately, affect future politics in regards to spending.
But even “with the benefit of minute hindsight,” I find it hard to believe that someone who supported the war would now oppose it. First, what did Buckley expect? To liberate a country of 26 million with less than 800 dead? Historically, that’s unprecedented. And I don’t care about the empty arguments criticizing our bitter compromises or propping “interim governments” or what have you, this was liberation. Things are not going to go perfect; it is, after all, a friggin war! But, you can’t point to 300,000 dead in mass graves by the hands of Saddam Hussein and rationally conclude anything else than this being a war of liberation. What we do now will have positive ramifications for the entire region in the years ahead, although like South Korea, people might call it a “stalemate” and that sort of nonsense for decades. (Not to go off on too much of a tangent but that’s what they taught me the Korean War was when I was in high school – a “stalemate.” Yet look at those two countries today and tell me today who won and who lost, who prospers in democratic capitalism and who suffers under oppressive socialism).
WMD? In the least covered bombshell of the month, or year, last week Charles Duelfer told the media that his inspections team had found “10 or 12 sarin and mustard rounds” in Iraq. Well, I assure you Saddam Hussein didn’t produce a dozen chemical shells and call it quits. There’s more where that came from, and they’ll be found. But even if not, or if too many years from now, we at very least know that Hussein kept the methods of production and precursors never declared to the UN in clear violation (including live C. botulinum Okra B and other biological nasties). European intelligence gurus said yesterday that Niger was involved in illegal sales of uranium to five countries, including Iraq, three years before the Iraq war. Saddam was waiting us out, that’s all.
Ties to al Qaeda? Don’t get me started. At minimum, the 9-11 commissioners are saying there was a relationship, only that the relationship was not likely behind 9-11. Possible still was the Mohammed Atta meeting with an Iraqi case officer in Prague, two hijackers supported by a Lt. Col. in Saddam’s Fadayeen (Shakir), the Zarqawi connection, and Saddam Hussein’s support of terrorists like Abu Abbas and Abu Nidal. Speaking of, hijacker Ziad Jarrah’s uncle was Assem Omar Jarrah, who worked for Abu Nidal. Saddam harbored Nidal until he was conveniently murdered by Iraqi agents in 2003 – one heck of a coincidence, eh? Then throw in Abdul Rahman Yasin, a 1993 WTC bomber whom Saddam supported in Iraq after he fled the US. That’s just for starters.
Finally, what of the alternatives to war? It was the status quo, at best. It was what we now know to be a fully corrupt UN Oil-for-Food program that enriched the Hussein regime and the masses of all too willing unscrupulous partners from Paris to Moscow to Damascus (all three Security Council members, two with veto power). It was a sanctions regime responsible for the death of tens of thousands each year, precisely linked to that corrupt UN program and to futile “leadership” of Kofi Annan and company, who inexplicably allowed Iraq’s dictator a say in how the program was run. It was a regime destined to pass rule from an oppressive dictator to a pair of sons considered even more sadistic than the father. It was a regime that gradually but steadily aligned itself with Islamic extremism. It was, most of all, a regime anchored to the worst element of Western rule – our push for stability.
What is stability without liberty? Nothing. Liberty is a manifest endowment from the “Creator,” as our founders termed it, but it does not come cheap. Blood is spilled to earn it, whether in Washington DC in 1776, Paris 1789, or Berlin 1989. For decades the US and our Western allies have purposely refused to forcefully push liberty upon the Middle East even as we did in South America, Asia, the Pacific Rim, and Eastern Europe. What breaks the modern conservative from the Buckley generation, and certainly from the global Leftists who have the gall to call themselves “liberals”? The understanding, delivered by President Bush in the most important speech since Reagan uttered “tear this wall down,” that “Sixty years of Western nations' excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe, because, in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty.”
Our failure to recognize this led directly to 9-11. We can either force liberty upon all – and yes, sometimes it regretfully requires violent force – or we can sit back and allow liberty’s alternative of tyranny to be forced upon all. There is no alternative. A natural vacuum will always seek filler.
Contrast the following two statements following the reported death of al Qaeda's biggest terrorist in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi:"Al Qaeda is the biggest threat to the world. Al Zarqawi's death is a huge victory in the war - This is good news for all Muslims and people of all religions. He was killing people of all faiths. I hope the situation in Iraq will improve now."
-- Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman General Zahir Azimi"I have no sense of relief, just sadness that another human being [Zarqawi] had to die."
-- Michael Berg, whose son Nick was (personally) beheaded in Iraq in 2004, by... Abu Musab al-Zarqawi!
Mr. Berg additionally told Reuters that what would give him satisfaction is, "The end of the war and getting rid of George Bush." That Zarqawi's death could be a large step towards ending the war is lost on the clueless Michael Berg, a master of moral equivalency.
It gets much worse:Michael Berg: I'm not saying Saddam Hussein's a good man, but he's no worse than George Bush. Under Saddam Hussein, no al-Qaeda in Iraq; under George Bush, al-Qaeda. Under Saddam Hussein, relative stability; under George Bush, instability. Under Saddam Hussein, 30,000 deaths a year; under George Bush, about 50,000 deaths. I don't understand. Why is this better to have George Bush be the King of Iraq rather than Saddam Hussein?"
Only a the mind of a child could produce such a silly comparison. Among other things, Michael Berg's comments are not factual: To quote Oliver Stone's JFK, it's bullshit wrapped in excrement inside manure.
Al Qaeda, most notibly al Zarqawi, was very much inside Iraq before US invaded, and captured intelligence has proven that; and to date 30,000 deaths a year for each of Saddam's reign is far more than 50,000 total, even if you discount Berg's ridiculous underlying comparison between Saddam's true victims and those terrorists targeted by the US military. By Berg's arithmatic the greatest American mass murderer was Abraham Lincoln.
But what is most galling is the statement "Under Saddam Hussein, relative stability." Stability?! Is that what "liberals" have decided to sell out for? What is stablility without liberty!? By any other name it's a killing field, a gulag or concentration camp. Those places, too, are quite stable.
This fool calls himself a liberal? Taken from the word liberty, as in defender of? He has the gall to claim to be a "liberal," yet confuses stability with freedom, and calm with liberty. This loser doesn't deserve the liberty he has.
Is Zarqawi to blame for Nick Berg's death? Not to the senior Berg, and not even though the disseminated video of Nick Berg's beheading was titled "Abu Musab al-Zarqawi slaughtering an American." To Michael Berg, Zarqawi was just as much the choiceless victim as his son - and how moral equivilists love their victims!
That in Zarqawi's camp authorities discovered nine human heads from his butchered victims matters not to Mr. Berg.
To Mr. Berg, all life is equal, and thus all deaths are too. Zarqawi, Mother Theresa, same thing right? Perhaps Mother Theresa had opportunities that Zarqawi didn't? Perhaps had we only offered to share a Coke and kumbaya with al Qaeda on September 12 all would be peaceful in the world? goes the thinking of the moral equivilist.
I'm not exactly sure when the party of Jefferson, FDR, Truman and JFK became the party of John Kerry, Ted Kennedy and Frank Murtha, but I would argue that it parallels the ascension of moral equivalence.
Yet something tells me that had today it been al Qaeda who took out Bush, Mr. Berg would not be saddened that "another human being had to die," but would likely have lectured us 'non-elitist, intellectually inferior Americans' that Bush, you know, brought it on himself, as did we all. I'm sorry Mr. Berg's son is dead. I wish he were alive so he could knock some damn sense into his father.
The war on terror is certainly the most important war, but the war to prevent this backwards moral equivalent mentality of Bergism (Mooreism, Murthaism, Stoneism, Kerryism) from coming to power is a close second.
As it's been stated before, they're not antiwar, they're just rooting for the other side.
Head administrator in Iraq L. Paul Bremer reiterated that the US would not allow any Iraqi government or constitution based upon Islamic law, or Sharia. The US, said Bremer, won’t attempt to refuse any acknowledgement of Islamic principles or the Muslim religion, but will ensure that Iraq has secular rule.
"We have an obligation as the sovereign power that an appropriate democratic structure is put in place here while we are here so that we can deliver to the Iraqis what they want, which is a democratic, unified, stable country at peace with itself," Bremer said.
I have no doubt that Bremer and the Bush team will insist that Iraq adopt secular rule in order to ensure liberty to every Iraqi, whether Shiite, Sunni, Kurd or another minority faction. This is the single most important notion we can establish in Iraq, even more than democracy. After all Taiwan under a British but liberal and secular monarchy was one heck of a lot more free than Russia or Iran, countries which are technically democratic but which lack freedom to the extreme.
Separately the Bush team scored a diplomatic victory when United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan backed the US position that elections cannot be held in Iraq until the political power is handed over on June 30. Still unknown is if Annan will back the Bush team’s preferred method of choosing a provisional government. Annan, out of the loop for months due to his own misjudgments, was recently empowered when the defacto ruler of the Shiite community in Iraq, Ayatollah Sistani, said that he would be more willing to back the US method if the UN also endorsed it. All involved parties are now debating how to create an interim government, with some advocating a system used in Afghanistan, and others wishing to simply expand Iraq’s current provisional government to 25 members until direct elections were held. The current conventional wisdom believes the latter will prevail but it really doesn’t matter so long as the most Iraqis possible back it and that it ensures secular rule based on individual liberty.
Having said that, despite the diplomatic victory there is reason to be cautious of the UN’s new role in Iraq.
Despite the Bush administration's increased reliance on the United Nations, senior administration officials are wary of involving the Security Council in Iraq policy.
One State Department official voiced concern about the possibility that member nations might call for a Security Council resolution to formally approve a new plan for Iraq's transition, which could complicate and delay the process with just over four months remaining.
"There's ample opportunity to hijack this in the Security Council and take it down a road we don't want to see it go," said the official, speaking on the condition that he not be named.
"It may be that some want to use it . . . for their own gains in Iraq."
France and Germany, the council's two toughest critics of the U.S.-led war against Iraq, said today that the Security Council should adopt a new resolution.
Oh, boy. You can see this coming a mile away – more French opposition for the sake of opposition. Like 17 Security Council resolutions on Iraq weren’t enough. Now the French want another. That’s just the first problem with involving the UN: it indirectly empowers the French, Germans, Russians, Chinese and Syrians, among others. Each of them has their own agenda for Iraq, and much of the time it runs contrary to what our government desires. These ulterior motives often lead to corruption. The UN oil-for-food program comes to mind, as do Syrian, French and Russian illegal financial dealings with the former Hussein regime.
The second problem is that the more “partners” and “allies” you include in the process the more of a bureaucratic mess you make. Try getting 15 people together and get them to agree on lunch. Now have fifteen representatives of fifteen countries get together to determine how to reconstruct the political apparatus of a country. They don’t call the UN the world’s biggest debating society for nothing.
The third problem, the biggest, is that the United Nations has a habit of promoting stability over freedom. They call it peace, but it’s a false peace: is there such a thing as peace without liberty? Koreans are “at peace,” but one group of them is just fine and the other group, to the north, is friggin miserable. Everywhere the UN is involved one can find false peace. The UN (and Clinton) backed President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, but he’s just a different degree of despot. Call him despot-lite; just “humane” enough for the world powers to back him because they promote peace over liberty, but corrupt enough that Haiti is, ho-hum once again, in chaos.
Then look at the Balkans. The UN still has full control over that nightmare but most people don’t know that Kosovo has “deteriorated into a hotbed of organized crime, anti-Serb violence and al-Qaeda sympathizers, say security officials and Balkan experts.” Despite 18,000 NATO forces in the region paramilitary groups in Kosovo have murdered 1,192 Serbs, kidnapped 1,303 and wounded 1,305 in 2003 alone. Those numbers are up sharply from the prior year. But is the UN doing anything about it? Are they activating those 18,000 peacekeepers to use force against the paramilitaries? No, because to do so would call attention to the fact that there’s a problem; to do so would promote liberty over peace or stability. World War II could have been peaceful too, had we just let Hitler quietly take over Europe.
Related to the above point is problem number four with the UN: they refuse to differentiate between liberal and illiberal regimes. Syria, Libya, Zimbabwe, and other despotic regimes are given the same voice, rights and privilege as liberty-ensuring regimes in the US, Canada, or the UK, for example. The UN bestows membership to regimes who do not even enjoy lawful representation of their own populations. From these seeds the UN becomes a farce. It’s why we find Libya or Syria on the Human Rights Commission. Or why under Saddam Hussein Iraq was part of the UN commission on disarmament.
So, the Bushies should be wary of the UN in Iraq, at least if it doesn’t want to Iraq to become Balkanized.
[Washington Post] In Bush's view, successful elections in two of the world's most volatile places [Palestine and Iraq] will ignite a chain reaction of reform and public pressure that will shake repressive governments across Arab society. Yet in this region, the term "battleground states" takes on more ominous meaning, and the cycle of violence and terrorism threatens further destabilization that could, skeptics say, undermine Bush's "march of democracy."
..."His inauguration is bracketed by two events that are very big, very important for the meaning and success of his presidency," said William Kristol, chief of staff to former vice president Dan Quayle and now editor of the Weekly Standard. "No one thinks everything changes the day after the elections. But what some people thought was a naive Wilsonian democracy may turn out to be his real legacy."
Exactly. Judge Iraq by what those regions look like in 20 or more years, not tomorrow or next month or later this year.
There can be some reasonable questions posed toward the skeptics too: What was the alternative? Continued stagnation of the whole Middle East and Central Asia. With silly allusions to "Pottery Barn" the opponents of this war argue that we've made the region more volatile. More volatile than what? The assertion is ridiculous on it's face - Iraq was already plenty broken, not a productive society. And what is stability without liberty? We tried that way for 60 years and it made the Middle East not safe, nor stable, nor free.
In high school they taught me that the Korean War was a stalemate. Today, South Korea prospers, China slowly embraces capitalism, and the entire Pacific Rim is fruitful while North Korea stagnates into oblivion. You tell me who won and who lost. Maybe it's a prideful assertion but I believe when I'm old and gray we'll begin to reap fruit from the steady but sometimes painful seeds we plant in Iraq today.
This isn’t rocket science. Take a pair of dictators out of the Middle East and it’s natural that the opportunity of progress will increase. (Note, I said opportunity, as nothing is guaranteed). Iraqi elections are still on track for January, but now that PLO Chairman Yassir Arafat has died the Palestinians also have a historic opportunity through their January 9 scheduled election.
JERUSALEM, Nov. 14 - Palestinians have scheduled presidential elections for Jan. 9 to replace Yasir Arafat, officials said today. Meanwhile, the favored candidate, Mahmoud Abbas, escaped injury as Palestinians waged a deadly gun battle during a mourning service for Mr. Arafat in Gaza City... Mr. Abbas, widely known as Abu Mazen, traveled from the West Bank and arrived this afternoon at the grounds, an open field near Mr. Arafat's seaside compound in Gaza City. Armed men in the crowd began chanting, "No to Abu Mazen," and "No to Dahlan," a reference to Muhammad Dahlan, an ex-security chief who accompanied Mr. Abbas. Some of the armed men then began firing their rifles into the air, witnesses said.
This is where some misguided Kofi Annan-type would retort, “but, the region could become chaotic!” – as though chaos was not already the norm in the Middle East. Which brings us back to the very point of these exercises: what is stability without liberty? It is dictatorship, and nothing more. And it is that very lack of opportunity which in large part fuels young, ticked off Islamic men to hijack planes and crash them into buildings.
So, you see, I’ll take my chances with at least the opportunity for progress.
I've got a bad feeling that the Bush team just didn't close strong enough in the last six weeks to win this election. When you consider that Kerry is arguably the most liberal member of the Senate, arguably not convicted enough to take the fight to Islamofascists, and ran on a platform of raising taxes for small business owners, physicians, lawyers, and other professionals, it's almost inconceivable to think that Bush isn't up by 5 or 8 points, no matter how many people truly hate him.
You can sum up Bush's weak closing with two words - and I know I harp on this - Tora Bora. The Kerry campaign, by almost every poll, was behind Bush on the issue of the war on terrorism by about 22 points after the Republican National Convention. But the Kerry campaign chose a pretty gutsy strategy: attack Bush on his strongest point.
You really have to hand it to the Kerry people (who were really the Clinton people) for the try. Not because it was difficult to counter - on the contrary, it is so very easy to retort that perhaps it took the Bush team by surprise. But what killed Bush is his lack of articulation. Perhaps the Kerry people understood that in order to defend Tora Bora accurately it would take articulation that Bush does not possess.
It's a pathetic statement indeed that pundits, even amateur pundits such as myself, can more effectively counter Kerry's Tora Bora claims than any member of the Bush team. And remember, the Bush team isn't just Bush and Cheney. A lot of people were paid a lot of money to sit around and not defend their boss from Kerry's Tora Bora attacks.
The defenses, instead, came belatedly from military commanders like Gen. Tommy Franks, Lt. Gen. Michael DeLong, or pundits like Rich Lowry and Melanie Kirkpatrick. But as CNBC's Larry Kudlow noted in his election eve commentary, "President Bush failed to respond head-on to Kerry's ridiculous Tora Bora outsourcing charge until the very end of the campaign."
How is it that Internet bloggers can find Kerry statements in 2002 endorsing the Tora Bora strategy but Karl Rove cannot?
Indeed, Tora Bora, of course, is really just a metaphor for the last six weeks of the Bush campaign. Bush failed to articulate Tora Bora like he failed to articulate economic improvements such as GDP growth; like he failed to articulate the importance of liberally democratizing Iraq to defeat regional Islamic extremism; like he failed to articulate that higher taxes are disincentives to business and economic growth.
Nobody connects with the "I gave your family $1000" argument - Bush focused on the trees, instead of the forest.
In November 2003, for another theme example, Bush expressed that 60 years of promoting stability over liberty "did nothing to make us safe -- because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty."
This could have been an effective direct assault on the John Kerry and Kofi Annan crowd - those who promote more of that same failed 60-year solution: containment of a threat that is not containable. (You cannot contain someone who cares not about mutually assured destruction, but on the contrary, welcomes it. ) This is something Americans could have understand. Instead, the administration chose to rely on George Tenet's "slam dunk" pretext of WMD. To be fair, it seemed obvious at the time - but too many eggs were in that basket.
Certainly the media exacerbated this articulation weakness with clear partisan attacks against Bush - recall the forged documents, draft scaremongering, and exaggerated "missing explosives" stories (in just six weeks).
But Americans aren't dumb. They understand large themes. Since Bush was rotten at talking points (and he was) he should have concentrated on the themes. But he didn't. Instead Bush made the same mistake that all politicians (arrogant by nature) make - voters are too dumb to get broad themes. (Reagan being the exception: he possessed the best of both worlds - promoting the theme of democracy over oppressive communism while simultaneously executing historic talking points - "...tear down this wall.")
It's only 8pm. So If I sound pessimistic it is because I am. It is because for weeks I have been reflecting on how dismal the last six weeks have been for the Bush team. (And it goes without saying that Bush's bad spending habits and promotion of liberal Medicare and education bills hurt him - call it the backfire of Dick Morris' triangulation tactic.)
Maybe I'm exaggerating, I don't know. But watching the past six weeks is like watching a Ron Zook Florida Gator team: all the talent in the world, but a dropped interception here and a few holding calls there and the game is lost in the final four minutes.
But there is one silver lining: Absentee ballots. I'm hearing that Republicans have a 2-1 advantage in absentee ballots in most states, including large states in close races such as Florida and Indiana. The election officials in these states say they won't finish counting the absentee ballots until Thursday. So unless Kerry just really pulls ahead in the absentee-filled states it means we might not know who is president until Thursday.
The other silver lining is that if Kerry wins perhaps it kills Dick Morris triangulation once and for all - and conservatives can go back to being conservatives again. Screw this "compassionate" crap. Frankly, I'm kind of ticked off.
Hasn't Ted Kennedy been one of those constantly criticizing the Bush administration for troop levels in Iraq? Now here he is today calling for a withdraw. Even more galling, he's basically taking the plan the Pentagon has always had in place for that withdraw and repacking it as his creation.
Kennedy, one of the most searing critics of the war, said the conflict is being perpetuated by the continuing presence of U.S. forces and the Iraqi perception of being occupied. He laid out his five-point exit strategy, which envisions turning over the battle to the new Iraqi government chosen this weekend, possibly aided by a U.N. military contingent.
Well, timing aside, that's always been the plan. The Pentagon isn't going to cut and run this weekend as Ted suggests, but the point is that we leave when Iraq can take care of itself.
"It is time to recognize that there is only one choice: America must give Iraq back to the Iraqi people," Kennedy said in a speech at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies. "We have no choice but to make the best we can of the disaster we have created in Iraq. The current course is only making the crisis worse."
Warning against a repeat of mistakes made during the Vietnam War, Kennedy proposed withdrawing 12,000 of the 150,000 U.S. troops in Iraq "immediately" and the rest "as early as possible in 2006." He acknowledged that pulling out might exacerbate the fighting. "There may well be violence as we disengage militarily from Iraq and Iraq disengages from us," he said. "But there will be much more serious violence if we continue our present dangerous and reckless course."
Democracy -- reckless and dangerous. Indeed, it often is - ours sure was. But this isn't about providing stability, but liberty. If we wanted stability we could have just kept Saddam there and King George here.
I believe that Kennedy, despite his rhetoric, sees the writing on the wall. The Iraqi insurgency is not popular and their violence will not result in a political victory for them. I think Democrats know this. So they will repackage any success as failure, including the existing exit strategy.
Since day one of this war the Pentagon, Donald Rumsfeld and President Bush have said they will pull US troops out once the new Iraqi government and security forces are capable of sustaining themselves.
Even so, according to the NY Times, Bush answered yesterday that if the Iraqi government asked him to do so he would withdraw US troops:
"I've, you know, heard the voices of the people that presumably will be in a position of responsibility after these elections, although you never know," Mr. Bush said. "But it seems like most of the leadership there understands that there will be a need for coalition troops at least until Iraqis are able to fight."
He did not say who he expected would emerge victorious. But asked if, as a matter of principle, the United States would pull out of Iraq at the request of a new government, he said: "Absolutely. This is a sovereign government. They're on their feet."
Separately, Donald Rumsfeld agreed with his British counterpart, Geoff Hoon, to double the Iraqi police forces before withdrawing coalition troops. These things take time, however, and the Pentagon expects to maintain current troop levels for another two years. But nobody can dictate an exact plan for withdraw because we don't know how Iraqi security will progress, how the new Iraqi government will react, and, frankly, because such talk encourages terrorists.
Back to Kennedy. He also undercuts the argument that more troops would have automatically led to more stability. There have been definite drawbacks to our smaller sized occupation but because of that force size it has always been the insurgency seen as the greater intrusive force to the population. You don't fight an unconventional war conventionally. Because of this and because the insurgents are so reckless in choosing targets they cannot secure a political victory.
As with force size, there is also a balance to the number and time we can withdraw troops. The Pentagon has that balance in mind. Kennedy does not.
There are two more differences between Kennedy and our current plan as well.
First, to aide the Iraqis Ted Kennedy would empower UN peacekeepers who can't seem to go one African peacekeeping mission without starting a criminal child-sex ring.
And second, while any rational person would term a new, healthy and stable Iraqi government as the goal and success of this war, Kennedy calls it "disaster."
I don't know if election day in Iraq is necessarily the beginning of the end, but I do know that the only "disaster" is its existence to the insurgency.
Via pundit Andrew Sullivan I found this Michael Ledeen commentary regarding the country’s “discovery” of Iran as a dangerous state. Hey, better late than never, right Michael? Ledeen writes that the 9-11 Commission’s disclosure that Iran, at very least, had a policy in place which allowed around 10 of the 9-11 hijackers (among other jihadists) to pass between Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan covertly is damaging to those who advocate an appeasement policy towards Iran.
Iran is the center of the terror world. It’s long backing of Hezbollah alone makes Iran a dedicated enemy of the US. But add in the connections between Hezbollah and al Qaeda, as I cited two years ago, and Iran becomes doubly dangerous. Now Iran is close to becoming a nuclear power. Now Iranian intelligence officers have been captured with explosives in Baghdad. Now Iran has brazenly threatened coalition members with its capture (and subsequent release) of British soldiers, and illegal border crossing into Iraq. Now Iran holds (or is harbor the better word) several ranking members of al Qaeda, including Saif al-Adel, Saad bin Laden and al Qaeda spokesman Sulaiman Abu Gaith (Ledeen says Arab outlet Asharq al-Awsat claims more than “384 members” of terror groups are in Iran, “including 18 senior leaders of Osama bin Laden's network”). Now Iran officially joins the list of nations which, at least, passively conspired to support terrorists dedicated to harming the US.
Bush’s policy toward Iran, then, should be a “slam dunk” in both vision and practice. But Ledeen argues contrary:
Now the London Times has found a nameless someone in the Bush administration who promises that a second term for W. would bring vigorous support of democratic revolution in Iran, and decisive action against the atomic project. It is beyond me why anyone would take seriously such claims, given the fact that after four years in office this administration still has no Iran policy, and the deputy secretary of State, Richard Armitage, has never backed off his claim that Iran is a democracy, nor has he been gainsaid by any other top official. I certainly hope the Times is right, but I have my doubts. I'm afraid we're not going to get serious about Iran without another 9/11…
Maybe that [an official Iranian attack on the US] would finally produce an Iran policy worthy of the name: support for democratic revolution against the mullahs. But [Ayatollah] Khamenei's and Rafsanjani's experience with the United States leaves them pretty sanguine about that risk, because every time we come up with some devastating bit of information on Iran, we immediately follow it with "but that doesn't mean that the leaders knew about it, or that it was the actual policy of the regime." You find half of bin Laden's family and top assistants in Tehran? Not to worry, maybe the mullahs didn't know. You discover that that 9/11 band crossed Iran and were assisted by the border guards and customs officials? Not to worry, that wasn't necessarily the actual policy — this from the lips of the acting director of Central Intelligence on Fox News yesterday. Scores of Iranian intelligence agents are found in Iraq, some in the act of preparing bombs? Some bright bulb in the intelligence community puts out the line that Iran is actually helpful to us, and has actually restrained Hezbollah. We find Iranian involvement in the bombing of Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia? The evidence is quashed by the Saudis, with the complicity of State and large sectors of the intelligence community. So why should the men in the blood-soaked turbans fret over the consequences of aiding and abetting yet another murderous assault against Americans? I'm unfortunately betting on the second half of October, based on their happy experience with the Spanish elections last March.
Remember the Bush quote I often cite: “Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe -- because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty.” I do think Bush is dedicated to changing Iran, I just don’t think his team knows how to do it. Of course, reviewing history we see how despotic regimes have become more liberal or even fallen by propping liberal regimes in Western Europe and the South Pacific. You think China would be slowly reforming – too slowly albeit – without liberal bastions in Taiwan, Japan and South Korea?
Now, I agree with Ledeen that, in practice, Bush’s policy vis-à-vis Iran has been scattered. Much of this, I believe, is because Iran has long been a third rail of foreign policy: Iran brought down Carter, and severely hurt Reagan. But Bush is without a doubt opposed to the regime. And at least Bush has a vision and commitment to change the whole region, even if he’s not sure yet how to deal with Iran. John Kerry and fellow Democrats, thus far, have no regional vision or commitment. They are for the status quo. They wish to combat terrorism exclusively with defense. They’re stuck in September 10, 2001.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan once again declared the war in Iraq illegal and that regime change did not make the world safer. I suppose any time a dictator, especially one handing oil vouchers to Kofi Annan's son, Kojo, is removed from power it is a bad thing in the eyes of the UN Secretary General. Perhaps what Annan meant to say is that the war in Iraq did not make him any richer. Speaking of rich, Annan even defended governments who have been caught red-handed accepting bribe money from Saddam Hussein.
"I cannot say the world is safer when you consider the violence around us, when you look around you and see the terrorist attacks around the world and you see what is going on in Iraq," Annan told the ITV network. "We have a lot of work to do as an international community to try and make the world safer," he said in an interview on the network's "The Jonathan Dimbleby Program."
Annan also dismissed suggestions that France, Russia and China had been prepared to ease sanctions on Hussein's government in return for oil contracts. A U.S. report issued earlier this month by the Iraq Survey Group, an entity set up to hunt for weapons of mass destruction, concluded that Iraq tried to manipulate foreign governments with oil contracts and bribes to companies and political figures in an effort to end sanctions.
Annan said it was "inconceivable" that Hussein's efforts could have influenced policy in the countries concerned.
That US report was written by Charles Duelfer - thus the UN-lovers like John Kerry try to have it both ways by using the report to declare Iraq weapons free while simultaneously ignoring that France and other UN Security Council members were complicit in propping up the regime of Saddam Hussein.
But back to Annan. If the war in Iraq was "illegal," then by the same standards so was the US-UK bombing campaign against Slobodan Milosevic in 1998, which removed him from power. It strikes me as rather insincere, too, for the head of the UN to declare anything illegal when that organization supplies membership and legitimacy to illegitimate and unelected regimes from North Korea to Sudan, Libya to Zimbabwe.
Saddam Hussein was paying dirty oil money to hundreds of powerful global leaders and entrepreneurs, including the UN official in charge of running the Oil-for-Food program, Benon Sevan. The corrupt program sent bloody bribe money to a former French Interior Minister, and the current president of Indonesia, Megawati Sukarnoputri, among many, many others.
Finally, what is Kofi Annan's plan to make the world safer? When Kofi's UN failed to stop genocide in Rwanda and now Sudan, did that make the world safer? When Annan failed to back military force against Bosnia's dictator, did that make the world safer? Does it make the world safer when Kofi's UN appoints illegitimate and oppressive regimes in Libya, Cuba and Sudan to the UN Human Rights Commission? Or when another illegitimate regime in Syria - which has occupied Lebanon for 20 years without a peep from men like Kofi Annan - is a member of the Security Council?
Kofi Annan prioritizes stability over liberty. By such standards we could end all violence if we just did whatever the world's thugs ordered us to do - including to report to the nearest mass grave. Dead men cause no instability.
Critics of the Bush Doctrine and the Iraq war complain, almost entirely disingenuously, that Iran and North Korea were bigger threats to America than Iraq. That's debatable at best. What is irrefutable, however, is that Iraq was an easier target than either Iran or North Korea.
When the rebels attacked the Death Star in Star Wars, there was a reason they attacked at the battle station's weakest point. Iraq was the Axis of Evil's weakest point. The hope for many of us was that toppling Saddam would set off a chain reaction that would bring the whole thing down.
That can still happen. Critics who lament "instability" in the Middle East miss the point entirely. Instability — the right kind of instability — is exactly what we want. The signs are that the Iranian regime is coming apart. Whether it's inches or miles from the tipping point is impossible to tell. But what is obvious is that without the West's active pressure on the mullahs, and even more active support of the freedom fighters, the tipping point may never come.
-- Jonah Goldberg
I’m stealing the analogy from right-wing pundit Rush Limbaugh. Love him or hate him I find he’s either right on the money or just off. Months ago, when John Kerry kind of just sprung ahead almost by default, Limbaugh predicted that the Liberal community would eventually have buyer’s remorse with the candidate they had chosen. Looks like Limbaugh was right on the money on Democrat’s buyer’s remorse. For some of them he’s not liberal enough (imagine that!), for others he’s the kind of Tax-achusetts liberal that the Southern Democrat won’t embrace, and for all of Bush’s public speaking faults at least he’s short and too the point whereas Kerry could bore Medusa to stone – The Washington Post’s Richard Cohen summed it up like this: “Bush is minimally articulate; Kerry is downright verbose. When Kerry opens his mouth, whole chunks of paragraphs fall out and hit the floor with a clunk.”
Here’s another point over which superliberal Cohen frets:
“In the past month or so, everything has gone wrong for George W. Bush. He has been criticized at hearings of the Sept. 11 commission for being lackadaisical about terrorism. Richard Clarke accused him of being weirdly obsessed with Iraq. More than 100 Americans have been killed there in the past 30 days, and Bush was so inarticulate in his recent news conference that you could say he violated the standards of his own "No Child Left Behind" policy. Still, if this keeps up, he'll win reelection in a landslide. That, at least, is the forgivable conclusion you can draw from the Washington Post-ABC News poll released this week. It had Bush ahead of John Kerry, the Democrats' presumptive nominee, by 48 percent to 43 percent, with most of the rest (6 percent) going to someone named Nader. What's particularly telling is that Bush and Kerry have traded places on two key issues -- national security and the economy. Where Bush once lagged, he is now in the lead.”
So sorry to disappoint you, Richard. Once again I guess you Beltway and New Yorker subscribers think you know what’s best for the rest of us but haven’t figured out how to convince us. But, the problem isn’t what Bush has or hasn’t done, but rather who John Kerry is (and has been for decades). The Democrats didn’t so much choose a candidate as allow one to slide in simply because Howard Dean’s instability and screaming frightened them.
MSNBC’s Howard Fineman, another of your typical liberals so filled in our mainstream media, is also having a case of buyer’s remorse. Fineman, unlike Cohen, gets the root of the problem. He lists several points but I’ll start with number three:
“Resolve.” In politics, you can’t beat something with nothing. Bush has a plan and a vision: His goal is to protect the American homeland by spreading democracy (by military force if necessary) to the cockpit of Islamic fundamentalism. This idea strikes many serious people as naïve and grandiose at best, dangerously imperious and counter-productive at worst. But what, precisely, is the better idea? Kerry certainly hasn’t made that clear. “Winning hearts and minds” sounds nice, but how do you do that these days? Relying on the United Nations sounds good, too, except that the U.N. has little real credibility.
Although Fineman can’t hide his disdain for “spreading democracy” to the Islamic world at least this liberal concedes that nobody else has had a better idea. As Bush said in December – and I know I’m a broken record on this but it’s just so true – 60 years of promoting stability over liberty did nothing for Western security. Just try to debate that one and I assure you you’ll get your butt whooped every time. Added, the Islamic militants certainly vocalize that the thing they fear and hate most is our brand of liberal, secular democracy – next thing you know, Akbar, they’ll allow women in Mecca driver’s licenses! Our enemy gets it. Why the Liberals don’t is beyond me.
But back to Fineman on Kerry, he concludes that Kerry’s positions on the important issues on Iraq aren’t really different from Bush’s. Voter’s analysis: then why change?
That’s not all. Fineman draws some more sensible conclusions:
Richard Ben-Veniste & Co. The media loved the 9/11 commission hearings. By instinct, we thrilled to watch a prosecutor such as B-V on the hunt, creeping in on a witness like a big cat. But the commission, which served as a platform for the theatrical Richard Clarke and the cross-examinations of Democratic members, eventually came off as too political and partisan to damage the president. Just the opposite, I think. Too many of the commissioners ended up looking like they were pressing to prove that Bush could have and should have prevented the 9/11 catastrophe — a theory the public doesn’t buy. In fact, most Americans tend to blame the rise of terrorism here on the eight-year Clinton administration. Bush, without having to say much, was able to play the political victim.
Very true. The thing is Richard Clarke’s full frontal assault backfired. Had he simply said both presidents made mistakes the public would have gravitated to Bush’s because he’s still around to be punished. But Clarke didn’t – instead he fired from the hip at a frantic pace; but many of the bullets intended for Bush ricocheted on Clarke and his allies.
Fallujah and Najaf. Politics is a game of context. And for now, this early in the campaign, the context isn’t Bush versus Kerry — it’s Bush versus the murderers and thugs. The first reaction of Americans wasn’t “what were those contractors doing in Fallujah in the first place?” It was “we must punish the beasts who killed and savagely mutilated them.” As a political analyst, my first thought was: All this video is bad for Bush, because it makes his Iraq policy look like a failure. I was wrong, of course. His may pay politically for Iraq at some point, but not right now. For now, it’s still rally ’round the commander-in-chief, if for no other reason than to show that we are not Spain.
What’s this? A liberal journalist admits being wrong! Hath hell frozen?
Next, a great one about Bob Woodward’s book “Plan of Attack.”
Bob Woodward’s blessing. He certainly didn’t intend to do so, but the great Watergate reporter’s new book, “Plan of Attack,” gives President Bush some cover — which is why it’s listed on the Bush-Cheney ’04 Web site as recommended reading. No, Bush didn’t convene the war cabinet to assess the risks of going to Iraq. But Woodward portrays the president as insisting on the need to prove the case that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. According to Woodward, CIA Director George Tenet told Bush that making such a case would be a “slam dunk.” Stories about the president’s reliance on faith and on a “higher father” to give him strength scare many voters. But most of those particular voters lost to Bush long ago. On the other hand, I can think of swing voters I’ve interviewed in Ohio and Florida who would be reassured, not shocked, that Bush would pray as he leads.
“He certainly didn’t intend to”? Say again, Howie? Does Woodward send out press releases on his intentions now? I guess Woodward’s decision to put professionalism and integrity above blatant Bush-bashing might disappoint the other media liberals who never do so but it’s refreshing nonetheless. It would seem that my initial fear that Woodward’s book was just another Richard Clarke biased Bush-basher was an over-reaction (there, your conservative host can also admit being wrong). It turns out that Woodward’s book is actually helping Bush.
The Economy. It is improving in most places in most ways. West Virginia is a good example. Bush won it in 2000 on the strength of protectionist promises made to steelworkers there. He has since dialed back on protection, and you would think that that presented a big opening to the Democrats there. But, for other reasons (voracious demand in China, mostly) the American steel industry is booming. There are other local and national trends out there. Some of that good news is getting out, which is why Bush’s numbers — still not great — are improving for handling the economy. And, as in Iraq, Kerry’s proposals aren’t radically different. He’s even in favor of keeping most of Bush’s tax cuts in place.
Um, not exactly, Howard. That’s delusional thinking. Kerry is all for raising taxes on the top 2%, even though they already pay more than 33 percent of all income taxes. A married couple doesn’t have to make much to hit that top 2%. Meanwhile, again, a liberal admits the economy has recovered! Hell hath frozen!
Finally, Fineman points out the problem:
Kerry, of course... So far, his strategy has amounted mostly to: Vote for me, I’m not Bush. That’s not enough, especially if Kerry is seen by most voters the way the BC04 ad portrays him: as a flip-flopping manipulative insider.
The perfect six-word definition of John Kerry.
