Bush says, "Bring 'em on!"

Criticizing a President for not visiting countries in states of chaos and civil war is a ludicrous cheap shot, and, even if we accept for sake of argument the article's simplistic and dubious characterization of the administration's Iraq war aims, justifications, and alliances, the overall theme that the failure to address human catastrophes in one area devalues attempts to address them in others is as shallow as it is obvious. From this perspective, any policy that didn't address every problem, and send an army of saints to do the work, would represent "hypocritical selectivity."

Arianna has, in my opinion, been spending far too much time with fellow parents of students at the exclusive, insanely politically correct Pacific Palisades private school where she sent her kids. Amongst the Hollywood super-elite, such notions probably qualify as clever and original, just as the criticisms in that pathetically dishonest op-ed of hers that you posted on another thread, addressing Bush's supposed psychopathology, probably count as thoughtful and cutting.

In the meantime, events in Liberia appear to be justifying the care with which the the Bush people have addressed the situation: Taylor appears to be on the way out, but there are complications, and it wouldn't make any sense to send American Marines into a situation where they'd have little or no chance of succeeding.

As for the Congo, it's possible that we could or should have intervened there, but a meaningful expedition to that vast, landlocked country, in which several neighboring countries have already intervened militarily in what has been called "Africa's World War," would have to be a massive, costly, and uncertain operation - Somalia to the tenth power. No doubt, America's critics would determine that we were really there to secure Congo's vast mineral resources for ourselves. (Similar criticisms were offered in regard to Somalia, as to Iraq and Afghanistan more recently.) Any use of force to establish order would be criticized for its brutality. Any failure to use force would be criticized as a sign of our unseriousness. If we launched operations against one or another troublesome faction, we'd be accused of ignoring local sensitivities. If we failed to launch such operations, we'd be accused of effectively supporting that same faction despite its horrible record. Ditto if we sought to patch together a ceasefire and negotiations involving all parties, though, if we excluded anyone, we would again be accused of taking sides and ignoring local desires and aspirations. (Imagine the criticisms if any excluded party happened to be associated with Islamism or the French...) If we left early, we would be accused of abandoning the people. If we stayed, we'd be called imperialists, and the same critics would claim we'd stumbled into a quagmire. If we fed the starving, we'd probably be accused of seeking to establish dependency on agribusiness interests and genetically modified foodstuffs. If we encountered logistical difficulties that delayed the delivery of aid, we'd be be accused of not really caring, and just putting on a show.

And what about Burma? What about Zimbabwe? What about Chechnya? What about the poor and unemployed back home? How dare we expect credit or appreciation for efforts in [take your pick] when we've left desperate people elsewhere to fend for themselves?

Compared to Arianna's twaddle, Ann Coulter's over-the-top but at least intelligent and somewhat grown-up columns are looking better and better.

 

Leftists for Bush
by Oliver Kamm

As a European onlooker of liberal-Left views, I was disappointed at Bush's election. The Clinton-Gore administration had been often feckless and sometimes squalid; having promised much, it was not after all consistently 'New Democrat'; and Clinton himself, while not the worst president ever, was the worst human being ever to be president, as his final days in office confirmed. But against that, Clinton had eventually done the right thing in Kosovo (largely at Tony Blair's urging) and his record on the economy was good. Though the economic record was largely by default - the Fed was in highly capable hands, while Clinton's Treasury appointees, notably but not only Larry Summers, were outstanding - that was still an achievement; Richard Nixon managed to be an actively-damaging president even apart from Watergate.

Bush came to office as an underachiever armed with a political slogan - 'compassionate conservatism' - at least as vacuous as 'The Third Way'. Conservatism, as I understand it, is a doctrine about the proper limits of government; a government that is compassionate and caring (fine as personal virtues but lethal as political affectations) has in principle nothing to constrain it. If I suffer emotional hurt, a democratic - but epecially a conservative - government ought to have no interest whatever in my emotional state. I do not want to live in a 'caring society': I would settle for one that disinterestedly sets the rules we live by and seeks equity (not compassion) through some measure of economic redistribution.

Bush gave every sign, moreover, of being uninterested in the principles of democratic internationalism: he expressly warned against 'nation-building', hinted that he would pull US troops out of the Balkans, and did not obviously possess instinctive sympathy for Israel's position as a constitutional democracy surrounded by autocracies. He appeared to be socially illiberal, making a much-criticised campaign speech at Bob Jones University, notorious for its anti-Catholic discrimination. And he was demonstrably at sea in economics: in one of the debates with Gore, the candidates were asked how they would respond to some hypothetical economc crisis, to which Bush's answer was (from memory) roughly 'I'd leave it to Greenspan'.

Economics has indeed turned out to be a weak area of this administration (and was the Clinton administration's strongest point) - though not on the grounds that the British Politics blog claims. Tax cuts at a time of budget deficit is precisely what Kennedy proposed in 1963, because he wanted to stimulate the economy and he was opposed to confiscatory rates of taxation (a marginal rate then of 91% on incomes of over $300,000). What's more worrying about the Bush approach to economics is that it's transposed an understandable impatience at multilateral diplomacy in the political sphere - the UN obviously deserves no respect after its performance over Iraq - also to international economics. If there were a shock to the global economy of the order of the Asian currency crisis in the second Clinton term, the role of the US Treasury Secretary would be crucial in addressing global imbalances and reassuring markets.

Economics apart, the Bush administration has confounded my expectations. He is no reactionary. His stand on race has been admirable: not only appointing black members of his administration who are conspicuously talented (I would dearly like to see Condoleezza Rice as president one day), but making it clear that Trent Lott had violated the bounds of decency in praising the segregationist 1948 presidential campaign of Strom Thurmond. He has made every effort to express solidarity with mainstream Islam in order to distinguish it in the public mind from Islamist totalitarianism. He immediately understood the import of September 11: not an isolated criminal act for which law-enforcement agencies should be allocated responsibility, but an act of war against liberal democratic values. And understanding it, he saw that the removal of a primitive but brutal theocracy in Afghanistan was insufficient. Islamist totalitarians would naturally seek weapons that could kill even more Western civilians than four hijacked planes; the leader of the free world had not only the right but the duty to stop their potential supply at source. The particular potential supplier was moreover himself at war with the international community, having serially breached the ceasefire agreement that concluded the Gulf War and violated UN requirements.

So a president who initially appeared to be more interested in accommodation with Saddam and lifting sanctions against him became the liberator of a nation that bore comparison with Stalinist Russian and Nazi Germany. Beyond that, he has tied his administration to a vision simultaneously straightfoward and ambitious: to side with democratic forces in the Arab world and elsewhere, in the conviction that this will both improve the lives of millions and serve American security by encouraging the growth of civil society. A thriving and diverse political culture, rather than one forced into the mosque on account of the suppression of other methods of dissent, is less likely, so it is argued, to be susceptible to radical anti-American and antisemitic ideology.

Anyone who believes Bush's strategy to be hubristic or imperialist should read Samantha Power's recent book A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide. In a harrowing account of American quietism in the face of genoocide - in Cambodia, Iraq, Bosnia, Rwanda - she notes, of the traditional diplomatic stress on the importance of international stability:

"[T]here is perhaps no greater source of havoc than a group of well-armed extremists bent on wiping out a people on ethnic, national or religious grounds."

I believe the decision by President Bush, supported by Tony Blair, to overthrow rather than bargain with a genocidal dictatorship in Iraq has no parallel in American diplomacy for strategic far-sightedness and nobility, at least since Truman's commitment to the rebuilding and defence of western Europe. (The Reagan Doctrine, of support for anti-Communist insurgencies, was by contrast as much a way of limiting American commitments overseas as it was of challenging tyranny.) I cannot stomach, let alone comprehend, the absurdity of those who claim the mantle of progressivism and yet who regard the overthrow of tyranny as something to be sneered at and marched against. President Bush has embraced and effected the deepest humanitarian principles of the liberal Left, and we must recognise him for one of our own.

http://oliverkamm.blogspot.com/2003_06_29_oliverkamm_archive.html#105719928581778784

 

2003 WorldNetDaily.com





A new Gallup Poll conducted in the days leading up to Independence Day, shows a wide "patriotism gap" between the political right and left in America.

Eighty percent of conservatives said they are extremely proud of the country, while only 56 percent of liberals responded that way.

Some 68 percent of moderates said they were extremely proud of America.

Whites and non-whites showed a similar difference, with 73 percent of white Americans saying they were extremely proud of the country and 59 percent of non-whites responding that way.


How proud are you to be an American? Extremely proud, very proud, moderately proud, only a little proud, or not at all proud? (Gallup)


The poll found younger Americans are less likely to be extremely proud to be Americans than are those who are older. Six in 10 adults aged 18 to 29 say they are extremely proud, compared with about three in four Americans in both the 30-to-49 and 50-to-64 age groups as well as roughly two-thirds of adults aged 65 and older.

Likewise, the Gallup survey found, more than eight in 10 Republicans are extremely proud to be Americans, while two-thirds of Democrats feel this way.

Interestingly, while most Americans are personally extremely proud to be Americans, many perceive that other Americans are not so proud – and only half say the original signers of the Declaration of Independence would be pleased with the way the United States has turned out.

The poll was conducted June 27-29. The results are based on telephone interviews with a randomly selected national sample of 1,003 adults, 18 years and older. It has a margin of error of 3 percent.

In answer to the question, "How proud are you to be an American?" 70 percent of respondents said they are "extremely" proud, with an additional 20 percent saying they are "very" proud. A January 2001 poll, conducted prior to the events of Sept. 11, found somewhat lower levels of pride, as 55 percent of Americans said they were extremely proud to be Americans. After the attacks, however, pride in the country increased substantially, with upwards of two in three respondents saying they were extremely proud to be Americans in two 2002 polls.

The current data show no decline in patriotism almost two years after the terrorist attacks.

 

COMMENTARY

July 5, 2003

Flypaper


There are currently three main theatres of -- not war, precisely, but something resembling it, within the Middle East. One is the civil insurrection in Iran, which has continued to escalate, even though the media have withdrawn their attention again, wanting quicker results. One is in Iraq, which is now getting more media attention, as Saddamite and affiliated "dead-enders" try to step up resistance to the U.S. and British military occupation. The third is Israel/Palestine, always aboil, but where the media are reporting "hopeful signs".

I almost tire of mentioning how the media -- specifically, the "liberal" mainstream media that determine how 60 per cent of Canadians and 40 per cent of Americans think -- get everything backwards. So that by the time one has unwrangled their reflexive views, one is stupefied by the doublings, quadruplings, and sextuplings of negatives.

There are no hopeful signs in Israel/Palestine, per se. The Bush administration and the Israeli government of Ariel Sharon are entering consciously into a devil's pact, in which the Palestinian authorities who had pledged to disarm the terrorist militias, have instead made a show of arranging ceasefires with them. Far from putting them out of action, this gives Hamas, Islami Jihad, the various branches of Fatah, and affiliates of Hizbullah -- all still recruiting and operating freely throughout the West Bank and Gaza -- an opportunity to regroup and repair the damage the Israel Defence Forces were able to inflict on them through almost three years' of Intifada and counter-Intifada.

The ceasefires also give Israel an opportunity, and diplomatic cover, to pull back the most exposed West Bank settlements, and make preparations for the isolation of the various Palestinian enclaves when the terrorism resumes -- which it will do almost inevitably. But on balance, time weighs to the benefit of the terrorists.

The hopeful signs are instead around the region -- just where the media are affecting despair. With each passing day, the future of Iran's ayatollahs looks grimmer, as it becomes clearer they can depend on the loyalty of no significant section of Iranian society, and must increasingly doubt their own police and army. What appeared last year to be students versus ayatollahs, is now effectively the people versus the ayatollahs, with the biggest demonstrations yet planned for next week.

The U.S. occupation of Iraq has done more to destabilize Iran than the ayatollahs could hope to do in Iraq; and then something. This "something" has befuddled the various "experts" on regional security, trapped within their Pavlovian assumptions. They notice that the U.S. forces in Iraq have become a new magnet for regional terrorist activity. They assume this demonstrates the foolishness of President Bush's decision to invade.

It more likely demonstrates the opposite. While engaged in the very difficult business of building a democracy in Iraq -- the first democracy, should it succeed, in the entire history of the Arabs -- President Bush has also, quite consciously to my information, created a new playground for the enemy, away from Israel, and even farther away from the United States itself. By the very act of proving this lower ground, he drains terrorist resources from other swamps.

This is the meaning of Mr. Bush's "bring 'em on" taunt from the Roosevelt Room on Wednesday, when he was quizzed about the "growing threat to U.S. forces" on the ground in Iraq. It should have been obvious that no U.S. President actually relishes having his soldiers take casualties. What the media, and U.S. Democrats affect not to grasp, is that the soldiers are now replacing targets that otherwise would be provided by defenceless civilians, both in Iraq and at large. The sore thumb of the U.S. occupation -- and it is a sore thumb equally to Baathists and Islamists, compelling their response -- is not a mistake. It is carefully hung flypaper.

And I think the naïve "roadmap" exercise in diplomacy between Israel and the Palestinian Authority may make some sense in this context. I.e., Israel takes down its flypaper, while the U.S. puts up its own in Iraq.

At the moment it appears that most of the infiltration of Iraq is coming from the west, through Syria, and consists of Lebanese-based Hizbullah elbowing their way into Saddam's old territory. Their intention is to do to the U.S. Army in Iraq what they did to the Marines in Beirut in 1983. The chief source of both men and materiel is what Gal Luft has called "Hizbullahland" -- the 1,000 square kilometre patch, that Hizbullah now rules under Syrian protection, which was formerly Israel's security enclave in southern Lebanon (until they withdrew in a peace initiative in the year 2000).

Hizbullah itself (the "Army of Allah" -- Shia, and ultimately financed and armed by Iran's ayatollahs) are directing their attention less and less towards the "Little Satan" of Israel, and more and more towards the "Great Satan" of the U.S., as events unfold.

This is exactly what President Bush wants. To engage them, away from Israel, in mortal combat. To have an excuse for wiping them out -- a good, solid, American excuse, from which Israel has been extracted. The good news is, Hizbullah's taking the bait.


David Warren

http://www.davidwarrenonline.com/Comment/Jul03/index150.shtml

 

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,91157,00.html


stories like this make me sad to see such bs out there...

 

Troop morale in Iraq hits 'rock bottom'

Soldiers stress is a key concern as the Army ponders whether to send more forces.

By Ann Scott Tyson | Special to The Christian Science Monitor

WASHINGTON – US troops facing extended deployments amid the danger, heat, and uncertainty of an Iraq occupation are suffering from low morale that has in some cases hit "rock bottom."

Even as President Bush speaks of a "massive and long-term" undertaking in rebuilding Iraq, that effort, as well as the high tempo of US military operations around the globe, is taking its toll on individual troops.

Some frustrated troops stationed in Iraq are writing letters to representatives in Congress to request their units be repatriated. "Most soldiers would empty their bank accounts just for a plane ticket home," said one recent Congressional letter written by an Army soldier now based in Iraq. The soldier requested anonymity.

In some units, there has been an increase in letters from the Red Cross stating soldiers are needed at home, as well as daily instances of female troops being sent home due to pregnancy.

"Make no mistake, the level of morale for most soldiers that I've seen has hit rock bottom," said another soldier, an officer from the Army's 3rd Infantry Division in Iraq.

Such open grumbling among troops comes as US commanders reevaluate the size and composition of the US-led coalition force needed to occupy Iraq. US Central Command, which is leading the occupation, is expected by mid-July to send a proposal to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on how many and what kind of troops are required, as well as on the rotation of forces there.

For soldiers, a life on the road

The rethink about troop levels comes as senior military leaders voice concern that multiple deployments around the world are already taxing the endurance of US forces, the Army in particular. Some 370,000 soldiers are now deployed overseas from an Army active-duty, guard, and reserve force of just over 1 million people, according to Army figures.

Experts warn that long, frequent deployments could lead to a rash of departures from the military. "Hordes of active-duty troops and reservists may soon leave the service rather than subject themselves to a life continually on the road," writes Michael O'Hanlon, a military expert at the Brookings Institution here.

A major Army study is now under way to examine the impact of this high pace of operations on the mental health of soldiers and families. "The cumulative effect of these work hours and deployment and training are big issues, and soldiers are concerned about it," says Col. Charles Hoge, who is leading the survey of 5,000 to 10,000 soldiers for the Walter Reed Institute of Army Research.

Concern over stressed troops is not new. In the late 1990s, a shrinking of military manpower combined with a rise in overseas missions prompted Congress to call for sharp pay increases for troops deployed over a certain number of days.

"But then came September 11 and the operational tempo went off the charts" and the Congressional plan was suspended, according to Ed Bruner, an expert on ground forces at the Congressional Research Service here.

Adding manpower to the region

Despite Pentagon statements before the war that the goal of US forces was to "liberate, not occupy" Iraq, Secretary Rumsfeld warned last week that the war against terrorists in Iraq and elsewhere "will not be over any time soon."

Currently, there are some 230,000 US troops serving in and around Iraq, including nearly 150,000 US troops inside Iraq and 12,000 from Britain and other countries. According to the Pentagon, the number of foreign troops is expected to rise to 20,000 by September. Fresh foreign troops began flowing into Iraq this month, part of two multinational forces led by Poland and Britain. A third multinational force is also under consideration.

A crucial factor in determining troop levels are the daily attacks that have killed more than 30 US and British servicemen in Iraq since Mr. Bush declared on May 1 that major combat operations had ended.

The unexpected degree of resistance led the Pentagon to increase US ground troops in Iraq to mount a series of ongoing raids aimed at confiscating weapons and capturing opposition forces.

A tour of duty with no end in sight

As new US troops flowed into Iraq, others already in the region for several months, such as the 20,000-strong 3rd Infantry Division were retained in Iraq.

"Faced with continued resistance, Department of Defense now plans to keep a larger force in Iraq than anticipated for a period of time," Maj. Gen. Buford Blount, commander of the 3rd Infantry Division, explained in a statement to families a month ago. "I appreciate the turmoil and stress that a continued deployment has caused," he added.

The open-ended deployments in Iraq are lowering morale among some ground troops, who say constantly shifting time tables are reducing confidence in their leadership. "The way we have been treated and the continuous lies told to our families back home has devastated us all," a soldier in Iraq wrote in a letter to Congress.

Security threats, heat, harsh living conditions, and, for some soldiers, waiting and boredom have gradually eroded spirits. An estimated 9,000 troops from the 3rd Infantry Division - most deployed for at least six months and some for more than a year - have been waiting for several weeks, without a mission, to return to the United States, officers say.

In one Army unit, an officer described the mentality of troops. "They vent to anyone who will listen. They write letters, they cry, they yell. Many of them walk around looking visibly tired and depressed.... We feel like pawns in a game that we have no voice [in]."