President Bush is the only real choice Tuesday

AS AMERICA closes in on what may very well be another hotly contested presi- dential election, voters might want to ponder the following--and all too familiar--excerpt taken from a major American news publication:

"The troops returning home are worried. 'We've lost the peace,' men tell you. 'We can't make it stick.' A tour of the beaten-up cities in Iraq six months after victory is a mighty sobering experience for anyone. Iraqis, friend and foe alike, look you accusingly in the face and tell you how bitterly they are disappointed in you as an American. You try to explain to these Iraqis that they expected too much. They answer that they had a right to, that after the last war, America was the hope of the world. Never has American prestige in Iraq been lower. 'Have you no statesmen in America?' they ask. We have swept away Saddam, but a great many Iraqis feel that the cure is worse than the disease."

Sounds like what you've seen and heard in dozens of newspapers and TV shows, right? Well not exactly. The above quote comes from an article written by one of America's great novelists, John Dos Passos, and it appeared in Life magazine on Jan. 7, 1946.

And as the alert reader may have already suspected from the italicized words in the quote, I took the liberty of substituting Iraq for Europe, and Saddam for Hitler. Plus ca change, plus c'est la même chose!

Harry S. Truman was president when this issue of Life slipped into America's mailboxes, and the article reflected just a small dose of the battering criticism he was then receiving from his many critics who claimed he mishandled the peace.

But the worst was yet to come. Over the next few years, our erstwhile ally in war--the Soviet Union--conducted a communist jihad in Europe that led to the partitioning of Germany, the isolation of Berlin, and the Soviet colonization of Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, plus an ugly and violent civil war in Greece, and then in Korea. Could the challenges confronting America get any worse?

Notwithstanding expert opinion of the day, historians now look back on that postwar era as one of America's finest hours, and meeting that heroic challenge ranks Truman among our great presidents.

Europe was stabilized, democracy flourished, and the American infantry performed a cultural sex change on a nasty European nation--Germany--that in the preceding hundred years had managed to distinguish itself largely through the repeated invasions of its hapless neighbors, and the horrific genocide conducted upon its citizenry. Sixty years and counting, Germany remains at peace with the world.

What carried President Truman through these dark days was a stubborn belief that America could make a difference, and that rogue countries could be brought to heel and dragged into the civilized world.

President Bush has shown the same steely determination, and the same stubbornness as Truman, in his belief that Afghanistan and Iraq might respond much as Germany did a half-century ago.

And maybe he's right! As Exhibit 1, who would have thought that de-Talibanized Afghanistan would have successfully, and non-violently, conducted its first-ever democratic election? But it happened, and it happened on Dubya's watch.

OK, so what about the economy? Much has been made of comparisons of this recovery to the last, or to the one before that, but judgments tied to benchmarks of the past miss the point and overlook the extraordinary progress made in sustaining an economy that continues to produce the highest standard of living in the world in the face of a global recession.

Over the past year, America's economy grew by an astounding 4.8 percent, compared to 2 percent for the countries of Europe. Among the advanced nations of the world our economy is far and away the healthiest, yet in the perverse logic of a political campaign, coming in first year after year becomes an indictment for failure. Go figure.

In the end, what's most surprising about this presidential race is the absence of a Democratic candidate from it. I became a Republican a long time ago when it was very much the minority party. I was drawn to its principles, and the contribution I believed they could make in creating a safe and prosperous civil society.

I was confident that in time these ideals would prevail, but I never suspected the victory would occur so soon, or be as complete as this campaign seems to suggest.

Once recognized as one of the nation's most liberal politicians, Sen. John Kerry has cobbled together a platform that promises as many as 40,000 more troops for Iraq, increased defense spending to support them, and better equipment for our armed forces; a balanced budget and more tax cuts for all but the very rich; greater financial support for Bush's No Child Left Behind program; stronger states' rights on social issues; and a health-care reform plan that largely relies on the private sector. Welcome to the party, Mr. Kerry.

If imitation is the greatest form of flattery, then consider Kerry's platform a ringing endorsement of the president's principles and that of his party. Welcome aboard, folks, to the new era of conservative values, but steer clear of bootleg copies and novice practitioners.

Given a choice between a meaty porterhouse and a salisbury steak lathered in suspect gravy, I'll take the real deal in a heartbeat and pull the lever this Tuesday for President George W. Bush.

An email forwarded to me this weekend:

From Geraldo Rivera of all people...

Sent: Sunday, October 17, 2004 5:48 AM

As Paul Harvey says "and now for the rest of the story !"...

No matter what your political convictions, you need to read this. It is the Former Liberal Democrat Geraldo's perspective on Iraq.

"They have a saying in the news business," Geraldo Rivera related this week. "Reporters don't report buildings that don't burn." And with that introduction, he told a TV audience about the story that is being systematically denied to our entire nation: the success story of post-Saddam Iraq. Are we losing some soldiers each week? Yes. Is there some frustration in the public about electricity and water service? Yes.

Are some Saddam Hussein loyalists throughout the land, making trouble? Yes. Has this opened a window for some terrorist mischief? Yes. But that's ALL we hear. No wonder the country is in a mixed mood about Iraq. If you hear about the buildings that are not burning, though, it is a different story indeed.

Rivera is no shill for George W. Bush. But Bush, Condi Rice and Colin Powell together could not have been as effective as Geraldo was Thursday night on the Fox News Channel's Hannity and Colmes program. "When I got to Baghdad, I barely recognized it," he began, comparing his just-completed trip to two others he made during and just after the battle to topple Saddam. "You have over 30,000 Iraqi cops and militiamen already on the job. This is four months after major fighting stopped. Can you imagine that kind of gearing up in this country? Law and order is better; archaeological sites are being preserved; factories, schools are being guarded." But what about the secondhand griping that the media have been so efficiently relating about power, water and other infrastructure?

"To say that Iraq is being REBUILT is not true," answered Rivera. "IRAQ IS BEING BUILT". There was no infrastructure before; we are doing it. I just think the good news is being underestimated and underreported." At this juncture, one must evaluate how to feel about the voices telling us only about the bad news in Iraq, whether from the mouths of news anchors or Democratic presidential hopefuls. At best, they areunderinformed. At worst, their one-sided assessments of post-Saddam Iraq are intentional falsehoods for obvious reasons.

If I hear one more person mock that "Mission Accomplished" banner beneath which President Bush thanked a shipload of sailors and Marines a few months back, I'm going to spit. That was a reference to the ouster of Saddam's regime, and that mission was indeed accomplished, apparently to the great chagrin of the American left. No one said what followed would be easy or cheap, and that's why the dripping-water torture of the cost and casualty stories is so infuriating.

Remember we pay our soldiers whether they are in Iraq or in Ft Bragg, North Carolina. We should all mourn the loss of every fallen soldier. But context cries out to be heard. Our present news media is not performing this task. As some dare to wonder if this might become a Vietnam-like quagmire, I'll remind whoever needs it that most of our 58,000 Vietnam war toll died between 1966 and 1972, during which we lost an average of about 8,000 per year. That's about 22 per day, every day, for thousands of days on end. Let us hear NO MORE Vietnam comparisons. They do not equate. What I hope to hear is more truth, even if we have to wrench it from the mouths of the media and political hacks predisposed to bash the remarkable job we are doing every day in what was not so long ago a totalitarian wasteland.

Local elections are under way across Iraq, Rivera reported. "Where Kurds and Arabs have been battling for decades, things have been settling down."

So does Geraldo think his media colleagues are intentionally painting with the side of the brush? "I'm not into conspiracy theories,..but there's just more bang for your buck when you report the GI who got killed rather than the 99 who didn't get killed, who make friends, who helped schedule elections, who helped shops get open for business, who helped traffic flow again. "The vast majority of Iraqis are very happy to have us there. I would like to see a bit more balance." This needs to be reported to the American Public who are presently being duped. I expect the dominant media culture to nitpick and attack Bush, and Democrats to blast him with reckless abandon. But when that leads to the willful exclusion of facts that would shine truthful light on the great work of the American armed forces, that level of malice plumbs new depths.

Please pass this along. The media won't tell this story!

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