Mark Steyn on Hugh Hewitt: the Dems latest shenanigans

HH: And to sort through it all, a special extended appearance by columnist to the world, Mark Steyn. You can read all of his work at Steynonline.com. Mark, welcome, and thanks for spending extra time with us today, because there's so much to go through.

MS: It's a pleasure. Well, I'm not sure pleasure's the word, but you're right that there's a lot to get through.

HH: Let's start with North Korea, Mark Steyn. Today in the Washington Post, former Secretary of Defense Bill Perry, and an assistant secretary of defense from the Clinton era, urged that George Bush do what they did not do, which is to take out a North Korean missile on its launch pad immediately. What do you think of the suggestion? What do you think of the authors of it? And what do you think we ought to do?

MS: Well, I wish they'd felt that way a decade ago when all this was starting up, because I think the lesson of the Clinton strategy in North Korea is that if you defer foreign policy crisis, if in a sense, you just boot them down the road, they always get worse. And North Korea is the classic example of that. As to whether we should take it out on the launch pad, I've got very mixed feelings on that. That is an explicit act of war, and I think we should understand the logic of that, that if we take action, an explicit act of war against North Korea, North Korea is a country that enjoys the support of China, which is one reason why this is a bigger problem than it appears to be. But at the same time, they're not going to conduct a test of this missile. It's like if I buy a new gun for hunting season, and say I'd like to get in a bit of target practice, but I come and practice in your back yard. If my target practice is taking out your kitchen window, or your garage door or whatever, that is not a test. And North Korea firing missiles into other countries airspace is not in any sense of the word a test. And I think we're looking at a situation here now where almost all the options are bad, they're far worse than they would have been ten years ago, and that's the lesson not just for North Korea, but for Iran, too.

HH: Now if we have the ability to let them launch, I think it is different if it is actually launched, and we try and take it down, hopefully successfully with missile defense. Do you view that as a different action than striking their...then we're just testing our missile defense system, they're testing their rockets. What do you make of that?

MS: Yes, I think that is a different thing. If they fire a missile, and we take it out, that's fine. That's a relatively uncomplicated situation, and in the greater scheme of things, obviously, it's a humiliation for the North Koreans. It would be interesting (laughing) given Canada's objections under the last government to the missile defense scheme, I always think it would be interesting if the North Koreans were to aim it at say, Vancouver, and for U.S. missile defense to infringe Canadian airspace in taking it out.

HH: Part of the problem is we don't quite know if they know where they're aiming. It's sort of like the scuds that Saddam used in the first Gulf War.

MS: Yes, it is. All we have to go on is they did fire a missile over Japan a couple of years ago. I mean, that is...and they got away with it. And this is...one of the terrible things about the world we're moving into is that it's not as if there are rival powers to America. There are no serious rivals to America. Almost all the threats that America faces are by weak powers. In the case of North Korea, this is a country where everyone's starving in it. They can't even feed their own people. But yet they've somehow managed to come up with a system where they've got enough missiles just to be able to fire them randomly at places, and see where they come down. And that's the world we're moving into, where weak powers are nevertheless able to kind of lob a missile at civilization from time to time. I mean, this is a terrible situation to have let develop.

HH: I also believe that if we were able to knock it down, that would have an amazing effect on Iran and others who think about nuclear blackmail in the future, or actually blackmail of any country in the future of any sort.

MS: Well, I think it would do good in this sense, that it would demonstrate that the American technological advantage compensates for all the countries' other disadvantages. That's to say that America's technology is so good, that it can overcome even its defeatist media, and its defeatist Congress, and this idea of a hyperpower with feet of clay. That in the end, for all those disadvantages, the American technological advantage is just so great, that it can basically watch American Idol and be absorbed in that, and then press the button, and take out the incoming missile as well. In other words, it would demonstrate that even for all its flaws, the American technological advantage is still in a sense, compenstates for all those.

HH: All right. Let's switch, then, to the low tech weapons of terror that we have discovered buried in the Iraqi desert, or at least that's what I think. Have you followed the Rick Santorum/Pete Hoekstra announcement? And what do you make of it?

MS: Well, I think it's interesting. I tend to agree with them. Obviously, they've seen the whole thing, and they wish that more was declassified. And I think one of the lessons of this is that actually, the American people and the administration would benefit from a lot more being declassified. In other words, that there's very little to lose, and a lot to gain from letting a lot more people see what's at stake. Now obviously, what's happening here is that as far as the left is concerned, as far as the Democrats are concerned, as far as the media is concerned, there's no story here. Whatever kind of WMD you find, they're always the wrong kind of WMD. You know, these ones, oh, it's old mustard gas. It doesn't matter, it's degraded, it's useless, it doesn't mean anything. 15 of these things were enough for him, Saddam Hussein, to kill large numbers of his own people a few years ago. They're now saying they've found, I think it's upwards of 500.

MS: That would kill, in the...used in the right way, that would be enormously devastating to large numbers of people. Now what is at issue here is at what point does the risk become too great to tolerate? I mean, basically, the media and the Democrats are saying no matter how much he's got, no matter how much potential he had, and how much capability he had, it still doesn't justify the war. And in that case, the only 100% proof you have of his WMD program is when you switch on the TV at 8:00AM, and there's a big, smoking hole where some famous city used to be. I mean, this is simply not...that's not a level of proof that you can live with in the age we're in today.

HH: Before I go to a couple specific questions about that, you've driven around this area of the world, and I'm wondering if you've got a truck and enough gas, and you've got a couple of these binary mustard shells, or sarin gas, and we've seen Zarqawi when he was alive send bombers to Jordan. We've seen his allies in Egypt blow up the Red Sea resorts, etc. How long does it take to strap a couple of these things in a truck and start heading somewhere, at least to our allies, of Jordan or Israel, and possibly just to innocent Muslims in Egypt. And they could, I think, wreak enormous havoc.

MS: Well, yes. I think that's the issue, that if you say did just stick a couple of these in the back of the truck, and you drove through Iraq's western desert, and you get to the Jordanian border, they're not going to have...they don't have anything at that Jordanian border that could tell you had something like that on you. If they were concealed in the truck well enough, they're given a very peremptory look by Jordanian officials. So you get into Jordan. You could do enormous damage to U.S. interests in Amman with that. You could drive on a couple of hours past Amman, you can be across the Allenby Bridge, and on the edge of Jerusalem, and doing damage to Israeli targets there. So we're not talking about something that requires huge, great technical difficulty to move around. And to be honest, this whole issue has become preposterous, because basically, what we're arguing over here is at what point does Saddam, is he deemed to have got something so bad we have to go to war for it. Well, the issue here has always been the same one, that Saddam acted as if he had this stuff, and now it turns out he did have a lot of this stuff. And that should be good enough. We shouldn't even be discussing this, Hugh. It's ridiculous.

HH: I know. What upsets me, or at least aggrieves me about the Washington Post coverage today is they quote unnamed intelligence sources as saying oh, this isn't what we were looking for, and it was near the Iranian desert, and was buried. And they never even bothered to ask did Saddam, or any of his inner circle know that these WMD had been hidden? And how did we find them? Because we have to figure out are they lying around all over like in the MIG's that were buried in the desert. And I suspect that our intelligence community really doesn't want to know, Mark Steyn.

MS: No, I think this is the thing, that in fact, if you look at the performance of the intelligence agencies, with respect to Iraq, and also with respect, in fact, to this thing they've got in North Korea, they've underperformed in every case. And what's worse than that is that they've subordinated what they've found to their particular political bias on these issues. Now I think it's clear that if you drive around Iraq, it's clear that there's a million places to bury this stuff. Saddam has these vast, old, empty bases, just as sort of...they're called H-1, H-2, H-3. They're just sort of off the highway. They go on for miles. You think...there's not reason for them to be there, for anything that a country that is not got some maligned purpose....

HH: We've covered North Korea and the WMD. Let's go to the Senate debate today, where on the John Kerry, get out of there by a year resolution, only 13 Democrats voted for that. On the Carl Levin, Jack Reed of Rhode Island resolution, 39 voted for it. One Republican, Lincoln Chafee, Republican in name only, truly. Let's get some clips of the debate, and have Mark Steyn react to them. Cut number 1, Russ Feingold, earlier today, in the United States Senate:

RF: I've been a legislator for almost 25 years now, and I must say that this is one of the toughest moments of my career, to see the United States Senate not recognize that we were falsely led into a war, that we falsely led the American people into believing this had something to do with 9/11, and that many of the things that have happened simply didn't have to happen. That's water over the dam. What has happened after the mistake was made is that mistake after mistake has been compounded.

HH: Mark Steyn, this charge of falsely led is evidently going to be Russ Feingold's campaign platform.

MS: Yes, and I think that is totally unworthy of any serious country. Even...I don't believe it's true, by the way. In fact, I think when you look at what has been going on in the last three years, in fact, the left has been responsible for far more lies about Iraq than the Republican and the administration ever were, in terms of the quagmire, and all of the other ridiculous predictions, and the fact that they've insisted for three years that there's a civil war in Iraq, which there isn't. I mean, that's a far bigger lie than anything anyone ever said in March of 2003. But at the same point, let's forget about all that. Let's say he's right, and we were misled into war, and we went into war on a false pretext. What then is the best thing to do? Say oops, sorry, we shouldn't be here, wrong booking, we're meant to be here Thursday morning, and this is Tuesday. Goodbye, sorry to trouble you. You can't do that. It's ludicrous. The issue here now is American credibility. American credibility. Iraq, from an Iraqi point of view, is about Iraq. But Iraq, from an American point of view, is about the United States, and about the credibility of the United States. And to have this situation where effectively, the Democrats are straining, straining, straining to tug defeat from the jaws of victory, will be even more damaging if they succeed, even more damaging than Vietnam was.

JK: The fact is, sure you can muddle along with this course. None of us have come to the floor and said the cause is lost. None of us have suggested that you just have to walk away and leave chaos. That's not what this plan does. This plan honors the investment of our troops. And in fact, what it does is provide a better way of not only empowering the Iraqis, but of empowering the United States of America to fight a more effective war on terror. Let me say it plainly. Redeploying United States troops is necessary for success in Iraq.

MS: Yes, I love this new word. They've obviously poll tested it, and I'm glad to hear it's focus grouped well for them. Redeploy, redeploy. There's a wonderful English satirist called Craig Brown, and he does these kind of satirical conjugations. You know, I'm colorful, you're weird, he's nuts. I'm witty, you're a laugh, he makes embarrassing bottom noises with his armpit. Well, that's what the Democrats are doing. I redeploy, you withdraw, he cuts and runs. John Kerry can say he's in favor of redeploying, but you know, whether you go for the Jack Murtha plan of redeploying to Okinawa, or the John Kerry plan of redeploying to his ski lodge in Idaho, or wherever he wants to bring people home to, in the end, it's cutting and running. It's going to be presented...they're not going to be using the word redeploy on Al Jazeera. They're not going to be using the word redeploy on the BBC, or on the front page of Le Monde. They're going to see it for what it is, an American defeat.

MS: And this poll tested word is not going to survive the first report on Al Jazeera.

HH: Let's skip down to Harry Reid, now. By the way, there's an order that we're following here. We began with Russ Feingold, we'll go to John Kerry. Now it's Harry Reid, and we'll try and figure out the pattern in the next segment. Harry Reid, cut number 4:

HR: The Iraq War will soon become the longest conflict in this nation's history. Longer than World War II, a war in which we fought across Europe, North Africa, and the Pacific. My own state of Nevada, a small, sparsely populated state, has paid an enormous price in this war. We've lost 39 soldiers in Iraq, and Afghanistan, of course. Most of them in Iraq. That's 39 fathers, brothers, uncles, sons, daughters, aunts, who will never come home.

HH: Now a couple points about this, Mark Steyn. The exploitation of the dead soldiers is bad enough, but I also wonder about his dating of the longest conflict. Obviously, he does not consider the early years of World War II to have been America's war, even though it was underway. I think he's dating this war wrong, too. I think it began with the bombing of the World Trade Center, maybe with the seizure of the Iranian Embassy.

MS: Yes, I think that's true. I think clearly, he's false, just to put it in those terms, because certainly compared to the time that there was major American involvement in Vietnam, it doesn't compare. And also, I think you have to look at it in terms of what it is. It's not a war like the Second World War. That would be a much easier war to fight, if you're up against clear, major world powers, having big tank battles in fields, in particular places. This is something that's much tougher for a nation like America, because it's not my phrase, but Nile Ferguson, the British professor, history professor at Harvard, thinks that America suffers from attention deficit disorder. And you certainly get that when you listen to Harry Reid and the Democrats talk about foreign policy.

HR: We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it.

MS: Yes. Dissent is only as good as the particular dissent you make. If you're arguing about how to fight a war more effectively, that's one thing. What we're having here is a dispute about whether there is a war. And that's really the issue for the Democrats. You know, James Lileks wrote a marvelous column this week about the so-called Democrat platform. When you look at it, it's basically an ostrich platform. It's an entire political party sticking its head in the sand and saying there is no war, and we just want to talk about prescription drug plans for seniors until the bomb goes off.

HH: Let's proceed, Mark, to Joe Biden. Slow Joe on Hardball last night, cut number 8:

Norah O'Donnell: Do you think that that...having that debate on that is in some ways distracting from the real issue, and in fact, setting the Democrats up for the Republicans to make this argument that you guys are divided?

JB: Well, yeah it does. It does, but you can't blame John. I mean, John is frustrated as can be. A lot of people are. And John's, I guess, reached the conclusion that they're never going to get it right, so we might as well set a timetable to get out. I'm not there, but it is...it does give the Republicans an opportunity not to speak to where they are.

JB: I ask the following rhetorical question. No matter what's said here today, no matter what Karl Rove does in his gameplan, no matter how many times the president tries to make this political by talking about white flags, the bottom line will be, the election is on November the 7th. On November the 6th, if the conditions on the ground are like they are now, the American public will speak with their ballot.

MS: I don't think that's true, because essentially, there are two options in front of the American people this November. There's the Republican option, which as...you can make criticisms of the President, and you can make criticisms of the administration. But it's basically a grown-up policy. It's saying this is the existential struggle of our times, and this is one front in it. And because it's one front in the existential struggle, we cannot afford to lose it. And then you have the Democrats, who are divided, and they're basically divided over which defeatist loser option to have, loser options that aren't in the least bit credible, like redeploying to Okinawa, which is just absurd and laughable. And in fact, I would be embarrassed and ashamed if my party's spokesman was going on TV and saying things like that. And so I think that's the thing. The Democrats are divided. They're divided between six or seven embarrassing, pathetic, infantile, grade school joke policies.

HH: And we're going to get to the bottom of the barrel now. We've been going from Feingold to Kerry to Reid to Biden. Now we hit bottom, Barbara Boxer on Fox News, cut number 11:

Bill Hemmer: Well, what kind of a message are you sending them, if you're suggesting leave before that mission's complete?

BB: Well, we're sending them the message that we stand behind them. We're sending them a message very clearly, we Democrats, that we want to give them what they need to do the job, that we want to be with them when they come home, and that we want to give them a mission that is doable and that is winnable. And you know, 99% of the Republicans said stay the course. And if you go back to a Republican president, Teddy Roosevelt, who said essentially that blind adherence to an executive by the Congress is unpatriotic. I think that's a fascinating thing. We need to stand up for our troops. We have to stand against the status quo which is not working.

HH: Now what do you think (snickering), Mark Steyn. Did that make any sense at all?

MS: ...absolutely no sense at all. You know, there's 300 million people in this country, and there's only 100 Senators. And I cannot understand how Barbara Boxer, from one of the biggest population states, wound up as one of the Senators. That is simply embarrassing. It's completely incoherent. Basically, what she's saying, that the way to support the troops is to bring them home and psychologically traumatize them for the rest of their adult life by doing to them what was done to American soldiers a generation ago, and not letting them win the war.

HH: Right. And they are winning the war. It's inflicting defeat upon them. I'm just beside myself. Now look, Mark, before we move to another subject in the last segment, I want to ask you. This debate has been ongoing in the House last week, and the Senate this week. It's over, it's been repudiated. Only loopy Lincoln Chafee signed up with the Democrats today. They lost a few of the more normal ones. What's the impact on the country of these debates? Good that they occurred? And what's the impact?

MS: Well, I think on balance, it's actually good for the Republicans, because I think this is so frivolous and unworthy, that in a sense, the Democrats are getting pushed back to their hard-core, kook base. Now I don't dispute that that's actually not an insignificant number. But in the end, I think most people, enough people understand that it's not actually about Iraq. You know, I go back to when the Argentines took the Falklands, and there were people in Mrs. Thatcher's cabinet who said oh, well, they're a couple of unimiportant islands. What's the big deal? And Mrs. Thatcher understood that if you let that stand, then nobody, anywhere on the planet, would have any need to pay attention to Britain again. And that's the thing. If you lose in Iraq, nobody needs to pay attention to America ever again.

HH: Now Mark Steyn, yesterday, the president of Austria...I think it was the president of Austria, rushed to the podium after some nitwit journalist was throwing idiot questions at the President, and attempted to remind the world of what the United States does. Do debates like this help or hinder us on the world stage, with nitwit reporters and with heads of states?

MS: Well, I think they do hinder. I think the whole Democrat strategy since September 11th has been very damaging to America's reputation around the world, because basically, ever other serious alternative to America understands that this is the way you weaken America.

HH: I wanted to finish up my conversation extended with Mark Steyn, and thank you, Mark, for doing this, by talking about why the Democrats may have lost their way. And it goes back to the convention in Las Vegas, the Yearly Kos convention, to the rise of the lefty blogosphere. And today, Kos himself, or Kosputin, as I'm calling him, made war, declared war on the New Republic, of all things, mentioning the Lieberman-loving neocon owners. Can you hear them saying 'the Joooos' in the background? And what is going on with that part of the Democratic Party, and its effect on the leadership?

MS: (laughing) Well, I think if the Daily Kos guys were the insurgency in Iraq, they've now advanced as the insurgents advanced from blowing up American troops to blowing up Muslims in shopping markets and schools and so forth. And in effect, that's what Daily Kos has done. From a few strategic successes against the Republicans, and against the right wing, it's now turned on its own, and it's basically blowing up the New Republic. And I think they are, in a way, exactly like a lot of the enemies America faces on the international stage. They can be very good at just being sort of oppositional and destructive. But it's a lot harder to know what it is these people stand for. You know, I read a lot of things on the internet. When you read someone like Austin Bay, for example, this is someone who has a lot of informed commentary, and original ideas on foreign policy and military matters. There's very few equivalence to that on the Daily Kos side of things. It's pure partisan attack dog behavior, and now they've turned on their own side.

HH: Now I don't think they are in any sense unamerican. I don't think they want America to lose, or to be forced out. But their hatred of Bush, I think, has destabilized them. And going after Lieberman, and now the New Republic, suggests to me that kind of splitter, splitter, splitter mentality we saw in the Life Of Brian, where it just becomes...well, I guess sort of like the left wing movements of the anarchist era, where everyone was against everyone. Now that's a good thing for us, but I think...don't you think Democratic leaders, Mark Steyn, have to be alarmed?

MS: Oh, absolutely. And I don't actually think it is a good thing for us, because every two party system depends on two sane parties, that in the end, you do want to be able to go into the ballot box, and know that if you may check box A, but if box B happens to win, that it's not going to be the end of the world. In a lot of countries, that is what happens. The party you don't like wins the election, and you think to yourself, well, am I going to have to leave the country? Is it going to be...and the reality is, the Daily Kos and co. have done a great job of actually unhinging mainstream sections of the Democratic Party. And I think even the people who are the relatively sane members of that party fear this base in a way that no equivalent person on the Republican side is feared by anybody in Congress or the White House.

HH: Oh, I absolutely agree with that. Now I also wonder about this weird kind of strain, which reminds me of a lot of the Islamic rhetoric about Israel, where they start talking about the neocon, Lieberman-loving owners...and they were talking about Martin Peretz, obviously.

HH: Or they're referring to...they've got, actually, very gross, anti-semitic cartoons posted at the Daily Kos, not by Kos, but they haven't been taken down, either. And do you think that that strain is virulent? Or just that he's not really smart enough to know what he's saying?

MS: Well, I think it is that very unattractive side of civilized, urbane, people, that you see routinely on European television shows, and European newspapers. You know, if you pick up a newspaper in Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, where they don't realize that the code has become so subtle, that in effect, they're taken in by it. They don't realize what it means. And to have that kind of remark about the Jewish owner, with reference to a Jewish Senator...I mean, it's pretty clear what's going on. And I don't think...the one marvelous thing, I think, about the United States is that that ugliness at the heart of political debate has generally been absent from this country in modern times, and that is very disturbingly like French politics, and German and Dutch politics, where you know, where in Dutch politics, where you have the European central banker, his wife doing oven jokes in public. I mean, I don't...I think it gets distressingly near to that kind of ugliness.

HH: Now I want to end our conversation today by ending in Europe, and your obituary from the new Atlantic Monthly, on the Swede's swingingest swinger, except I can't say his name.

MS: (laughing) Well, this is one of those things where he's a name that to anybody of a certain age...

MS: Yeah, he made a movie called I Am Curious Yellow. And it was like a landmark sex movie in the late 1960's, and he became for a while the most famous Swede on the planet, at least until ABBA came along a couple of years later. And this was really his kind of grand moment, Vilgot Sjöman. And it's very strange to me, because the idea of the Swedes, who actually are rather gloomy people, and it's a rather gloomy country, but he almost single-handedly gave them this image as the kind of great, swinging country, where it's the place to go to meet hot dolly birds, and you'd all be sitting around naked in the hot tub all day long. In fact, Sweden isn't like that at all.

HH: I made my first trip to Sweden last year, and it sure wasn't like that. But Marlon Brando, in this famous film, did it have any significance outside of the teenage boy set, Mark Steyn?

MS: Well, I think it did, because I think what he created was the idea that if you showed nudity on the screen before that, nudity was basically something you saw in these sort of health movies that they made in the 1950's. And he was the one who introduced this idea of nudity as a political act, that somehow you could make nudity into a political statement. And in fact, in San Francisco, just about ten days ago, you had all these people having their nude bicycle ride...

MS: And no war for oil slogans. In a sense, they're the descendants of this Swedish movie.

HH: I've got to close...the last couple of lines. "By the 90's, there was no sure way to laughing stock status in Hollywood than some ill-considered erotica. Joe Eszterhas' reputation never recovered from Showgirls, and poor Sharon Stone was reduced to blaming the failure of Basic Instinct II on cowardly movie-goers, unwilling to go against the new puritanism of the Bush tyranny.

MS: Yeah, I think that's...I mean, I like Sharon Stone. I find her rather charming and sweet in some ways. But the idea that somehow Bush/Cheney killer her movie, her pathetic...what's it called? Basic...

MS: Basic Instinct II, that the Bush administration killed it, I wish that they were that good.

HH: Mark Steyn, thank you. Great to have you. Steynonline.com, America. Atlanticmonthly.com for the obit.

former Secretary of Defense Bill Perry, and an assistant secretary of defense from the Clinton era

Ben Stein: "And the North Koreans got their missle intel from... anyone? anyone?"

Class: "The Chinese!! The Chinese!!"

Ben Stein: "Yes! And the Chinese got their missle guidance intel from... anyone? anyone?"

Class: "The Clintons!"

Ben Stein: "Exactly!"

You know, there's 300 million people in this country, and there's only 100 Senators. And I cannot understand how Barbara Boxer, from one of the biggest population states, wound up as one of the Senators. That is simply embarrassing.

I have had just about the same thought about Boxer myself. Thanks for posting the interview. Very enjoyable.

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