Posted on 03/24/2002 1:23:01 AM PST by kattracks
It is not easy opposing the war on terror. Sept. 11 seems to have been a fairly definitive declaration of war on America, leaving us little choice but to fight. Nonetheless, we are blessed with a cadre of thinkers for whom refusal to oppose war is a kind of self-betrayal. Whether out of distrust of American power or reflexive sympathy with whoever is today carrying the banner of anti-Americanism (yesterday, Communists; today, Islamists), they have sallied forth carrying the flag of protest.
It began with Susan Sontag's immediate judgment, published in The New Yorker, that America had it coming. With thousands dead in Washington and New York, this moral idiocy found few takers (outside the usual Middle Eastern and European precincts, of course).
The next try at opposition did not imprudently blame the war on us. It merely attacked our conduct of it: the war at home, for supposedly trampling civil liberties, the war abroad, for laying waste to Afghan civilians and bringing starvation as the Afghan winter approached.
Just five days into the war, for example, Mary Robinson, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, demanded that U.S. bombing stop so she and her indispensable cohort could feed the hungry. Had we listened to them, tens of thousands of Afghans would have died. As it was, the bombing defeated the Taliban — whose cruel and catastrophic misrule was the source of the famine — and thus saved the Afghans from starvation.
By year's end, with Afghanistan liberated and the Bill of Rights still intact, the opposition moved on. To military tribunals. Alas, no luck. Americans have not much appetite for giving Al Qaeda the run of a massive judicial apparatus designed for those who live by the American Constitution. They sensibly want to keep the number of years-long, jury-endangering, media-circus civilian trials for terrorists down to the bare minimum. Already, three — John Walker Lindh, the American Taliban, Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker and Richard Reid, accused shoe bomber — will enjoy O.J. levels of media coverage.
Next? Torture at Gitmo! This story is the purest example of microhysteria — a sudden burst of intense herd sentiment that then disappears without a trace — since the death of Princess Di. The Guantanamo storm was based on a single misinterpreted photograph of bound Al Qaeda captives. "TORTURED," screamed the British tabloid The Mail. It took but a few days of fulmination about American brutality before people actually visited Guantanamo and found well-fed prisoners in a Club Med climate with a Koran in every cell and rather fine medical attention. End of story.
Then the politicians tried their hand. Led by the intemperate Robert Byrd and the soothing Tom Daschle, Democrats played with the charge that the Bush administration was getting us into a quagmire with no exit strategy. This, too, lasted but a few days. For a simple reason — a reason that 88% of Americans understand, but these leading Democrats do not: Exit strategy applies only to wars of choice. You can choose to quit Vietnam or Somalia. The war on radical Islam is a war of necessity. Wars of necessity have no exit. They must be won.
So where is the left left? Sputtering, as with this from Robert Kuttner, editor of The American Prospect, writing in The Boston Globe: "Whether it is an ill-specified axis of evil or a decision to make tactical nuclear war thinkable, or a domestic 'shadow government' or deliberately leaked plans to attack Iraq, George W. Bush in his own way is as frightening as Al Qaeda. ... Terrorism, unfortunately, is all too real. But so is one's terror of the Bush presidency." Calling for protest to "reclaim our own democracy," the left waits, forlorn and flailing, for the American street to rise. Meanwhile, the street, sporting American flags on its SUVs, carries on, inexplicably less frightened by Bush than by Osama Bin Laden.
E-mail: krauthammerra@hotmail.com
Please let it be true. The Democrats pose a far greater threat to our way of life than Osama, et al.
I loved this line. Krauthammer is such a great writer. He's right, the LEFT just doesn't get it - they never did! I think it's time to tell them to sit down and SHUT UP!!
Krauthammer was Rush's interview in the Limbaugh Letter this month. What a great interview. I still cannot believe this guy works for the Washington Post.
Excuse me, but if you have someone who is trying to KILL YOU, and he is eliminated, doesn't that SOLVE THE PROBLEM??? H E L L O!!
If you just do homage and pay him money like Clinton did; you end up with 9-11. So, your analogy is erroneous.
Seems like it was only yesterday that we were waiting, forlorn and flailing, for the American street to rise, also. "Where's the OUTRAGE?!?" we screamed at every new revelation about the abhorent clinton administration. And we waited anxiously for the Sheeple to wake up and see the evil. Well,it seems the American Sheeple woke up just in time to see two large buildings annihilated, a pentagon-shaped building attacked, and a downed airplane in Pa.,full of brave Americans whose last words were not only powerful, but remarkably easy for the busiest of us to remember always: Let's Roll. The left will never win this battle because the American street awoke at the time for patriotism, not cynicism.
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