Want War? Vote Gore
George W. Bush decisively defeated Al Gore in the second presidential debate on one of the central and most morally significant questions in any presidential election: Which candidate will better handle the President’s unique constitutional role as Commander in Chief of U.S. armed forces?
Indeed, if the debate taught one lesson it is this: If you want war, vote Gore.
Bush not only defeated the pre-debate expectation that he lacked expertise in foreign policy matters, he also repositioned himself to the right of where he appeared to stand on foreign policy during the primary season. He thus placed himself closer to Main Street, America–which is significantly less interventionist and internationalist than the Washington establishment of both major parties.
To be sure, Bush is still an internationalist, if a prudent and restrained one. Gore, however, is the latest Democratic proponent of the sort of messianic globaloney that, when converted into real world policy by liberal Presidents from Woodrow Wilson to Jimmy Carter to Bill Clinton, led the United States into one foreign policy debacle after another in the 20th Century.
In the first 40 minutes of the debate, Gore revealed a foreign policy vision that could potentially get many young Americans killed, squander the hard-earned tax dollars of American families and, yet, do nothing to secure the vital interests of the American nation.
‘Going in Anywhere’
Indeed, as commander in chief, Gore’s approach to foreign policy would make the world a more dangerous place, where any humanitarian crisis anywhere could be converted into a U.S. war of intervention, and where the relentless, and, for now, blessedly isolated, civil wars that stand as perpetual testimony to the fallen nature of the human race are in danger at any moment of being transformed, by the action of the President of the United States, into regional or even international conflagrations.
For starters, in the spirit of Clinton’s four-day, dog-wagging, pre-impeachment war against Saddam Hussein, Gore declared, for all the world to hear, that as U.S. President, he would like to ignite a civil war in Iraq. "Now I want to go further," he says. "I want to give robust support to the groups that are trying to overthrow Saddam Hussein."
Where would that lead? Al Gore has no idea.
Considering that the Clinton-Gore Administration could not find Saddam Hussein’s hideout after four days of laser-targeted bombing–while driving out forever the UN inspectors who had been our primary source of intelligence there–how is it to be supposed that Guerrilla Al could find and install a new pro-U.S. Iraqi leader who has the broad base of support as well as the utter ruthlessness it would take to oust Saddam and his cabal and establish a stable regime at the head of the Persian Gulf?
And if we brazenly back lethal force by insurgents in an attempt to rearrange the internal politics of Iraq, will the Iraqis, or their terroristic surrogates, reciprocate with lethal force here?
After shamelessly trying to blame the "Bush-Quayle Administration" for the disaster in Somalia, where President Clinton and the negligent political leadership of his Defense Department got 18 U.S. soldiers killed for no good reason (click here for Terence P. Jeffrey's related story), Gore indicated he would be willing to engage in so-called nation-building virtually anywhere on earth.
"Now, just because we cannot be involved everywhere and shouldn’t," he said, "doesn’t mean that we should shy away from going in anywhere."
"Go in anywhere"? Anywhere?
Sure, sheer demographics means that, as Gore concedes, "the United States cannot be involved everywhere." If all 270 million of us were drafted and shipped overseas to occupy literally every potential hotspot on earth, there would be no one left at home to work in the private sector, and generate the income needed to pay the taxes to subsidize the deployments.
But, in this debate, Gore did not impose any plausible national-interest limitation on where he would deploy U.S. military forces.
When Bush said he thought President Clinton "did the right thing" in staying out of the Rwandan civil war, Gore criticized the policy of his own administration. "We did actually send troops into Rwanda to help the humanitarian relief measures," said Gore. "But I think in retrospect, we were too late getting in there. We could have saved more lives if we acted earlier."
What would our troops have done in Rwanda? Whose army would they have tried to defeat? Whose army would they have helped to win? What stable, achievable political outcome would they have aimed at accomplishing?
Does Gore really have any clue what the internal politics of Rwanda are? Even the most well-informed Americans are likely to have about as much understanding of Rwandan politics today as Hillary Rodham Clinton had in the 1980s of U.S. cattle futures.
No major U.S. newspaper has a correspondent living in Rwanda–let alone a correspondent who speaks the local language, understands the local culture, and can intelligently read the swirling currents of local politics and accurately relate them to an American audience.
Most of the stories referring to Rwanda in the New York Times, the most foreign-policy-oriented paper in America, are datelined from the United Nations building at the end of 42nd Street in Manhattan. The last time the Times ran a story with a dateline from Rwanda itself was June 25–when it published a 291-word opus from the Associated Press. The piece bore no byline, and fleetingly noted a skirmish near the Rwandan border between Rwandan and Ugandan troops.
What side would Al Gore have wanted the Americans to shoot at in that firefight? Or would he have wanted them simply to stand by and not shoot at all? Would Gore, as commander in chief, have sent young American warriors to stand like targets, in harm’s way, so they could hand out groceries later to whoever happened to survive?
Indeed, at the same time Gore said he wanted U.S. troops in Rwanda earlier, he insisted he did not want them there, as he put it, "to separate the parties" but merely for additional humanitarian work.
But then he did indicate that as President he would strive to lay the groundwork for future U.S. troop interventions in such remote hostilities.
Couldn’t Be More Wrong
"I do not think that it was an example of a conflict where we should have put our troops in to try to separate the parties for this reason, Jim," he explained. "One of my criteria that I think is important in deciding when and if we should ever get involved around the world is whether or not–if our nationally security interest is involved, if we can really make the difference with military force, if we’ve tried everything else, if we have allies."
So what precisely was the limiting factor in Rwanda? Allies. Gore would seek more of them in Africa, so we are better positioned to intervene there in the future.
"In the Balkans," Gore explained, "we had allies, NATO, ready, willing and able to go and carry a big part of the burden. In Africa, we do not. Now we have tried–our country’s tried to create an African crisis response team there and we’ve met some resistance. We have had some luck with Nigeria . . . and that now that Nigeria’s become a democracy, and we hope it stays that way. then maybe we can build on that.
"But because we had no allies and because it was very unclear that we could actually accomplish what we would want to accomplish by putting military forces there, I think it was the right thing not to jump in, as heartbreaking as it was. But I think we should have come in much quicker with the humanitarian mission."
Okay, so if Gore did have "allies" in Africa, what national security interest would have justified rallying them to help us intervene militarily in Rwanda?
On this question, Gore pathetically tried to seize the moral high ground from Bush. "In some of the discussions we’ve had about when it’s appropriate for the U.S. to use force around the world," said Gore, "the standards that you’ve laid down have given me the impression that if it’s–if it’s something like a genocide taking place or what they called an ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, that that alone would not be the kind of situation that would cause you to think that the U.S. ought to get involved with troops. Now, there have to be other factors involved. But by itself, that, to me, can bring into play a fundamental American strategic interest because I think it’s based on our values. Now, have I got that wrong?"
Couldn’t be more wrong, Mr. Vice President.
By your logic, you and President Clinton should be trying to build an alliance in the Far East in preparation for war against the People’s Republic of China–to stop its brutalization of Tibet. You should have parachuted boys from Chicago into Chechnya to protect the beleaguered population there from Russian forces your own State Department reports "killed numerous civilians through the use of indiscriminate force."
Or in your vision, is America to be transformed into the world’s biggest bully, roaming about the globe loudly pounding its chest and fecklessly intervening in the affairs of only those nations so weak and small they cannot extract from us a significant price in return?
Though he did reiterate his mistaken support for the unconstitutional war in Kosovo, George W. Bush categorically rejected the U.S. occupation of Haiti and the Clinton-Gore nation-building debacle in Somalia. He prudently called for shifting the responsibility for peacekeeping in the Balkans to our European allies. And he hit the nail on the head when he warned against an arrogant, interventionist American policy, telling Gore: "Maybe it’s just our difference in government, the way we view government. . . . I want to help people help themselves, not have government tell them what to do. I just don’t think it’s the role of the United States to walk into a country and say, we do it this way, so should you."
There is now a far clearer choice on foreign policy in this campaign than voters might have suspected just a few days ago. One choice is more likely to preserve the peace. The other choice, Al Gore, is more likely to bring us war.
humaneventsonline.com |
