Some sensible stuff from Buchanan about the war...I may not agree with most of his overall views but IMHO he is now too far off the mark here.
Published in Washington,
D.C. 5am -- June 2, 1999 www.washtimes.com
TOP POLITICAL STORY
Buchanan: 4 in
GOP are Clinton
'copies'
By Ralph Z. Hallow
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Pat Buchanan said yesterday that he has four principal
rivals for the Republican presidential nomination and all of
them "are virtual Xerox copies" of President Clinton and Vice
President Al Gore on the most important issues facing the
nation.
He said the four -- Texas Gov. George W. Bush, former
Red Cross President Elizabeth Dole, Sen. John McCain of
Arizona and publisher Steve Forbes -- all share the same views
on everything from Kosovo, China trade and international
banking and trade organizations to foreign aid and
"open-borders" immigration.
Mr. Buchanan reserved his strongest condemnations for the
war against Yugoslavia, which he called "Bill Clinton's
misadventure."
"The Serbs have seen their country smashed by Americans
they once admired," said Mr. Buchanan, who is making his
third bid for the GOP nomination. "The Kosovars have
suffered a catastrophe. . . . The U.S. has seen its superpower
status and reputation for decency tarnished by the pounding of
a tiny country that never threatened us."
"It is neither just nor moral for a superpower to ravage the
civilian economy of a country for refusing to give up sacred
land [the province of Kosovo] that has belonged to Serbia for
generations," he said, drawing applause from a National Press
Club luncheon audience.
Mr. Buchanan said if any one of the candidates he
designated as his main rivals wins the GOP nomination, "we
risk a replay of 1992 and 1996, where both major parties will
agree on most major issues, and a pillow fight will ensue over
some dinky tax cut."
"This may satisfy the political establishment, but it would
cheat Middle America," said the conservative commentator.
He warned that "tens of millions of Americans will not vote,
millions more will cast protest votes for [Ross Perot's] Reform
Party, the Taxpayers Party, the Green Party and the
Libertarian Party."
A general election in 2000 between Mr. Gore and one of
the "Xerox copy" Republicans would represent a "politics of
inconsequentiality," Mr. Buchanan said.
Americans, he said, would be condemned to a choice
between "two compulsive interventionists" who believe in "open
borders" on immigration -- "one-worlders, enthralled by a
Utopian vision of a different America or seized by the allure of
some New World Order."
Calling his main GOP rivals "good and able individuals," he
said their biggest mistake has been to endorse the war against
Serbia. "I believe truly this war is the product of a hubris and
an arrogance that has marked American foreign policy since
our triumph in the Cold War and against which I have been
warning since the end of that Cold War," he said.
"I am here to underscore my profound disagreements not
only with Mr. Clinton and Mr. Gore, but with my principal
rivals," he said, and singled out Mr. Forbes for wanting to arm
the mostly Islamic Kosovo Liberation Army. Mr. Buchanan
said such a move would assure "an Afghanistan-type war
between Muslims and Christians."
Mr. Buchanan commended Mr. McCain "for forthrightness
and not engaging in trivial pursuits but contending about the
central issues of our day."
Referring to the senator's popularity with the news media --
his hawkish views on Kosovo have earned him numerous TV
appearances -- Mr. Buchanan joked that Mr. McCain "is
clearly this year's favorite for the 1999 William Ginsburg trophy
-- named after Monica Lewinsky's legendary lawyer."
Mr. Buchanan noted that Mr. Ginsburg once "appeared on
no fewer than five Sunday morning talk shows in a single
morning."
Mr. Buchanan, who challenged President Bush in the 1992
GOP primaries, also had some barbed humor about the former
president's son. The younger Bush has surrounded himself with
former Reagan and Bush advisers on national and foreign
affairs and has refrained from campaigning for the nomination
while Texas lawmakers were still in session.
"And now that the Long Parliament known as the Texas
Legislature has adjourned and Gov. Bush has emerged from his
tutorials, perhaps a great debate over America's destiny and
role in the world can now get under way," Mr. Buchanan said,
drawing gales of laughter from the audience. |
