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Politics : America Under Siege: The End of Innocence -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: lorne who wrote (21459)	2/13/2003 11:38:58 AM
From: calgal	Respond to of 27756

R. Emmett Tyrrell URL:http://www.townhall.com/columnists/emmetttyrrell/et20030213.shtml February 13, 2003 Recovering from political gaffes WASHINGTON, D.C. -- What numbskull in the Kerry for President campaign allowed Sen. John Kerry to be filmed by the TV crews wearing a bombardier jacket as he dashed into the hospital for surgery the other day? Yes, he looked reassuringly gung-ho in this time of imminent international hostilities. Still, wearing a leather jacket with an obscenely furry collar is bound to imperil his prospects with what has become a key constituency in today's Democratic Party, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). Sure, an agile Kerry aide has already telephoned the nuts over at PETA national headquarters -- cleverly located at the heart of things in Norfolk, Va. -- to assure them that the jacket was not made of actual leather but rather of leather's enlightened substitute pleather, plastic leather. But explaining away that fur collar is going to take the terminological legerdemain of a Bill Clinton, and Bill is already committed to the presidential ambitions of Hillary, lest another lamp or ashtray be hurled at his big fat head. Another campaign gaffe like that and the Democratic presidential nomination will be Dr. Howard Dean's for the asking. You laugh, but I actually know Dean, and political observers who are calling him a fruitcake are underestimating his political savvy. For several years, Dean and I did a television show together taped in Montreal. It was called "The Editors," though Dean was not an editor. He was the governor of nearby Vermont. Every month during the fall, winter and early spring, he would motor up to Montreal (I envisaged him riding the Greyhound surrounded by plump country girls eating sandwiches, some carrying chickens in cages). On the show, he held down the liberal end of a panel while I held down the conservative end. Actually, it would be more accurate to say he held down the Democratic end, for never did he wander from the Democratic party line, even when we of a more philosophical caste of mind brought up a nonpolitical topic -- say, Aristotle or the death of the novel. "The novel would never have died if we had adopted the single-payer health care model," he might have responded, or, "Did you know Aristotle was the first gay-rights activist?" Dean has recently taken a very bold position on war with Iraq. He will be the George McGovern in this Democratic field and oppose war -- while insisting that Saddam disarm. If Saddam does not disarm, Dean will raise his voice. Possibly he will stomp his foot. Yet, it is a mistake to believe Dean is a glassy-eyed idealist. He is a thoroughly professional Democratic politician. That is to say, he is well practiced in the art of contradicting himself without betraying a hint of embarrassment or even awareness. Every week he would tape several shows, and always he had the Clinton agenda and spin down pat, as if he had been reading talking points sent to him directly from George Stephanopoulos at the White House. Was Clinton lying about fund-raising efforts made in the White House? "Absolutely not; that is the kind of thing you Clinton haters make up." Did Clinton have ties with shadowy Indonesian bankers? "There is not a shred of evidence." Would Clinton lie his way into an impeachment? "Just the kind of thing you Clinton haters want to believe," and then surely Dean would throw in something about sex being a private matter or everyone having a thing or two they are not proud of. Well, Howard, neither you nor I have had a woman step forward and accuse us of rape. Yes, I think Howard Dean is going to make an excellent Democratic presidential candidate. He can intone the party line whatever it is ... and if he makes it into the White House he will be the first Democratic president since Jimmy Carter not to be accused of rape. My thoughts about these Democratic presidential contenders and the ethical standards that the last Democratic president upheld while residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. were interrupted by the untimely death of a White House figure from years past, Ron Ziegler, age 63. He died of natural causes, though a decade short of what might have been his life expectancy. Ziegler, of course, was President Richard Nixon's press secretary, and it fell to him to explain away Watergate's ongoing presidential lies prior to the resignation. The ordeal obviously took its toll. After Watergate, the political community's public judgment was that Nixon fell because "a president cannot lie to the American people." In Ziegler's New York Times' obituary, the paper noted that while he was press secretary "a study team from American University and the National Press Club" reproved him for having "misled the public and affronted the professional standards of the Washington press corps." After George Stephanopoulos did the same, ABC made him heir to the Sunday morning talk show of Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts, scene of some of George's most implausible deceits. The next time you tune in to "This Week," see if you can envision Ron Ziegler seated in George's place. ©2003 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

To: lorne who wrote (21459)	2/14/2003 9:20:15 PM
From: calgal	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 27756

Holiday From History By Charles Krauthammer Friday, February 14, 2003; Page A31 URL:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5709-2003Feb13.html The domestic terror alert jumps to 9/11 levels. Heathrow Airport is ringed by tanks. Duct tape and plastic sheeting disappear from Washington store shelves. Osama bin Laden resurfaces. North Korea reopens its plutonium processing plant and threatens preemptive attack. The Second Gulf War is about to begin. This is not the Apocalypse. But it is excellent preparation for it. You don't get to a place like this overnight. It takes at least, oh, a decade. We are now paying the wages of the 1990s, our holiday from history. During that decade, every major challenge to America was deferred. The chief aim of the Clinton administration was to make sure that nothing terrible happened on its watch. Accordingly, every can was kicked down the road: • Iraq: Saddam Hussein continued defying the world and building his arsenal, even as the United States acquiesced to the progressive weakening of U.N. sanctions and then to the expulsion of all weapons inspectors. • North Korea: When it threatened to go nuclear in 1993, Clinton managed to put off the reckoning with an agreement to freeze Pyongyang's program. The agreement -- surprise! -- was a fraud. All the time, the North Koreans were clandestinely enriching uranium. They are now in full nuclear breakout. • Terrorism: The first World Trade Center attack occurred in 1993, followed by the blowing up of two embassies in Africa and the attack on the USS Cole. Treating terrorism as a problem of law enforcement, Clinton dispatched the FBI -- and the odd cruise missile to ostentatiously kick up some desert sand. Bin Laden was offered up by Sudan in 1996. We turned him away for lack of legal justification. That is how one acts on holiday: Mortal enemies are dealt with not as combatants but as defendants. Clinton flattered himself as looking beyond such mundane problems to a grander transnational vision (global warming, migration and the like), while dispatching American military might to quell "teacup wars" in places such as Bosnia. On June 19, 2000, the Clinton administration solved the rogue-state problem by abolishing the term and replacing it with "states of concern." Unconcerned, the rogues prospered, arming and girding themselves for big wars. Which are now upon us. On Sept. 11, 2001, the cozy illusions and stupid pretensions died. We now recognize the central problem of the 21st century: the conjunction of terrorism, rogue states and weapons of mass destruction. True, weapons of mass destruction are not new. What is new is that the knowledge required to make them is no longer esoteric. Anyone with a reasonable education in modern physics, chemistry or biology can brew them. Doomsday has been democratized. There is no avoiding the danger any longer. Last year President Bush's axis-of-evil speech was met with eye-rolling disdain by the sophisticates. One year later the warning has been vindicated in all its parts. Even the United Nations says Iraq must be disarmed. The International Atomic Energy Agency has just (politely) declared North Korea a nuclear outlaw. Iran has announced plans to mine uranium and reprocess spent nuclear fuel; we have recently discovered two secret Iranian nuclear complexes. We are in a race against time. Once such hostile states establish arsenals, we become self-deterred and they become invulnerable. North Korea may already have crossed that threshold. There is a real question whether we can win the race. Year One of the new era, 2002, passed rather peaceably. Year Two will not: 2003 could be as cataclysmic as 1914 or 1939. Carl Sagan invented a famous formula for calculating the probability of intelligent life in the universe. Estimate the number of planets in the universe and calculate the tiny fraction that might support life and that have had enough evolution to produce intelligence. He prudently added one other factor, however: the odds of extinction. The existence of intelligent life depends not just on creation but on continuity. What is the probability that a civilization will not destroy itself once its very intelligence grants it the means of self-destruction? This planet has been around for 4 billion years, intelligent life for perhaps 200,000, weapons of mass destruction for less than 100. A hundred -- in the eye of the universe, less than a blink. And yet we already find ourselves on the brink. What are the odds that our species will manage to contain this awful knowledge without self-destruction -- not for a billion years or a million or even a thousand, but just through the lifetime of our children? Those are the stakes today. Before our eyes, in a flash, politics has gone cosmic. The question before us is very large and very simple: Can -- and will -- the civilized part of humanity disarm the barbarians who would use the ultimate knowledge for the ultimate destruction? Within months, we will have a good idea whether the answer is yes or no. © 2003 The Washington Post Company