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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: American Spirit who wrote (394480)	4/18/2003 12:48:42 AM
From: Techplayer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Now Kelley, that is a bit extreme. Bush is a fine leader and president. Perhaps you will realize that during his second term.

To: American Spirit who wrote (394480)	4/18/2003 12:52:10 AM
From: Techplayer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

The Democrats' reality problem Rich Lowry (back to web version) April 17, 2003 Democratic Senate Leader Tom Daschle often sounded uncertain about the war in Iraq, but not about North Korea -- the United States had to absolutely, unconditionally, give in to North Korean demands for bilateral talks about the communist nation's nuclear program. "I clearly believe," Daschle said in January, "that the only way now for us to successfully deal with the North Koreans is to enter into direct talks, to make sure that we have people sitting across the table to address the concerns specifically enunciated by this administration -- and they can't do it too soon." He wasn't alone. Sen. Ted Kennedy agreed, telling the "Today" show in March: "I think Colin Powell should have direct conversations with the North Koreans. That is what is being urged by South Korea, Japan and our allies in the area. This is a recommendation not just of Democrats." In fact, nearly every Democrat on the planet said the same thing -- Bill Richardson, Madeleine Albright, Joe Biden, Howard Dean and, one presumes, even Democratic county commissioners and dogcatchers. The problem with this seemingly eminently reasonable demand on President Bush is that North Korea is no longer making it. So, on this question at least, the entirety of the Democratic Party is to the left of Kim Jong Il. On Saturday, the North Koreans dropped their insistence that the United States enter into direct talks, saying it "will not stick to any particular dialogue format." The shift is no coincidence so soon after the United States smashed the regime of Saddam Hussein. As South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun noted, North Korea is terrified that it will be next. The North Korean media, which usually obsessively reports Kim Jong Il's "brilliant revolutionary feats," hasn't reported his whereabouts in weeks, presumably because he has been anxiously viewing news reports from Iraq. If the new tone from North Korea has a rational explanation, how then to understand the Democrats? After so many of them were dead wrong about the invasion of Iraq -- about its difficulty and how U.S. troops would be welcomed -- it is, uh, notable that they would be so wrong, so quickly, about an entirely different foreign-policy question. Just bad luck? Partly it is a reflexive partisan opposition to Bush policy. But, more fundamentally, it reflects an underappreciation of the uses of force and how the "demonstration effect" of a military campaign can make the rest of the world more respectful, rather than less, of the United States; a naive faith in the power of negotiations to work out any dispute (so, why not just sit down with the North Koreans?); and a hyperwillingness to believe the United States is in the wrong whenever it holds a position opposed by other countries. It all adds up to a fundamental misunderstanding of how the world works, and of the utility and general morality of American power. This poses a danger for the Democrats. Not just because they will occasionally say things that are starkly wrong (Republicans do that, too), but that their lack of a coherent and realistic framework for foreign policy prevents them from offering serious policy alternatives that keep from simply sounding churlish about American successes overseas. You can imagine some Democrats muttering in chagrin today, "Why did North Korea have to give up their demand so easily?" This attitude is reminiscent of the posture of the Democratic Party in the late 1980s. Back then, it was so out of step on so many issues that it had been forced into the position, in the words of party theorists Elaine Kamarck and Bill Galston, "of tacitly hoping for bad news -- a stance the electorate can smell and doesn't like." Usually sensible liberal commentator Peter Beinart recently wrote of North Korea that the administration portrays "its calm as steely resolve. But it actually signifies a refusal to face reality." As recent days have demonstrated, it is Bush's critics who have the reality problem -- one they ignore at their peril. Rich Lowry is editor of National Review, a TownHall.com member group. ©2003 King Features Syndicate townhall.com

To: American Spirit who wrote (394480)	4/18/2003 12:54:22 AM
From: Techplayer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

The Liberal Pessimists Why do American elites scoff at American values? Wednesday, April 16, 2003 12:01 a.m. With the Pentagon declaring the end of "major combat" in Iraq, most Americans are responding with relief and pride. Our troops have performed with skill, courage and even honorable restraint in deposing a dictator half a world away in less than a month. The puzzle is why some Americans, especially media and liberal elites, continue to wallow in pessimism about this liberation. Two weeks ago these elites were predicting a long war with horrific casualties and global damage. Then at the sight of Iraqis cheering U.S. troops in Baghdad, they quickly moved on to fret about "looting" and "anarchy." Now that those are subsiding, our pessimists have rushed to worry that Iraqi democracy and reconstruction will be all but impossible. What is it that liberals find so dismaying about the prospect of American success? In discounting these gloomy new predictions, it helps to consider their track record. Among the anticipated disasters that haven't come true: a "nationalist" uprising against U.S. troops, à la Vietnam; the "Arab street" enraged against us; tens of thousands of civilian casualties and a refugee and humanitarian crisis; bloody house-to-house urban combat; Iraq's oil fields aflame, lifting oil prices and sending the economy into recession; North Korea ("the greater threat") using the war as an excuse to attack; the Turks intervening in northern Iraq and at war with the Kurds; and all of course leading to world-wide mayhem. We could attach famous names or institutions to all of these positions, but (space limitations aside) our question today is less who than why? America's liberals weren't always so dour about their country's purposes. As recently as the 1960s, their favorite son (JFK) offered to "bear any burden" to extend the promise of freedom. Why are they so afraid of freedom's expansion now? One answer is simple partisanship. The Iraq war would never have happened without President Bush's determination, and many liberals can't bear to admit he was right all along. The American left has developed a special antipathy for Mr. Bush, more than for any President since Nixon. Experts in moral ambiguity, they especially detest his certitude, which is rooted in religious faith. Perhaps they have come to loathe him so much that they can't even bring themselves to relish this broader American triumph. Another answer is the continuing legacy of Vietnam. That failure remains the defining event in the lives of the men and women who now run most of our idea-forming institutions and media. Vietnam has made them forever suspicious of the use of force on behalf of American national interest. They shelved those doubts for a time under Bill Clinton, albeit only when the cause wasn't "tainted" by national interest (Haiti, Kosovo) or when it was constrained by the "international community" (the U.N.). But they simply don't trust that, left to their own devices, the American government and military will act in a moral way that leaves the world better off. Our former editor Robert Bartley offered a third, and more philosophical, explanation in his column on Monday. Citing Thomas Sowell, he noted that today's left has become a self-insulated elite convinced of its own virtue. In this view, these members of "the anointed" operate in an echo chamber that listens to and rewards one another to the point that they refuse to admit contrary evidence. If you repeat often enough that Iraqis couldn't possibly welcome Americans as "liberators," you can't process those TV images in Baghdad. Instead of freedom, you see only "anarchy" and American troops that somehow "allowed" looting. We aren't saying that all liberals have succumbed to this pessimism about American purpose. Many have seen Iraq's evil squarely for what it is and have supported the Bush Administration's attempts to remove it. They include the Washington Post editorial page, Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, Democrats Joe Lieberman and Dick Gephardt, such writers as Christopher Hitchens and Bill Keller, and above all Tony Blair. But the majority of the American left, and especially its leading media voices, remain flummoxed if not embarrassed by America's Iraq victory. These include most Democrats in Congress, the editors (though not all reporters) of the New York Times and its acolytes at CNN and the major networks, and of course most academic experts. They can barely bring themselves to celebrate the downfall of a tyrant before predicting the awful challenges to come. They now find themselves in league with those on the pessimistic and isolationist right who also opposed this war. The difference is that Pat Buchanan and his allies think the U.S. is too good for the world and will be corrupted by it. The liberal pessimists think the U.S. isn't good enough. We don't write this in any spirit of gloating, because in fact this union of American left and far right may pose a long-term problem for liberated Iraq. Nation-building will require both patience and political consensus to succeed. Looking for vindication, these voices may too quickly look for reasons to call every mistake or difficulty a disaster--and demand a U.S. retreat. As optimists ourselves, we'll hold out hope that the sight of free Iraqis will cause at least some of them to revive their faith in American principles. Copyright © 2003 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. PRINT WINDOW CLOSE WINDOW opinionjournal.com

To: American Spirit who wrote (394480)	4/18/2003 1:03:42 AM
From: Techplayer	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769667

The Media's Antiwar Script Was the New York Times watching the same war as the rest of us? Tuesday, April 15, 2003 12:01 a.m. Just a few days into the Iraq campaign, it became clear that it didn't take military briefings to tell how things were going. You could get a clear sense of that merely by following the overnight shifts in the torrents of charges, questions, and sudden new urgent concerns pouring forth from the peace camp. Ten days ago, an attorney acquaintance in whose blood there lies congealed every article of faith spawned by a past as a '60s political activist began hurling queries about what the administration would do if it found no weapons of mass destruction. What would all the supporters of this war for oil say? A few hours later, one of the hosts of a New England Cable Network program erupted in fevered questions about the weapons of mass destruction that hadn't been found. Doing a guest stint on the show, and out of touch with news reports all day, I suddenly understood--the war must have taken a decisive turn, and not in favor of the Iraqis. And that indeed was the case April 4, a day of breakthrough advances for the coalition, clearly headed for speedy victory. Gone, now, was the crowing punditry, the front page stories of "unexpected resistance" and the prowess and determination of Saddam's elite guard units--the dark comparisons to Vietnam and the Soviets in Afghanistan, the confident suggestions the war could last years, and not least, the sneering about American expectations of quick victory. In its place had come the new subject: the as yet undiscovered weapons of mass destruction--not the most potent of themes, given the brief time the war had been under way, as even the most impaired zealots of the antiwar coalition must have understood. That would have to do, nonetheless, until the arrival of the next crisis--the pictures of liberated Iraqis pounding away at Saddam's statue. It fell to the inveterately high-minded Tom Friedman--whose dexterity in taking every side of every issue ranks as one of the marvels of the age--to write on the conspicuous absence of celebrating Iraqis: a piece that appeared, by a stroke of unkind fate, the very day that TV screens carried virtually nothing but scenes of joyful Iraqis. But the fates had also provided a new issue--the brief draping of the American flag over the head of a statue of Saddam. Glomming on at the first whiff of a possible embarrassment, anchors began asking tentatively, then more certainly, how this brief scene--the flag quickly came down--might affect the Arab street. Reporters and analysts came forth to offer their meditations; within hours, we had the makings of a story to run on for days, about the devastating impact of this alleged symbol of American imperialism. As late as Sunday, a Stanford linguist opined, in the pages of the New York Times, on the "problematic" nature of this gesture, and how it brought home how "imprudent and simplistic uncritical flag-waving can be." And besides, the young Marine guilty of this act had put up an American, and not a coalition flag. By then, the flag story had been joined by the looting story, an indisputably sad affair amplified beyond all reason. No one should have been surprised at Donald Rumsfeld's knife-edge response when Tim Russert asked how it was that Americans had "allowed" the looting. Mr. Russert's phrasing may have been inadvertent. The secretary of defense's thrusting retort "Allowed--allowed?" was not: Its tone summed up all that the sane might feel--and doubtless do--after exposure to endless coverage of looting, events now so magnified as to have been made to seem the central fact of the war that brought the overthrow of Saddam. But there is no inadvertence in the ill-concealed hostility now coming from the antiwar camp--only a kind of awkward pretense to give credit to the American and British forces that won so swift a victory. And grudging credit it is, replete with arguments that, of course, everyone knew they would win overwhelmingly. That assurance did not, of course, keep this crowd from issuing their dire predictions the first day or two of the war, about the "quagmire" and new Vietnam. The latest entry in the grudging acknowledgments department comes from Saturday's New York Times editorial that first pays tribute to the great skill of the American forces, credits Mr. Rumsfeld's push for a smaller more agile force, and then goes on to the main point: whether the victory could really be attributed to U.S. military excellence. The Iraqis, it notes, fought poorly and ineptly--perhaps this was simply "a lopsided fight." The most noteworthy specimen to date, though, must be the lead Talk of the Town item in the April 14 New Yorker, in which Hendrick Hertzberg writes: "By the end of last week--even though American troops who, by all accounts, have fought honorably and without undue cruelty, were at the gates of Baghdad--it was too late for the rosy scenario of the cakewalk conservatives." We may take it, from that "undue cruelty" reference, that Mr. Hertzberg is willing to credit American troops mainly because they failed to perpetrate war crimes. It is a pronouncement worth remembering, and not for what it says about the troops. Ms. Rabinowitz is an editorial board member of The Wall Street Journal and author of "No Crueler Tyrannies: Accusation, False Witness, and Other Terrors of Our Times," which you can buy at the OpinionJournal bookstore. Copyright © 2003 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. PRINT WINDOW CLOSE WINDOW

To: American Spirit who wrote (394480)	4/18/2003 1:10:58 AM
From: Techplayer	Respond to of 769667

Clinton could have save us all a lot of pain over the past 18 months. newsmax.com

To: American Spirit who wrote (394480)	4/18/2003 1:21:23 AM
From: Techplayer	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769667

Kerry Goes Ballistic Move over, Howard Dean. Here’s a bulletin from the 2004 presidential campaign trail: The junior senator from Massachusetts, and anointed frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, is a Vietnam veteran. Because of this fact, which John Forbes de Villepin Kerry hammers home in every campaign speech, the candidate and his advisers (including two of the most noxious men in politics today, Robert Shrum and Chris Lehane) are in attack mode. Kerry reasons he’s earned the right to make outrageous statements about President Bush even as U.S. soldiers are dying in Iraq. Speaking in New Hampshire on April 2, Kerry told a library audience that Bush has alienated the impotent United Nations, committing a "breach of trust" since a majority of countries wanted to give Hans Blix a chance. Kerry then delivered a soundbite that’s typical of the arrogance that’s marked his calculated political career. "What we need now is not just a regime change in Saddam Hussein and Iraq," he said, "but we need a regime change in the United States." The proudly aristocratic senator had made the same glib remark at a Democratic gathering in Sacramento just before the war started, so this wasn’t an off-the-cuff gaffe. If Kerry wants to contend in the Democratic primaries, he needs a tutor who can explain the difference between a standard political jab and a rhetorical time bomb. "Regime change" has a certain definition in the United States today: It means ridding Iraq of a dictator who tortures, maims and executes his own citizens at the merest hint of dissent or betrayal. Just imagine if a mass-murderer ruled this country, which is thankfully a cauldron of protest and debate. It’s your turn for the firing squad, Mr. Charles Rangel, right next to Tom Daschle, Nancy Pelosi, Howell Raines, Albert Hunt, Jules Witcover and Gore Vidal. The left-of-center media has long been liquidated, Charlie, and Jesse Jackson has escaped to Cuba at the invitation of Fidel Castro. It’s an indication of Kerry’s predicament that two liberal columnists from the Boston Globe and Boston Herald have sadly concluded that the senator is in danger of blowing what many concluded was a surefire opportunity to challenge Bush next year. The Globe’s Thomas Oliphant, perhaps the mushiest Beltway pundit, must’ve shed a tear when he wrote the following words in his April 6 column: "It is always dumb to hand opponents an easy attack line. It’s also misguided to use the word regime, with an antidemocratic connotation, about the United States. President Bush leads an administration, a government. Popular votes and Florida aside, his presidency is the result of constitutional process and it is legitimate. [The New Yorker’s Hendrik Hertzberg might want to take note of Oliphant’s use of the word "legitimate."] Regime implies otherwise. It is used for dictators and authoritarians, based on its Latin root that is all about ruling, not governing." The Herald’s Wayne Woodlief was more direct: "Tacky language, Long Jawn, in even appearing to put the president and the sadistic Iraqi dictator on the same footing. And terrible timing, just as our troops reached the very doorsteps of Baghdad." Even worse for Kerry, his burst of unseemly partisanship was echoed last Saturday by Michigan’s Rep. John Conyers, one of the most despicable and polarizing members of Congress. At a protest march in Detroit, the bombastic Conyers called the war, which Kerry voted to authorize, "unconstitutional and immoral." He continued, in a de facto endorsement of the senator (sorry, Al Sharpton!): "Well, George Bush, on November 2, 2004, there will be the biggest regime change you have ever seen... A big regime change. That’s what we’re preparing for." Kerry, who was embarrassed by lightweight Sen. John Edwards–who didn’t serve in Vietnam–by coming in second to the North Carolinian in raising money during the first quarter of this year, is now in a real Heinz pickle. What’s the new game plan? I suppose he can continue his hyperbolic criticism of Bush and congressional Republicans, which will earn him the probably unwanted support of fringe publications like the Nation and Salon, and battle Howard Dean for the antiwar vote. That’d be swell, since such a course is sure to irreparably damage his campaign. On Sunday, stumping in Iowa, Kerry revealed his 2004 platform. He said: "I am running to end forever the Republican politics of wedge issues and character attack and distortions made under the guise of patriotism, which undermine the definition of true love of country." You’d think Kerry might realize that’s he’s running against Bush, and not Tom DeLay or Denny Hastert, but apparently the legislator is looking for a schoolboy rumble rather than running the country. A smarter plan would be to lie low for a month, following the example of his main opponents, Rep. Dick Gephardt and Sen. Joe Lieberman. Gephardt, right now, appears to be the real frontrunner for the Democratic nomination. While he hasn’t matched Edwards or Kerry in collecting New York and Hollywood checks, the bland, veteran congressman has plotted a sound strategy for the primaries next year. He’s hawkish on the war, not uttering a peep of criticism once the military began its invasion, and is patiently waiting for its conclusion before attacking Bush on domestic issues. Gephardt, unlike Kerry, knows that the 2004 election will be a referendum on Bush, and if the economy is flailing, any temperamentally balanced Democrat has a decent shot of winning. Kerry’s arrogance in blasting Bush on foreign policy might win votes in Iowa and New Hampshire, but won’t be received well in the South or rustbelt states. It’s true that the president was stateside during Vietnam, a generation ago, but if Kerry campaigns on the plank that he’s a more experienced leader in global affairs, he’s sunk. Bush is a wartime president who’s exhibited remarkable resolve in not only protecting the United States in the wake of Sept. 11, but advancing democracy in the troubled Middle East as well. That he proceeded to invade Iraq without the blessing of the United Nations, and intends to rebuild Iraq without France and Germany in a leading role, was not only bold but visionary. Bush understands that acquiescence to his detractors–keen on collecting Saddam-sanctioned debts–would keep Iraq’s citizens in terror and ultimately bring dishonor to the United States. Whether the president’s plan is vindicated remains to be seen, but foreign policy is not a winning issue for a Democratic opponent