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

To: calgal who wrote (511346)	12/17/2003 12:44:09 AM
From: calgal	Respond to of 769670

Maintaining a focus Gary Aldrich (archive) December 17, 2003 \| Print \| Send Only an absolute bonehead could find something to complain about after Saddam Hussein’s capture. Of course, in an election cycle, there seems to be no shortage of boneheads. Next, Howard Dean will grow a beard – he’s already dug himself a deep enough “Spider hole.” And yet, what about Saddam Hussein and his now destroyed and discredited government? Are we safer because one man is captured? It’s too easy to write this nightmare off by concluding that Saddam was somehow so persuasive, so powerful and so evil that he was pre-ordained to rise to power, and that eventually, no matter where he was, he would become a murderous tyrant. Likewise, we should not make the mistake of believing that Saddam’s embrace of a sometimes violent religious movement enabled his rise to power or the horrible atrocities that followed. Some people try to simplify Saddam, perhaps capture him in a single sentence, or word, or create a clever sound bite suitable for today’s 30 second news cycle. But we can’t allow that to happen. We can’t ignore one of the primary reasons this maniac so easily rose to power, murdered hundreds of thousands of his own country’s citizens – and then marched into the territories of neighboring countries in a quest for more power. Does Saddam’s life-story ring any bells? It should, because every Socialist-Communist country has either already “been there and done that”, or their rulers harbor dreams of domination and conquest for sometime in the not-too-distant future. Some of today’s editorials mischaracterize Saddam’s rise to power and his eventual, all too predictable atrocities. They falsely call it Fascism, but the fact is, Saddam’s rise to power and his grip on the throat of his countrymen was possible through the devastating form of government everyone knows as “Socialism.” Socialism always fails, but not before many human lives are lost while trying to implement and maintain it. What is it about the human mind that prevents so many people from comprehending the simple truth that liberty and freedom – that which we still enjoy in our wonderful nation – are the only things standing between us and eventual murderous, miserable oppression? Even now, millions of Americans see no need to end the increasingly massive government entitlement programs, and cannot imagine why anyone would want to stop them. Apparently they don’t understand that the trend we have today is Socialism by another name – Big Government. Or maybe they just don’t care as long as they get something for nothing. We talk about Capitalism and Democracy, but we continually walk to the Left – toward Socialism. Could a Saddam Hussein or a Hitler-type rise to power in this country? Not today – but ask me the same question in another 20 years. Our Founding Fathers fought against such systems – then called absolute monarchies –and they knew why liberty must always prevail. A Saddam Hussein can never rise to power in this country, or in any other Democracy, as long as the peoples’ liberties are fiercely guarded. That’s because Democracy is the ideology of peace and love of life. No matter how determined, how crazy, how religiously driven the would-be ruler is – those determinations would not matter, as the citizens of this country would eventually put a stop to the madness, because they can! But take away more and more of our liberties, and eventually we will not have the ability. Socialist governments are the petri dishes for maniacs like Hitler, Castro, and Saddam Hussein. In a Socialist government system, when the maniacs eventually come to power, they already have the means at hand to take away the last remaining liberties of the oppressed citizenry. If they can remember that far back, I’m sure the citizens of Iraq can recall each time their government removed some of their rights. Like an ignorant few in this country, they probably reasoned, “So what? If I agree to give up this little right, which I don’t really use anyway, what will it matter?” If the hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis rotting in mass graves could speak, they would remind us all why protecting liberty is so important. The only thing standing between government oppression and freedom is the understanding that Socialism, Communism, Marxism – call it what you will – eventually leads to soul-wrenching dismay and death on a massive scale. Nazi Germany was a socialist country, as was Iraq. Adolph Hitler and Saddam Hussein were Socialists. We need to tell the truth about history simply because too many people around the globe are continually infected with this virus of the mind we call Socialism. The only cure for this disease is a firm Democracy unwilling to give up even the most obscure right. Saddam may have been captured, but evil Socialism is alive and well and free to infect even more minds in Iraq. We must teach the Iraqis why it is so important to enjoy and defend their God-given liberties. Gary Aldrich is president and founder of The Patrick Henry Center for Individual Liberty, a Townhall.com member group. ©2003 Gary W. Aldrich URL:http://www.townhall.com/columnists/garyaldrich/ga20031217.shtml

To: calgal who wrote (511346)	12/17/2003 12:44:34 AM
From: calgal	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

After Saddam Tony Blankley (archive) December 17, 2003 \| Print \| Send So what does the capture of Saddam Hussein mean for Iraq, America, Howard Dean and the price of tea in China? The specialists came out of their spider holes in Washington and elsewhere to start weaving their intricate webs of analysis. For allegedly thoughtful people, it is wondrous how little thought they needed to precede commentary. By about 9 a.m., Sunday morning, every network had panels of these specialists explaining this remarkable event so that even we simple-minded non-area specialists could know for certain what the future would hold. There were some differences of opinion. But, by and large, those specialists, who one suspects were against the war in the first place, saw dark implications for America and President Bush. For them, the man who, 12 hours before, was our greatest danger, was, by, say noon, Sunday morning, a meaningless figure who might not know anything much about Iraq. For these specialists, the world had already passed Saddam by -- and in fact, the resistance was only likely to increase. Pro-war specialists were more hopeful. Obviously, it is too soon for empirical, scientific measurement of the event's impact. Even the early polls mean little. The polls taken of Americans during the day on Sunday couldn't help but capture a more positive public view of President Bush. Whether that uptick (or, arguably, surge) will weather the following weeks and months of typically rough press coverage, who can know. Likewise, whether Saddam cooperates and gives us vital information or not is -- at this early point -- still unknown, even to Saddam himself. After all, it is in the nature of professional interrogation to elicit useful information from unwilling subjects. We can't know the future. But we can assess the event itself for its inherent nature. In that regard, Saddam's arrest is a singular moment of perceived justice. Except for the most devoted Saddam loyalists amongst his Iraqi fellow tribesmen and Euro-American left-wing Bushophobes, the fact that this awful mass killer will face the consequences of his actions in a court of law is a deeply heartening assurance that the world is not completely unjust. We should not underestimate the significance of this fact. In a world filled with daily evidence that wickedness and brutality usually reward people far more than modesty and charity, the idea of justice accomplished can be very powerful. We are, after all, homo sapiens -- thinking men. Ideas matter. The Soviet Union, with all its nuclear weapons, tanks and millions of soldiers, collapsed when the idea took hold of them that their system couldn't compete. Not since the Nazi leadership was shipped off to Nuremberg has so major a world villain been brought to justice. This fact makes the Iraq war a far better thing than it was. Whether or not it turns out to be a geo-strategic success, the Iraqi war has accomplished something very good -- it has delivered a deeply deserved and yearned-for justice. Howard Dean's line -- that it was the wrong war at the wrong time -- has lost its thundering righteousness. Anyone with a sense of justice and decency would be embarrassed to continue reciting that line after Sunday morning. On Monday, Mr. Dean continued to thunder away. But even if one agrees with his technical analysis (such as it may be), the moral quotient has been subtracted from his message -- and his persona. Either he doesn't fully believe what he continues to say, or, if he does, we must think less of him for it. The other useful idea that Saddam's arrest has presented the world is that America cannot be stopped. By our sheer magnitude and organized persistence, we will eventually find all enemies and accomplish all objectives. The Romans sometimes were opposed by better generals and equally courageous warriors. The odd legion might even be massacred. But they maintained a Roman Peace for half a millennium by the perceived certainty of their ultimate success. Finding one rat in a hole in the ground in the middle of a vast land cannot help but be a vastly dispiriting fact to many of our current enemies. Thus Saddam's arrest discloses to the world that America is both an instrument for exemplary human justice and a remorseless, inevitably successful enemy if we are opposed. That's not a bad day's work for the Fourth Armored Infantry Division. ©2003 Creators Syndicate URL:http://www.townhall.com/columnists/tonyblankley/tb20031217.shtml