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Politics : THE VAST RIGHT WING CONSPIRACY -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: calgal who wrote (5117)	12/30/2003 8:20:20 PM
From: calgal	Respond to of 6358

The Doggedness of War By Charles Krauthammer Friday, December 26, 2003; Page A35 Yeah, sure. After 18 years of American sanctions, Moammar Gaddafi randomly picks Dec. 19, 2003, as the day for his surrender. By amazing coincidence, Gaddafi's first message to Britain -- principal U.S. war ally and conduit to White House war councils -- occurs just days before the invasion of Iraq. And his final capitulation to U.S.-British terms occurs just five days after Saddam Hussein is fished out of a rathole. As Jay Leno would say, what are the odds? The nine months of negotiations with Libya perfectly frame the war on Iraq and the fall of Saddam Hussein. How is it possible to ignore the most blindingly obvious collateral benefits? Imagine this kind of thinking 58 years ago: "Japan Surrenders -- Years of War Deprivation Proved Too Much." Dateline Tokyo, Aug. 14, 1945. Japan capitulated yesterday to the allies, worn down by the accumulation of hardships from the war begun with the sudden outbreak of violence in Hawaii in December 1941. The housing shortage in Tokyo had become particularly acute, especially since the nights of March 9 and 10. And there also has appeared to be an abrupt downturn in recent economic activity in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Sen. John Kerry was equally ridiculous in his explanation of the Libya deal: "An administration that scorns multilateralism and boasts about a rigid doctrine of military preemption has almost in spite of itself demonstrated the enormous potential for improving our national security through diplomacy." Unlike Howard Dean, Kerry is not a foreign policy ignoramus. Does he really believe that the Libyan surrender is a triumph of multilateralism? Does he really think that Libya's capitulation -- coinciding precisely with a preemptive war that destroyed Saddam Hussein -- is a contradiction of the "rigid doctrine of military preemption"? What kind of naif thinks that this is a triumph for "diplomacy," as if, say, Bill Clinton had sent Warren Christopher to Tripoli, and he chatted Gaddafi into surrendering his WMDs? The Democrats seem congenitally incapable of understanding that force has not just the effect of disarming the immediate enemy but a deterrent effect on others similarly situated. Iraq was not attacked randomly. It was attacked as part of a clearly enunciated policy -- now known as the Bush Doctrine -- of targeting, by preemptive war if necessary, hostile regimes engaged in terror and/or refusing to come clean on WMDs. Mullah Omar did not get the message and is now hiding in a cave somewhere. Saddam Hussein did not get the message and ended up in a hole. Gaddafi got the message. Diplomacy is fine. But we are dealing not with Canada but with gangster regimes. In rogue states, the only diplomacy that ever works is diplomacy at the point of a bayonet. Why, even the hapless Hans Blix went out on a limb to speculate that "I would imagine that Gaddafi could have been scared by what he saw in Iraq." Ashton Carter, co-director of the Harvard-Stanford Preventive Defense Project, agreed that "what we did in Iraq put countries like Libya on notice that we're really serious about countering proliferation." To be sure, Carter prefaced this obvious truth with the Blixian phrase "one certainly hopes that." But that is to be expected from an adviser to Howard Dean. Do the Democrats really not see the larger picture, or do they pretend not to because it is an election year? The domino effects of the Iraq campaign are already in clear view. It is no accident that Iran has agreed to surprise nuclear inspections. Mind you, I do not hold much hope for this; it will take far more to disarm the mullahs, possibly U.S. airstrikes during a second Bush administration. But for now, Bush's willfulness and determination in Iraq have persuaded Iran to grab a European plan for inspections rather than face the wrath of the United States. Elsewhere in the Middle East, Hezbollah has been quiet since the war. Syria has made its first peace overture in years. Libya has now confessed and capitulated on WMDs. And that's not counting Iraq, which with Saddam Hussein captured has finally turned a historic corner and may be on its way to establishing the first pluralistic, representative pro-Western Arab polity in the region. These are not triumphs of diplomacy. These are the aftershocks of war. ">letters@charleskrauthammer.com

To: calgal who wrote (5117)	12/30/2003 8:21:13 PM
From: calgal	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6358

This Year's Democratic Attacks May Be Next Year's Republican Fodder By Terry M. Neal washingtonpost.com Staff Writer Wednesday, December 17, 2003; 8:11 PM Former Vermont governor Howard Dean supported the first war in Iraq, the war in Kosovo and the war in Afghanistan, as did other so-called first-tier Democratic presidential candidates. Yet Dean's rivals have been eager to portray his opposition to one war -- the one earlier this year in Iraq -- as a sure sign that he is the second coming of George McGovern. It's a curious route of attack -- one that could become a self-fulfilling prophecy and seriously damage the party if Dean wins the nomination. Even as Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) leads the pack in the effort to tar Dean as a kooky, far left, anti-war zealot who threatens to take the Democratic party backward, significant numbers of Americans agree with Dean's position on the war. In the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll, taken after the Sunday morning announcement of Saddam Hussein's capture, 42 percent of Americans said the war in Iraq was not worth fighting, compared to 53 percent who said it was. So even though more Americans disagree with Dean than agree with him, it's difficult to characterize Dean's opposition to the war in Iraq as an extremist position. Voters are split about the war in Iraq pretty much as they are split about everything else. At the same time, the poll shows that nearly twice as many Americans are still saying the war is going worse than expected (27 percent) than say it is going better than expected (14 percent). But Dean's opponents have made his opposition to the war nearly the equal of sedition -- even as they try to reap the political benefits of both agreeing with the war while criticizing Bush's handling of it. Their attacks, repeated over and over again, are beginning to become conventional wisdom. Media reports since Sunday have played off the theme of whether Dean can survive the positive news of Hussein's capture. "Of all the Democrats, Howard Dean's anti-war campaign has the most to lose from the surprise capture of Saddam Hussein," NBC's Andrea Mitchell proclaimed. "Saddam's capture is an undeniable political boost for President Bush and complicates things significantly for Dean's anti-war candidacy," Fox News Channel's Carl Cameron declared. Dean is increasingly seen as the likely winner of the Democratic sweepstakes. But his Democratic opponents may have doomed him in the race against Bush. Et Tu, Democrats? Given the level of animus directed at Dean, it's no surprise that one of the most notorious presidential primary ads in recent years was directed at him -- and financed by Democrats, no less. The ties those Democrats have to Gephardt were made clear in recent media reports, led by Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post's editorial page (Dec. 13 and Dec. 16). The ads, which use a picture of Osama bin Laden to assert that Dean is weak on foreign policy, were financed by an organization run by one man, Edward Feighan, who has contributed $2,000 to Gephardt's campaign, and another, David Jones, who is a former Gephardt fund-raiser. The group's spokesman is Robert Gibbs, Sen. John Kerry's former press secretary. While Americans for Jobs, Healthcare and Progressive Values, the organization that created the ad, has refused to immediately release its donor list, the Associated Press reported this week that at least two labor unions that have endorsed Gephardt have donated $50,000 each to the group. "There are those who wake up every morning determined to destroy western civilization," the ad's narrator says. "Americans want a president who can face the dangers ahead. But Howard Dean has no military or foreign policy experience. And Howard Dean just cannot compete with George Bush on foreign policy." The Dean campaign reacted angrily to the broadside. CONTINUED URL:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9525-2003Dec17.html