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

To: Wayners who wrote (575452)	5/14/2004 2:38:53 PM
From: Thomas A Watson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Well written piece. ADVANCE COPY In the new issue of The Weekly Standard: -David Gelernter on Abu Ghraib: These are times when President Bush and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld could probably use some encouragement. They should ponder a short note by Anthony Eden to Winston Churchill. It was May 1941 and World War II was going badly. Churchill was Britain's Bush and Rumsfeld, prime minister and minister of defence. Eden was his foreign secretary and friend. There had been disasters in Greece and Crete, a discouraging naval battle with the warship Bismarck and hard fighting in Iraq, where the British were battling Nazi-backed Rashid Ali and Luftwaffe bombers that were helping him out. "My dear Winston," Eden wrote, "This is a bad day; but tomorrow Baghdad will be entered, Bismarck sunk. On some day the war will be won, and you will have done more than any other man in history to win it." By "tomorrow" he meant "soon"; his predictions all came true. But for now, it is indeed a bad day. Too many Democrats and some Republicans are acting as if Abu Ghraib means that the Bush administration is in trouble. They are wrong. It means that America is in trouble. And when America is in trouble, every public official is required to help. The bestial murder of Nicholas Berg has nothing to do with Abu Ghraib. Absolute evil is self-seeding; nothing causes it any more than we cause rats to spawn or the black plague to blossom. But certain conditions help it thrive--such as the worldwide seething toxic stink of America Hatred, or the ongoing struggle by so many thinkers (especially Europeans) to legitimize terrorism (all those torn-to-pieces Israeli innocents dismissed with a shrug or a smirk). Perhaps the murder of Berg--9/11 compressed into one single act, a black hole of infinite wickedness--will at last bring American moral showboating to an end. We all love to tell the world how much we care. It's so easy, so cheap. Perhaps we will now get serious. Because of Abu Ghraib, America is (temporarily!) down and out and getting kicked in the head by every two-bit moralizing moron in the universe, while her thoughtful Euro-friends twist the knife by informing us that hundreds of dead American soldiers might just as well have stayed home; America's rule is no better than Saddam's. We need to hear from America's political leaders, loud and clear: Yes we abominate the Abu Ghraib crimes but will not accept your forgetting what America has paid to liberate Iraq, will not allow foreign nations to slander the United States, will not permit you to forget what we and the British have accomplished: a world without Saddam Hussein; a vastly safer, profoundly better world. And no one will be allowed to dishonor American soldiers and this nation by telling us 'you're just as bad as Saddam'; that lie will never go unchallenged." . . . Log on to weeklystandard.com on Saturday, May 15, to read rest, along with the entire new issue. And don't forget to try our PAPERLESS SUBSCRIPTION--48 issues for just $39.96! THE LAST WORD Howard Fineman had a good column this week on John Kerry. His most interesting quote comes from the Massachusetts senator himself, who recently told a meeting of financial backers that his strategy is "to preserve my acceptability." This isn't the way FDR or JFK or even Bill Clinton saw their own candidacy. But just because it isn't stirring, doesn't mean it's bad strategy. As a strictly analytical matter, Kerry's plan isn't crazy and might just win him the election. Because, as Fineman hints, Kerry is betting his candidacy on America's failure in both Iraq and the war on terrorism. Mind you, this isn't to say that Kerry wants America to fail--I don't pretend to know what he and Teresa whisper to one another at night. I do know that he once picked up a gun and risked his life for our country, and I admire and respect that. I'm only saying that, again, as an analytical matter, John Kerry has positioned himself so that America's failure will be his political gain. Strategically, this presents one large problem: Voters might not take it too kindly if they notice that he's betting against them. (Think about how you feel at a blackjack table when one of the players takes "insurance.") My own suspicion is that Kerry will dodge this problem (1) because of his military service; and (2) because he's going to be very, very careful about never actually rooting for the bad guys. His fellow Democrats, however, may be a different story. Take, for example, Democratic Boston city councilman Chuck Turner, who this week got the Boston Globe in trouble by peddling faked Abu Ghraib "rape" photos. Or Ted Kennedy, who explicitly likened the American military's behavior to Saddam's. It is an uncomfortable fact of life that a small, but sizable number of Americans really are rooting for our failure. And nearly all of these people are going to be Kerry voters. In the 1996 election, the press hung Newt Gingrich and the Republican revolution around Bob Dole's neck. It may or may not have cost him the election--but it sure didn't help his chances. John Kerry may find himself in a similar position. Best, Jonathan V. Last