Daniel Henninger has an important article today in the WSJ aptly titled “Wonder Land”. He writes from a sad, but true premise:
If there really is such a thing as a war on terror–that is, an active, sustained effort to unplug its principal actors–then we know it will happen only if the United States leads it. The statements of resolve this week by the presidents of Russia and Indonesia are welcome. But absent active U.S. leadership, Islamic terrorism will come to be tolerated by other national leaders–as was the Balkans, as is Darfur–as inevitable and unfortunate phenomena, like hurricanes. France, Germany and Spain have proven that.
Then he goes on to explore the presidential election:
I say both candidate and party because one wishes that John Kerry were running on a more settled party policy on terror. Wednesday in Cincinnati Mr. Kerry said, “Two hundred billion for Iraq, but they tell us we can’t afford afterschool programs for our children.” Then: “Two hundred billion dollars for Iraq, but they tell us we can’t afford to keep the hundred thousand police officers we put on the streets during the 1990s.” There may be a focus group somewhere suggesting this logic, but one week after Beslan, it seems quite beside the point.
Sen. Joe Biden on this page yesterday offered a Democratic alternative worth a debate, based on “reinvigorated diplomacy.” Sen. Biden explicitly says the Democrats would run out the negotiations clock longer than Mr. Bush did before launching a military attack. Well, this may be the Clinton foreign policy, but it’s at least a choice. Perhaps most Americans want more talking; perhaps they think the time for talking is over. One wishes Mr. Kerry would break free of his internal polling, drop the bizarre link between Iraq and afterschool programs and put a real choice before the voters. It will be awful for our divided politics if come November, Democrats are blaming their loss on a flawed candidate rather than on what they proposed to do about terror.
A flawed candidate indeed. Perhaps it is too late. But whatever the case, Kerry’s eager partisans in the mainstream media have not helped but hurt him. And I’m not just talking about the buffoon-like Rather. Gail Collins, the New York Times editorial editor and writer, is another, perhaps more important, example. Her rage at Bush is often so undisguised that she has become unreadable. Once the NYT editorials were so “gray” they would put you to sleep. Now they read like screeds on Atrios. A (partially) unreconstructed Freudian could come up with plenty of explanations for this, but they are beside the point. An implosion is taking place before our eyes. It is easy, as a blogger, to feel triumphant. But the situation is far more important than that — and dangerous.
UPDATE: Funny artwork from Wizbang (and Microsoft). Scroll down.
Bingo, Roger. An opposition characterized by incoherence and blind fury is bad for democracy.
The danger is that millions of sober and responsible Americans, having tuned out the opposition altogether, will gradually, inevitably begin to discount the Republicans as well. That way paranoia lies.
We need a serious debate, with serious alternatives put forth in a serious and responsible way, on many aspects of the war. No one has all the answers, and there’s much about Bush’s handling of the effort that screams for improvement.
In any case, what we have now regarding our paramount challenge, the containment of a nuclear Iran, is complete silence. This is worse than bad. This is political decadence. The MSM and Kerry’s handlers bear a large part of the blame, but then so does Bush. After the election, he needs to start to tell us what, if any, the plan is, how it fits together, what is expected of us and what we can expect of his administration.
That the Times and CBS et al are incompetent jokers does not mean we should not be demanding more and better from our leaders.
Kenneth, what’s the URL?
I agree that USA must lead war on terror but it is very important to get the help of russians at least. But russians say that USA are speaking with txetxens and are not treated as terrorists by USA. I think that USA must change its policy in that question in order to get full support from Russia.
In dealing with the Russians there is no need to give in to their usual diplomatic bluster. The simple fact is that they need us more than we need them. The menace is directly on their border and hitting them repeatedly. Also, their armed forces are considerably behind the US in capabilities. Compare Grozny to Baghdad, the former is a WWII battle while the later demonstrates the new 21st Century model of tightly integrated combined arms and precision munitions.
In short, yes, the assistance of the Russians is certainly welcome, but the US holds the cards in this set of negotiations. Of central interest to the US is the Russian’s support of the Iranian nuclear program and knowledge they may have of French and/or German involvement in the same. The US should be aloof regarding Russian needs until they break off arming Iran and reveal and dirty laundry they have on the French and Germans.
On topic, when in his acceptance speech Kerry said he would respong if the US was attacked my jaw hit the floor. I have since watched his campaign avoid acknowledging that any sort of a sustained conflict between islamist jihadists and the US.
There is no public debate because both sides frame the issue so differently. To the far left it is a minorly disturbing police issue, whereas to the the rest of us it is a gathering global conflict. Hence both sides talk past each other and the important issue of how to fight this war goes undebated.
The Russians have fought two wars in Chechnya this generation . The czar fought a 40 year war with Islamic Chechens in the 1800s. The Russians have already leveled Grozny, the capital, with carpet bombing and who knows how many towns and villages.
Moscow apartment buildings, theatres, and public transportation have all been bombed before. Heck, the Russians found a real-to-life dirty bomb in a public park before it went off.
The Beslan school massacre is horrific but it’s only the most terrible of a list of previous episodes. What are the Russians going to do now that’s any different or more effective than what they’ve done in the past? So far as we know they’re stll helping Iran with their nuclear program.
What thibaud just said.
As nearly as I can decipher it, the Democratic position on the War on Terror is as follows:
(1) There is a War on Terror, and George W. Bush has failed miserably in prosecuting it because he has alienated our allies, has not consulted the UN, and has botched the reconstruction of Iraq.
(2) We should never have gone into Iraq.
(3) We have failed in Afghanistan.
(4) We have failed to catch Osama bin Laden.
(5) We have actually caused the War on Terror, by not being sensitive enough to the world’s needs.
(6) There is no such thing as the War on Terror, and George W. Bush has lost it.
(6) If there were such a thing as a “War on Terror,” John Forbes Kerry would win it, because he spent four months on a Swift Boat in Vietnam.
(7) Islamic people feel oppressed by of the policies of George W. Bush, and if there were such a thing as a War on Terror, they would have every right in the world to attack us.
(8) Fortunately, there is no such thing as a “War on Terror,” so we can set about creating a vast new federal program, “The Department of Wellness.”
(9) The rest of the world will look on our Department of Wellness, and marvel that we have created such a just and fair society, and to the extent that they were planning to launch a War on Terror, they will reconsider.
(10) The attacks of 9/11 took years to plan, and the planning occured mostly during a Democratic administration, but they were only launched when Osama bin Laden, after consulting all the Islamic peoples of the world, France and the UN, came to a democratic and multilateral decision that the US should suffer for its arrogance. Republicans, headed by a vast cabal of Neo-Conservatives (Jews), made him do it.
Have I left anything out?
Jamie Irons
The strangest thing about all this, is that it all seems so unneccessary. I mean, Bush isn’t all that far from, say, Clinton (thank you, thank you). It’s not like he is some strange creature from 20,000 fathoms. Yet a large proportion of the Democrats have gone mad, I mean, certifiably so. People I thought rational spout the most unholy crap, and believe every word of it. I can’t but wonder if next year they will wake up and look back on their episode in wonder. Or if they will go forward thru life like some poor borderline schizophrenic wandering the streets and muttering about some timeless event that never resolves.
ambisinistral,
The Russians had people on the ground trying to fix jamming equipment against our smart weapons after the beginning of hostilities with Iraq. They couldn’t be trusted when it was the USSR and they can’t be trusted now.
You are absolutely correct in suggesting that we may choose to cooperate when our interests are coincidental but it will be on our terms, never theirs. I’m not sure that I would go as far as to insist that they reveal the depths of French perfidy. That could take months or years, depending on the level of detail required.
The documents, the SBVT,the false boo’s—Lots of shame for the MSM; but, the demise of an MSM (not “the” MSM) is not a good thing for America.The blogs are wonderful because they are communities; however, they do tend to be echo chambers (although I suspect this blog will have lively discussion on topics other than the war on terror after the election season). There are lots and lots of extraordinarily capable fact checkers out there which is one of the best things about the blogosphere.
But it seems to me we still need some type of MSM who is capable of keeping “objective” reporting separate from editorializing. The AP and Reuters have shown they cannot do that. The NYT, WaPo and the LAT used to do that, and indeed, the WSJ still does a good job of keeping reporting separate from editorializing, and, iof course, there is still the CSM. The Republic continues to need some repository of objective reporting. With any luck that phoenix will emerge from the wreckage of this campaign season. Sad to see the current MSM go the way of tabloids.
Jamie,
I think you need to slip “Republicans eat babies.” in as 7. Something along that line anyway. You always want to draw attention to the inherent evil involved in being Republican.
Rick: Ana Marie says both candidates eat babies.
Rick Ballard,
Re: you suggestion for item #7 on Jamie’s list. I think
Republicans use the dried carcasses of starved old people as cordwood for the cooking fires on which they Texas-BBQ the babies they eat.
I think that more closely reflects the Moonbats’ position.
There is no public debate because both sides frame the issue so differently. To the far left it is a minorly disturbing police issue, whereas to the the rest of us it is a gathering global conflict. Hence both sides talk past each other and the important issue of how to fight this war goes undebated.
Amen. But there is enough dissent and debate within the community of serious foreign policy pros, including plenty of sober, responsible ex-Bush admin hands, that we could have a national debate– IF, and only if, the Democrats decisively renounce their crackpot conspiracy-mongers and admit that we are in fact at war.
So long as Jimmah and Mikey and Howie retain pride of place with the Dems, a serious and responsible debate will not take place.
Therefore what we need is a splintering of both parties, as follows: the Dems need to hive off Mikey and Co. and return to their Truman-JFK roots. The Dems would compensate for this loss in support and votes by picking off plenty of disgruntled, center-right Republicans and plenty of Jewish former Dems (Krauthammer, Marty Peretz, Ed Koch, Roger Simon?? et al.) who have serious qualms about Rove and the fundamentalists.
Mikey and co could then cluster around their own Naderite “progressive” great white hope without f***ing up the national debate.
The Dems today are like the Taftite Republicans back in 1947-50: surly, negative, strongly inclined toward isolationism and even denial altogether of the new threat, given to conspiracy theories. And completely behind the curve regarding the ways in which the world had just completely changed.
This is a deeply unstable, unsettling time. The old alliances and old concepts of state sovereignty are of little help to us in the new world environment. Old allies are actually taking the side of our enemies in the middle east. Apparently friendly nations are undermining our efforts. Nations that appear to be incompatible and irrevocably hostile to us are actually potential sources of indispensable support.
All this demands a new bipartisanship similar to what finally emerged in the early 1950s when the Repubs decisively renounced isolationism and nominated Eisenhower. Perhaps we’ll have to wait until 2008 for the Dems to get over their frothing Bush-hatred and re-organize around a responsible hawkish leader.
Jamie:
I can’t believe you didn’t throw the word “racism” in there. Everyone knows that all Republicans are racist.
Oh, and throw something in there like “F*ck Israel.” I mean, clean it up some – “f*ck” is a patriarchial word of oppression unless it’s used by a womyn/transgendered being – but be sure to get the same feeling behind that phrase.
Bonus points if you can work “Speaking Truth to Power” in there, too. Who cares if it’s meaningless babble, as long as it makes trustafarian “dissidents” feel important?
thibaud
Today’s New Left Democrats are significantly worse than the Forties era Taft Republicans. Rather, there’s a significant qualitative difference. The Taft Republicans disagreed with the Democrats about means and sometimes about ends, but they did not disagree about the fundamental nature of reality.
We don’t like to admit it or think about it, but we’re fighting two religious wars now, one with the Muslims and one here at home.
If it is a fundamental part of the belief structure that we ourselves are the problem, then no rational sane debate is possible. [And I hasten to point out that for those who believe we ourselves are the problem, they never perceive themselves personally to be the problem, but always some surrogate for us, such as the president, the Republicans, etc.]
Well the Dems will have to face the fact that they are not acting like the loyal opposition so much as an enemy agent.
I know Dems who believe that there is right now a pipeline in Afghanistan that is making George and Dick millions every day and who think the whole war on Terror is something right wingers cooked up to make money and keep power.
Now I am all for diplomacy and I would much rather settle a dispute without killing than with it. But I am not oblivious to what is happening in the world and I don’t think that everything will be fine if we just shuttle Bush back to Texas. This mindset is ultimately defeating for the Dems as well because it is so unrealistic. Imagine their shock when the killing continues and they don’t have the Bushies to blame.
Down that road lies madness and for this reason they should not gain power until they start acting like adults once again.
Regarding Biden’s op/ed:
Aside from the requisite — downright cursory — references to Kerry & Co., the headline on Biden’s editorial could read:
Biden Endorses Bush Policy