THE MAN WHO MADE NIXON LOOK ATTRACTIVE :

Questions for Mr. Bush (George McGovern, April 11, 2002, The Nation)

No longer in government, I do not have the benefit of national security briefings or Congressional committee deliberations. So perhaps instead of making assertions, it may be more appropriate for me to ask some questions that have been on my mind both before and since September 11.

Which course might produce better results in advancing American security? Is it by continuing to boycott, diplomatically and commercially, such countries as Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Libya and Cuba and threatening to bomb them? Or would we be better off opening up diplomatic, trade and travel relations with these countries, including a well-staffed embassy in each? If we are fearful of a country and doubtful of its intentions, wouldn't we be safer having an embassy with professional foreign service officers located in that country to tell us what is going on?

Our leaders frequently speak of "rogue nations." But what is a rogue nation? [...]

Instead of adding $48 billion to the Pentagon budget, as the President has proposed, wouldn't we make the world a more stable, secure place if we invested half of that sum in reducing poverty, ignorance, hunger and disease in the world? [...]

Acting on the old adage "charity begins at home," why not invest the other half of the proposed new money for the Pentagon in raising the educational, nutritional, housing and health standards of our own people? [...]

[I]s sending our bombers worldwide in the hope that they might hit terrorist hideouts or such hostile governments as Iraq an effective way to end terrorism?

The Administration now has seventy-five officials hidden in bunkers outside Washington poised to take over the government in the event of a terrorist attack. Is it possible that paranoia has become policy? [...]

[I]s it possible that our well-intentioned President and his Vice President have gone off the track of common sense in their seeming obsession with terrorism? Is there still validity to the proverb "whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad"?

For half a century, our priorities were dominated by the fear of Russian Communism--until it collapsed of its own internal weakness. As I listen to the grim rhetoric of Messrs. Bush and Cheney, I wonder if they are leading us into another half-century of cold war, with terrorism replacing Communism as the second great hobgoblin of our age.

Richard Nixon was not only the worst president in American history but the worst person ever to be President. George McGovern is by all accounts an extraordinarily decent and likable man, who served his country well as a bomber pilot during WWII. Yet, as you read those questions, you can't help but think : thank God, Nixon whipped him.

These are the same types of things that Mr. McGovern espoused back in the 70s : disarm unilaterally, throw money at poverty and treat our enemies like friends. Now, admittedly, there's something almost Christ-like in the belief that these strategies will heal the world, but let's recall that those whom Christ loved crucified him. That turned out to be an okay deal for Him, because God then resurrected Him. But who's going to forgive and/or save an American leader who turns his cheek when our enemies strike?

Of course, a man who blithely dismisses Communism as a mere "hobgoblin" may be beyond redemption. If Communism's one hundred million victims don't deserve to be taken seriously, how many people do you have to murder before Mr. McGovern thinks you're beyond the pale? The leaders of Iraq and North Korea are starving their own populations to death but Mr. McGovern wants to normalize trade and travel with them. You don't have to agree with the current ads that say drug users effectively support terrorism in order to agree with the proposition that supplying a Saddam or a Castro with hard currency would make us complicit in their reigns of terror over their own people.

We might also note how absurd and self-contradictory it is for Mr. McGovern to argue that American priorities were dominated by the Cold War for fifty years but that the USSR collapsed on its own. Granted it is intolerable for the Left to acknowledge Ronald Reagan's role, but surely the series of wars begun by their guys (Korea--Truman and Vietnam--JFK & LBJ) and the mammoth defense expenditures had some effect, no?

On the other hand, I'd agree that letting the Cold War drag on for fifty years was a mistake, as was allowing terrorism to go unpunished for the last thirty. But if we wage this war now and wage it decisively we can defeat terrorism (well, mostly) twenty years quicker than we did Soviet Communism. The world would be a better place now if we'd left Mr. McGovern and his comrades in their cockpits and redirected them at the USSR in 1945. It will be a better place when his successors in our armed forces finish the current war on a different but quite similar terror.

N. B. : And let me just ask one question that Mr. McGovern and his ilk might want to consider : is it more paranoid for the administration to create a shadow government because they fear terrorists or for the Left to fear the 75 mid-level bureaucrats who comprise that shadow government? Who do you think is a greater threat to the American people : Osama bin Laden or George W. Bush?

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 12, 2002 8:22 AM