LET THE SUN SHINE IN:

When Dictators Blink: By confronting the truth, Bush helps crack Iraq and North Korea. (CLAUDIA ROSETT, October 23, 2002, Wall Street Journal)

In both Iraq and North Korea, what prompted the recent concessions was, at bottom, a simple thing called the truth. President Bush scrapped at least some of the soothing fictions in favor of facing facts. Last January he called these regimes "evil." Then, instead of apologizing to all the modern Neville Chamberlains who had gone faint with shock, he went about telling the world just how evil. His administration confronted Saddam and Kim Jong Il with evidence of their depredations and violations. And what do you know? Some of the world's worst bullies have begun to crack. [...]

Greater safety sure wasn't the trend in the slaphappy 1990s, the decade of denial, when U.S. foreign policy consisted largely of Bill Clinton desperately seeking a legacy, Hillary kissing Suha Arafat and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright belting out karaoke and dancing the hula. The assumption in those days was that what we didn't acknowledge couldn't really hurt us. As long as we got despots to sign on the dotted line, we'd be safe--and we had lots of paperwork that said so.

That policy allowed for the monstrous growth of al Qaeda, brought us the inane 1994 Agreed Framework that had us paying protection to North Korea, and engendered the absurd U.N.-run oil-for-food program, crafted on the assumption that Saddam would respect the spirit of a set of rules administered by the world's most craven bureaucracy.

I'd add to this list the kowtowing to Beijing, in the name of "engagement." This policy led the Chinese tyrants to conclude that "the United States is a
superpower in decline, losing economic, political and military influence around the world," according to the congressionally mandated U.S.-China
Security Review Commission. This commission further noted that "Chinese analysts also believe that the United States will not and cannot sustain
casualties in pursuit of its vital interests." China was far from alone in forming this opinion. America's evident decline into politically correct weakness
served as a call to arms for monsters around the globe.

We too little notice the desperation with which even history's worst dictatorships--be they fascist, communist, or Islamicist--try to portray themselves as legitimate and democratic. Saddam does not refer to his fiefdom as the Brutal Dictatorship of Iraq; he calls it a Republic and his storm troopers the Republican Guard. What the use of clear and honest language in the West can do is strip away such legitimizing nonsense.
Posted by Orrin Judd at October 23, 2002 11:45 AM