December 26, 2003
IGNORING IS BLISS:
How is it possible to ignore the Iraqi war's most blindingly obvious collateral benefits? (Charles Krauthammer, Dec. 26, 2003, Jewish World Review)
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. [...]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.
Gotta remember, Democrats still think Gorbachev won the Cold War. Posted by Orrin Judd at December 26, 2003 8:48 AM
Think? Don't you mean "know"? For many of them, to even entertain the notion that Reagan did anything good at all is, well, unthinkable.
Posted by: Peter B at December 26, 2003 9:32 AMAnd interestingly, for all their (the Dems) claims to openness to non Anglo-Saxon views, they refuse to hear the Czechs, Slavs, Poles, etc. who consistently tell them "It WAS Reagan".
Posted by: MG at December 26, 2003 9:45 AMDemocrats have yet still to grasp that locking up criminals reduces crime.
This is the heart of what has come to be called post-modernism.Science says any theory that does not conform to reality is an invalid theory.Po-mo states that any reality not conforming to theory is an invalid reality.
Posted by: M. at December 26, 2003 11:06 AMThe modern Democratic Party has become the haven for political loons and crack-pots. The very idea that some Americans support the current advocates of American Socialism,Statism and Surrender is disturbing proof for the benefits of limiting the power of government. After all, some of these screwballs may be making decisions within he bowels of the bureacracy for years to come.
Posted by: at December 26, 2003 6:52 PMGorbachev did single-handedly acheive a feat that had escaped mongols,turks,tarters,teutons,Napoleon and Hitler.
He brought down the Russian Empire.I guess that at least would make him noteworthy.
Posted by: M. at December 26, 2003 8:35 PM