Considerettes

With all the comparisons I’ve seen anti-war protestors make between Bush and Hitler, how about we ask someone who was actually there, who had almost 90 members of his family killed in the Holocaust, and who’s spent his life tracking down Nazis to bring them to justice?

How ’bout we ask Simon Wiesenthal?

John Fund has coalesced a lot of the history of Hollywood anti-war protesting over the past 20 years (and the convenient lack of it during the Clinton administration) into a single article with a great title, “Stars and Gripes”. Best paragraph:

I also remember when leftists and Hollywood stars of all stripes opposed American intervention in Grenada and supported the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. The people of both countries have shown their gratitude for our help and today live in freedom. I remember, too, how many countries were hesitant to join the allied coalition in the 1991 Gulf War, fearing that it would turn out horribly. History has proved them wrong.

Again, it’s history that points out the fallacies.

Rep. James Moran (D-VA) stepped down from his position as regional whip over his remarks that “if it were not for the strong support of the Jewish community for this war with Iraq we would not be doing this”. It was done rather quietly, so as not, I imagine, to call too much attention to antisemitism in the party, but at least it was done. Good things are coming out of the Trent Lott debacle, and this is one of them.

Next step, working on Robert Byrd for using the “N” word.

Which emits more smog-causing nitrogen oxides; factories, cars or trees? If you answered “trees”, you’re obviously not an environmentalist. And according to the journal Nature, you’d also be right.

Here’s another quote from the left side of the aisle expressing their real reason for not opposing terrorists or madmen:

Let’s be clear: Mr Chirac does not endorse Baghdad, and he finds Saddam’s regime as despicable as do Bush and Blair. But he fears the American hawks will ignite Muslim fundamentalism worldwide. The fear of domestic conflagration and terrorism are also ever-present: there are 6 million French Muslims to take into account.
— Marc Roche in The Guardian

Fear is continuing to grip the left. “Oh, that ol’ Hussein guy sure is despicable, but if we stand up for what’s right, or even try to enforce our own resolutions, people might get mad and not like us, and maybe even hurt us.” The terrorists have won the mind of Mr. Roche. One more victory for them.

For now.

Ouch! Andrew Sullivan pointed out an opinion piece in the Washington Post that is positively brutal in its honesty about the alternative to war.

If you think war kills, it doesn’t hold a candle to years and years of containment. A must-read.

The phrase popped up in the days after September 11, 2001, and became instantly trite. “If we don’t X, then the terrorists have won”, where X was replaced with things like:

“get back to our normal lives”
“resume broadcasting ‘Saturday Night Live'”
“rebuild the Twin Towers”

The phrase became the brunt of late night talk show monologues. Pretty soon you couldn’t take it seriously, because so many silly things had been tagged to it.

But then consider this: What value of X would actually make that statement the most true? In order to answer that question, you have to figure out what the terrorists are trying to do? Now, trying to get into their collective heads and determine their specific motives may be an exercise for a psychologist, not me, but I can think of a value for X that is at least generally true of terrorists in general.

X = “respond, because we’re afraid”

Basically, if terrorists have instilled terror into us, to the point that either we do what they want us to do or we don’t do what they don’t want us to do, they’ve won the battle, if not the war. The point of terrorism is to instill so much fear that we relent to their demands, either actively or passively.

And so, consider the following quotes from the left side of the aisle:

Do Americans believe that taking out Saddam would really make life here safer? Will we really be able to stop living in fear? Or do enough Americans believe, as I do, that terrorists will retaliate with an attack on us–perhaps in Chicago, Dallas or Los Angeles–the minute a bomb destroys the first mosque?
— Commentary by Juan Andrade of The United States Hispanic Leadership Institute, 10/11/2002

Iraq is going to retaliate as soon as they are attacked. And terrorists are going to hit the U.S. more and more. I believe that military targets in the U.S. are in jeopardy, so the Hampton Roads area and DC are likely targets.

I think Hussein is a scary man, but there are other ways to take him out than war.
— Cordle, a blogger, 2/27/2003

Leave Terrorists alone, they might strike back
— chalk writing on sidewalk at a student war protest at Stanford University, 3/5/2003, as reported by Chrislin’s blog (who, by way of disclaimer, doesn’t agree with the sentiments expressed)

What do all these sentiments have in common? Fear. Don’t go to war, because the terrorists or the madmen might hurt us back. Just let Saddam continue to torture his own people. Don’t respond to al Qaeda attacks. Hussein will change…he just needs more time (12 years surely isn’t enough), and if we push too hard he might push back. If we don’t bother Osama, maybe he’ll leave us alone.

Listen to the protesters, the bloggers, the pundits. When they get past their caricatures of Bush as Hitler and their mantras, listen to them. Why do they insist on doing the same thing that has been done for years without success? Why do they suggest that war never solved anything, when it plainly has (ask a thankful Kuwaiti or a Frenchman born after 1945 whose native language isn’t German)? Why do they safely protest against Bush, when Hussein has committed (actual) atrocities against his own people and yet they say nothing?

War is an awful option. “War is hell”, no doubt about it. But the only reason Saddam is feeding crumbs to weapons inspectors is because of the threat of war. The only reason he left Kuwait in his “blood for oil” war was because of the force of war. And the only way he’ll “comply” with UN resolutions is if he is physically forced to. The only reason some small semblance of freedom returned to Afghanistan is because war forced out the Taliban, who never had any intention of stopping bin Laden from his murderous ways.

The United States has responded to terrorists with full knowledge of the possible consequences, but was not afraid to act in its own interest. Ask that aforementioned Kuwaiti or Frenchman, or perhaps a woman in Afghanistan who can now go to school, what it means when we’re not afraid of terrorists or madmen.

If you’re afraid of terrorists, they’ve beaten you. If this nation becomes terrorized because we don’t have the will to act, the bin Ladens and Husseins of the world have us right where they want us.

If we don’t respond, because we’re afraid, then the terrorists have won.

Who said this?

What if Saddam Hussein “fails to comply, and we fail to act, or we take some ambiguous third route which gives him yet more opportunities to develop his program of weapons of mass destruction and continue to press for the release of the sanctions and continue to ignore the solemn commitments that he made? Well, he will conclude that the international community has lost its will. He will then conclude that he can go right on and do more to rebuild an arsenal of devastating destruction.”

“If we fail to respond today, Saddam and all those who would follow in his footsteps will be emboldened tomorrow.” “Some day, some way, I guarantee you, he’ll use the arsenal.”

If you answered “George W. Bush” or “Colin Powell”, you’re wrong.

OK, now who said this?

He [Hussein] has maximum incentive not to use this stuff. If we go, he has maximum incentive to use it because he knows he’s going to lose.

The answer to both questions is Bill Clinton (from 1998 and from 2002, respectively). The web site efreedomnews.com has these and other Clinton, Daschle and John Kerry quotes from then and now. Required reading, especially for Democrats who backed their guys 110% then and 110% now. The schizophrenia is amazing, not to mention convenient.

Once again, what a difference an administration makes.

Tony Schinella, who has a blog called Politizine, called me on an error I made on February 24th. I said,

Did you hear a story about Iraqi-Americans petitioning the Bush administration to topple Saddam Hussein?

Yeah, neither did I. Wonder why.

The link points to a item in the Detroit News that reported on an event organized by the Iraqi Forum for Democracy in which Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz was the guest speaker. The members of this forum were urging him to topple Saddam Hussein, in response to all the anti-war protests.

Tony said, in response to me, “Yeah, I did, FoxNews, MSNBC, and CSPAN were live with Wolfowitz in the town hall meeting promoting the idea.” So apparently this meeting, or some other meeting with a similar tone, did get covered by some of the cable networks. But let’s look at the coverage for a second.

• Fox’s coverage doesn’t surprise me. “Fair and balanced” means showing both sides of the issue and they cover both the anti-war and pro-liberation crowds in a more balanced fashion than anybody.
• Good to see MSNBC covering all angles, although their ratings are pretty much in the basement.
• CSPAN covers everything if it’s political and especially if it involves a high-level cabinet position.

The only real surprise for me here is the MSNBC coverage. Good to see, but virtually inconsequential. However, conspicuous by their absence were CNN, ABC, CBS, and NBC. A search for any mention of “Iraqi Forum for Democracy” and “Wolfowitz” on Google News did not reveal coverage by any of those networks, at least on their web sites. There is still the possibility that Peter Jennings gave it a few seconds of air time, but the point was, and still is, that the networks give far, far more press to anti-war views than those who believe a war is necessary. (The Media Research Center has been chronicling many instances of this bias lately, especially with regards to ABC News.) Look what it took to get MSNBC to cover this unique pro-liberation angle; a personal visit by a top cabinet member. Would they have covered this event if, instead of inviting Wolfowitz, the Iraqi Forum for Democracy had just staged an anti-Saddam protest? I think a safe bet would be “No”. And even with Wolfowitz’s presence, the other networks didn’t find it worthy of mention.

In fact, with all the attacks on Fox News that they’re just shills for the Republicans, it’s interesting to note that almost all of the other networks that consider themselves balanced didn’t bother covering this. Fox covers all angles, and they’re called “biased”, while the other networks ignore or minimize conservatives and they call themselves “fair”.

So yes, my personal experience wasn’t enough when determining whether or not the networks were biased in coverage of this issue. But given more information, the picture doesn’t look better. It looks worse.

Seems Mary McGrory wasn’t quite convinced by Colin Powell. Well, she does believe everything he said about Hussein’s poisons and all, she just had to clarify that she doesn’t think it’s worth going to war over. I guess we should just sit around another 12 years to let inspections “work”.

It’s amazing how much evil the left will allow to continue under the excuse of “but war isn’t the answer”. “Peace” has had it’s chance, but McGrory et. al. are more than happy to let Saddam continue to oppress his people and continue to murder them, just as long as any al Qaeda connection is tenuous, or he’s not directly linked to a nuke in San Francisco. If it’s Iraqis he’s killing, there’s no reason to fret.

Racism? Head in the sand? Lack of common sense? Or what other malady worse than these can possibly explain letting a murderer continue his ways unabated?