Democrats: All whining and obstruction, no action
By Rachel Marsden
Forget about
Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. Apparently, the liberals figure they have a far
more important target to contend with: namely the man Who has resuscitated the
post-9/11 US economy while simultaneously implementing and pursuing some of the
boldest foreign policy initiatives in American history.
While Bush is
juggling unprecedented foreign and domestic responsibilities, Democrats are busy
holding debating club meetings. The Democrats vying for the party's leadership can't seem to
agree on what kind of complete inaction and/or uselessness they would inflict on
the American people if they were in Bush's shoes. I've heard more realistic
promises in grade school "class president" election speeches. Dennis
Kucinich is offering up free university tuition to everyone. Wesley Clark is
talking about lifting the embargo on Castro's Cuba, even while he denounces
human rights atrocities. Instead of Bush-like decisive action in the Middle
East, the Democrats favour sitting down for a little afternoon tea to negotiate
"world peace" with despotic regimes, terrorists, and the likes of
Saddam Hussein--much like their hero Bill Clinton tried to do in Israel and
Northern Ireland. Even former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau--a good
friend of Castro's and a borderline communist--made it emphatically clear that
he would never negotiate with terrorists (the Parti Quebecois separatists, in
his case), even if the lives of his wife and children were at stake. To think
that this sorry lot of Dems leans to the left of Pierre Trudeau on ANY issue is
a scary thought, indeed.
On his
website, Democratic frontrunner Howard Dean states: "Harry Truman had faith
as I have faith, and as I believe the American people have faith, that if we are
wise enough and determined enough in our opposition to hate and our promotion of
tolerance, in our opposition to aggression and our fidelity to law, we will have
allies not only among governments but among people everywhere." Dean's
foreign policy can therefore be summed up in four words: Love 'em to death.
Sure, Howard, that'll work really well on someone like, say, al-Qaeda commander
and Bin Laden friend--Abu Salma Al-Hijazi--whose own foreign policy consists of
"amazing the world and turning al-Qaeda into [an organization that]
horrifies the world until the law of Allah is implemented, actually implemented,
and not just in words, on His land... You wait and see that the balance of power
between al-Qaeda and its rivals will change, all of a sudden, Allah willing.
There is no doubt that the demise of America and its collapse will lead to the
collapse of the fragile regimes that depend on it..."
George W.
Bush made it clear in the days following the 9/11 attacks that the war on
terrorism would be a long, protracted fight that would take years, and a great
deal of patience. Just because Democrats have a short memory and even shorter
attention span doesn't mean that we can, or should, just walk away from the
crescent of crisis in the Middle East.
On March 23,
1983, President Ronald Reagan outlined his Strategic Defense Initiative that
would finally cause the Soviet economic and political system to spin out of
control, bringing an end to the Cold War. Unlike the Democrats, he understood
that deterrence of aggression through the promise of retaliation was the only
real way to achieve long-term peace. But such a strategy cannot be applied if
there's no action ready to back it up.
Unfortunately, the only action that was going on in
Bill Clinton's administration was taking place under a desk in the "Oral
Office" during visits from Monica Lewinsky. Three days before the fall of
Baghdad, Uday Hussein (Saddam's son who was later killed by US forces), told the
director of Iraqi television, "I think the end is near, " because
"this time the Americans are serious. Bush is not like Clinton."
Bingo.
Bill and
Hillary Clinton, Democratic Senator Bob Graham, Presidential hopeful John Kerry,
Rep. Henry Waxman, Sen. Ted Kennedy, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, Al Gore, Rep. Nancy
Pelosi, Clinton National Security Advisor Sandy Berger, Clinton Secretary of
State Madeline Albright, and many others are all on record as recognizing the
serious threat posed by Saddam Hussein. The Reaganesque strategy of containment
doesn't work on a regime that has already proven its willingness to use
dangerous weapons on its own people and others. Iraq wasn't the former Soviet
Union or Cuba--it was a clear, imminent danger with a track record of following
through on its threatened atrocities. It should come as no surprise that
uncovering these weapons post-invasion has been a difficult task. Part of any
detailed plan to create them would have involved means of concealing them. It
hardly means that they didn't (or don't) exist.
Bush has also
acted decisively on humanitarian issues--giving large amounts of funding to
combat AIDS in Africa, and promising to call new attention to Fidel Castro's
repressive dictatorship in Cuba. The latter will surely be dealt with via a
campaign of education, denunciation and condemnation rather military might, but
nonetheless, it's more than any Democrat did or would be willing to do. It's
obvious that Bush also understands that, in the words of naval lieutenant
commander and military strategist Dr. Harlan Ullman, "the president must
begin by expanding his war on terror to dealing with the causes and consequences
of extremism...The best means for assuring homeland security is not guarding
every piece of infrastructure here but (to the extent possible) eliminating and
reducing the dangers where they rise abroad...Money and other kinds of
assistance are part of the solution."
While
Democrats were carping about Bush's $87 billion assistance package to rebuild
the former terrorist havens of Afghanistan and Iraq, Bush realized such an
investment would be required to ensure the future stability of these regions. To
say that the US can't afford to fork out this kind of funding is complete
nonsense. It barely represents a drop in the bucket of the country's GDP, and is
a small investment compared to the damage to the US economy that a single
terrorist attack on US soil could wreak.
On the
domestic front, nearly all of the Democratic hopefuls are complaining about
Bush's tax cuts--even while the economy is now booming back, with an addition of
286,000 jobs over a three-month period nudging the nation's unemployment rate
down to 6 percent. The economy needed some reform, and Bush provided it through
decisive leadership and action.