The alternative to war was simple: defeat
Mon February 2nd, 2004 22:43 MSTOnce again, Mark Steyn gets it just right. A sample:
The Left is remarkably nonchalant about these new terrors. When nuclear weapons were an elite club of five relatively sane world powers, the Left was convinced the planet was about to go ka-boom any minute, and the handful of us who survived would be walking in a nuclear winter wonderland. Now anyone with a few thousand bucks and an unlisted number in Islamabad in his Rolodex can get a nuke, and the Left couldn’t care less.
Unfortunately this head in the sand attitude will not only get them killed, but me as well.
OK, I know something about nuclear war, having been trained to fight it as a B-52 navigator and bombardier during the Cold War. It’s the nightmare we all learned to control, but that doesn’t make it desireable. If GWB intends to try to force the proliferating nuclear genies back into their bottles, good for him, but I would like a little notice so I can move out of known target areas for the expected counterstrikes.
If he does it soon enough and right, there won’t be counterstrikes. Who has the capability to do so right now, and who is willing to do so knowing that our response would be to wipe them off the face of the earth? We aren’t going to stuff the nukes owned by Russia, France, England or China back into the bottle. I doubt we will do it to Israel.
If we don’t stop proliferation, it is a virtual certainty that we will be nuked by terrorists, via smuggling. There is a possibility that the North Koreans might be able to throw a nuke into the US via missile, but it would be the last thing they ever did. This would only happen in the death throes of the regime, because it would be utterly suicidal, but could happen whether or not we did a thing. That is why the missile defense system is to be operational this summer.
I just hope that secretly the defense system is nuclear tipped with enhanced radiation weapons rather using than the politically correct hit-to-kill vehicle. The latter is probably easy to fool, but the former would be effective, and is how our earlier system works, and what the Russians have deployed around Moscow.
Look at it this way… the targets are most likely to be NYC and DC. If you are worried, its time to leave because of terrorism.
This argument is completely nonsensical. What (to follow in your pattern of making broad generalizations) exactly was “the Left” advocating over the past 3 years?
First, since Bush’s inauguration, he has been criticized for not doing more to shore up Russia’s nuclear arsenal and prevent an unpaid general from selling a suitcase bomb to bin Laden. Bush has effectively ignored this threat.
Second, since 9/11 “the Left” has urged that we increase domestic security. That means more — any — port security and security around nuclear power plants (not to mention chemical plants and storage units). Bush has effectively ignored this threat.
Third, “the Left” has advocated a more holistic approach to containing nuclear threats, increasing international agreements and using a combination of carrots and sticks to encourage countries to comply with nonproliferation treaties.
In contrast, Bush’s primary strategy has been to invade Iraq. Not only did Iraq have virtually no nuclear threat capability — which was infinitely easier to detect than chem or bio programs — but we have been incurring massive expenses in manpower and U.S. dollars. Additionally, Bush has undermined the credibility of international weapons inspectors.
Perhaps worst of all, Bush’s attitude to Iraq and N. Korea has sent a clear and convinving message to all of the world. If you want international credibility and don’t want the U.S. to invade your country then develop a nuclear weapons program as fast as possible. In other words, Bush has simultaneously given Iran a green light to speed up nuke development, diminshed our ablity to muster international condemnation of such efforts, and depleted our capability to respond to any Iranian threat with a conventional military force. Thanks, George!
The left has criticized everything Bush did. For example, it has criticised the Patriot Act, a necessary weapon against terrorism. It has criticized Bush for spending too much, while at the same time suggesting we should spend more, as you do.
And the “holistic approach” advocated by the left has no sticks, just carrots. The invasion of Iraq, which the left opposes (after many having voted to authorize it) is exactly the stick. The surrender of Libya is the result of a holistic approach, and as Ghadaffi made clear to Berlusconi, that was a direct result of the Iraq war.
Bush has been active in many, many areas. Iraq is just one of them. In my opinion, the ultimate threat is biological, and Iraq had an active program up until the end. It also had an active long range missile program. Did the left think those missiles were to be used to deliver flowers?
We suspected they had no active, massive nuclear program exactly because technical means are likely to discover such. However, it turns out that Iran had such programs and we were unable to detect them. It took an Iranian defector to show us the existence of a massive Uranium enrichment program. We also had no evidence of Libya’s advanced Uranium enrichment program.
The latter support what the right has always known: international inspectors are only effective when regimes cooperate. There is precedent for this cooperation: Brazil, Argentina and South Africa. Iraq did *not* cooperate.
Finally, I would suggest you propose how we should deal with Iran and North Korea. Should we nuke them? Invade them? Put on sanctions (North Korea has been under sanctions for ages)?
Also, there are a number of points that the left always miss about Iraq:
1) The sanctions were rapidly breaking down. Once they were gone, Iraq would have been free to go back to his WMD efforts.
2) The WMD business has gone multinational. Libya’s enrichment centrifuges were purchased from a company in Malaysia. Libya itself was enriching uranium for two other countries. Iraq could have also purchased those centrifuges, or the enriched uranium. Kay calculated that one year after the end of sanctions, Saddam could have nukes.
3)Saddam Hussein had the worst record of miscalculation of any of the rogue countries. He consistently made mistakes that cost thousands of other peoples’ lives. There was no reason to believe he wouldn’t miscalculate again in a way that would be devastating to a country he hated more than any: the US. His history of working with lethal biological agents and of cooperating with terrorists of all stripes was in itself sufficient reason to destroy his regime.
We can always criticize Bush for not doing enough in one sphere, but it is important to notice that almost everything he DOES do gets criticized by the left. Bush has concluded, and many of us agree, that the only defense against terrorism is offense.
As to domestic security, there is a lot more protection now than pre-911. Obviously not all of it is publicized, and obviously it will never be perfect. In fact, one reason that we have to go after the terrorists is that it is simply impractical to implement sufficient security. For example, detecting an enriched uranium bomb in a freight container can be extremely difficult (easier to find a plutonium bomb). Detecting a biological agent entering the country would only be by pure luck, or good intelligence, and one of the best ways to get the latter is to attack terrorism around the world, weakening them in a way that makes it easier to infiltrate agents or “turn” existing members.
But the real problem with the left is past history. Clinton, rather than dealing with the threat, which became utterly obvious (to me, at least) in 1993 when Islamofascists attempted to kill 100,000 people in the World Trade Center, was ineffectual. Bin Laden was encouraged by the weak US response, and considered it cowardly because we never endangered our people. His defeat of us in Mogadishu, also a Clinton screwup where his administration refused a request for the armor that would have allowed rapid rescue of our forces, was cited by Bin Laden as an example of how weak we were. Our failure to adequately retaliate for the embassy bombings and the USS Cole continued that pattern.
Let’s see, I have one of those little “certified to drop nukes” certificates around here somewhere (in a single-seat, one-way, disposable aircraft–complete with eyepatch so you can see to get partway home after the flash–arrggh, matey), so I suppose I can opine on the subject as well.
The DPRK (and Iran, Syria, Pakistan, et al) isn’t capable of launching a nuclear strike against the US. They are capable of handing off a nuke or dirty bomb to some terrorist fanatics and letting them smuggle them into a port (or, more likely, a few kilos of biologicals and disperse them from a city high-rise). This threat will only grow–and there’s no way to protect every port sufficiently or check every container that transits.
Port security is needed (and contrary to comments above it’s being worked), but is insufficient. The IAEA destroyed their own credibility far more effectively than we ever could have. Rogue regimes are developing nuclear programs (and unless they started in 2001, it wasn’t as a result of being called “evil” by President Bush). We can either do something about it, or wait for the inevitable. I choose option A.
Maybe there was another viable option for the US after 9/11…I think the option of fighting on the ground in the ME was probably the best option. Expensive maybe, but expensive relative to what, huddling around and wringing our hands waiting for the next attack. What has been the cost of the last 20 years of the WoT and what have we gotten in return for lack of action?
As to the WMD, the issue is moot except for the Useful Idiot Leftists/Democrats with the media puppets to demonize Bush’s actions. My guess is that they will prove once again you will never be elected President unless you actually stand for something besides the opposition….the party of no ideas will have few votes!
I was reading through the comments and saw someone say that the Patriot Act was a necessary weapon against terrorism. That sort of floored me, I’m sure you’ve heard all the regular arguments against it. Do you really think that authorities need to be able to take away all of a person’s civil liberties simply by saying ‘patriot act’? Do you really think that even if this act is used the way it was truly intended in the beginning, it will never get abused by anyone? There’s a reason we haven’t had anything like this in the history of our country yaknow. What’s that line, Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Believe me, if Bush wins in 2004 (he won’t) and that patriot act is made permanent and more and more people start getting knocks on their door from men in uniform saying ‘Patriot Act’, this country is going to have a problem. You insist on labeling lefties as anti-war and gutless, why don’t you try to make your suspension of civil liberties permanent instead of temporary, and then we’ll see who has the guts. I won’t fight in Iraq for, if not an imaginary threat, then a much lesser threat when compared to others around the world. But if you take away my civil liberties in a year or a few years I will fight here.
And John, Clinton did give orders that were intended to either capture or kill bin Laden. Okay, so he didn’t spend his entire 8 years trying to track down this guy. Sometimes you don’t have to start a war over things, remember that Clinton didn’t have a 9/11 to deal with. And even after we had 9/11, it’s starting to look like bin Laden will out-last G Dubya. Oh but that’s right, everyone loves Bush and hates Clinton because Bush knows how to take out the bad guys. Well where the hell is bin Laden then? He’s in eastern Afghanistan and western Pakistan. Why won’t we track him down? Because for some reason we don’t care enough. What is it, 8,000 troops looking for him over there? And ZERO in Pakistan. Stupid neo-cons want to spend the entire Bush presidency bashing Clinton for his great 8 years in office. Then look the other way when we realize Pakistan is a hot spot, we realize Iran is a hot spot, and we’ve known for a long time that North Korea was a hot spot. Ask your neo-con buddies about Uzbekistan and how much we love them now since they support us in Iraq, then do a little research into some of Uzbekistan’s very recent history. OH! But that’s right! Since Uzbekistan supports us in Iraq, we can ignore the thousands and thousands of people tortured and killed there, we only care about Iraqi’s who are killed and tortured.
HA!
Find every hate crime committed against a middle easterner since the war started. The same people saving the Iraqis over there are throwing bottles at them over here. Don’t feel like doing the research? I’ll just tell ya then, it’s you! silly conservatives…
Pop Quiz! Which president is going spectacularly easy on Pakistan even after finding the evidence of a black market for nuclear technology?
Think of a few things this way…
In 10,20,50 years, no one will be agreeing with you guys that Clinton let him get away. People will remember those oustanding 8 last years of the 20th century, where the economy just couldn’t stop, and when our President at the time had no shady dealings with the family of an international terrorist.
History Lesson
What they will remember is the president who was in office when 9/11 happened, who didn’t leave the classroom WHILE it was happening, and who was impotent to stop it after it happened. EVEN WHEN HE KNEW WHERE TO GO.
See Iraq? See what happens when you actually put resources into doing something? 160,000 troops, we find Saddam. 8,000 troops, we don’t find bin Laden. Oh and remember how you silly righties thought we would be soooooooo much safer after Saddam was CAPTURED. Well, Iraq is no safer, and our country had to go through that *other* color on that whole weird alert thing.
I’d go into more detail, but I was just perusing the site and felt like leaving a quick post.
p.s. horrible color scheme on the site man
xorfl,
There are two reasons I didn’t delete your ravings.
1) I try to avoid censorship.
2) It serves as a fine example of the ravings of the left.
Thankye very much John!
There are 2 reasons you’re a hack:
1) You responded to nothing in my post.
2) The color scheme is HORRIBLE.
xorfl
I agree. The color scheme needs improvement. I am open to suggestions.