Democrats Should Lead From the Front
Democrats say that, since the Iraqi government has only completed or made progress on 7 out of 18 (that's 39%) of the benchmarks on its agenda (
here), we should pull our troops out of Iraq. They have also suggested that the political leaders in Iraq should either resign or be removed for their "failure".
I say: Democrats have only met or made progress on 4 of the 9 (that's 44%) items on the
agenda that they got elected on in 2006 (add "ending Iraq War" as agenda item #9)--if one estimates generously rather than literally. Democrats should lead by example. Or, as we say in the military, Lead From the Front.
Democrats should pull out of Congress.
Anxiously Awaiting,
-The Analyst
By the way, according to the latest poll, the "current national government of Iraq" and Prime Minister Maliki have a
higher approval rating than the Democratic-led
U.S. Congress!
Foresaking Our Interests to Please the "International Community"
As is well known by now, the Clinton administration had at least three chances to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden. The country of Sudan had captured him and even offered to hand him over to us. Now we know, from a recent New York Times article, that the Bush Administration too failed to capture or kill Bin Laden and his 2--Ayman al-Zawahiri--when he had the chance. Why in the name of Allah would we keep letting America's Most Wanted get away (with murder)?
For now, I'll spare you the lesson on the lengths to which the World Workers (Communist) Party and organizations like it are behind most U.N. treaties and international law as a whole, the farce that is international law--an attempt at world governance that any freedom loving person should take pause at, and the intentions of nations like China, France, Russia (permanent members of the U.N. Security Council), Iran, and others to weaken the U.S. by discrediting it, ensnaring it in a web of international law aimed at undermining U.S. law and the U.S. Constitution
(here) and
(here), so that those nations can take what they believe to be their rightful place at the head of the world stage.
If you want to know about things like that, you can start by reading what China's own Colonels have to say about how to defeat America
(here) or about France's claim to world power status
(here) and
(here) or Russia's
(here) or Iran's
(here) and
(here) and
(here).
Suffice it to say that Bin Laden is still free because we continue to succumb to anti-Americanism and criticism and have bent to the will of those who say we must do as the "international community" (much of whom seeks our unraveling for their own benefit) says we must do.
Sound like a heavy charge? It doesn't seem as such if we consider the logic and the history.
"....George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and even Thomas Jefferson were not utopians. They were well versed in the realities of international politics. They could play by European rules when circumstances permitted and often wished they had the power to play the game of power politics more effectively. But they were realistic enough to know that they were weak, and both consciously and unconciously they used strategies of the weak to try to get their way in the world. They denigrated power politics and claimed an aversion to war and military power, all realms in which they were far inferior to the European great powers.... They appealed to international law as the best means of regulating the behavious of nations, knowing well they had few other means of constraining Great Britain and
France. They knew from their reading of Vattle that in international law "strength or weakness....counts for nothing. A drawf is as much a man as a giant is...." ....Two centuries later, Americans and Europeans (and others) have traded places-and perspectives. This is partly because in those two hundred years, and especially in recent decades, the power equation has shifted dramatically: When the United States was weak, it practiced the strategies of indirection, the strategies of weakness.... Now [the Europeans] (and others) see the world through very different eyes. These very different points of view have naturally produced differing strategic judgements, differing assessments of threats and of the proper means of addressing them, different calculations of interest, and differing perspectives on the value and meanining of international law...." -Robert Kagan, Of Paradise and Power
International law, in other words, is to a great degree merely a means for those who do not for some reason have a great effect on world affairs to act in concert to constrain the more powerful for their own benefit.
Do you think France and its
corrupt President--who was being bribed by Saddam and seeking billions of dollars in contracts in Iraq once France convinced the U.S. to lift sanctions on Iraq (Germany-same story)--bashed the U.S. in the halls of the UN in the run-up to the Iraq War on "principle"?
France, along with Russia, would seem to have the most to lose from the OFP investigations. A permanent member of the Security Council and a U.S. "ally," it opposed the Iraq War.
Many French companies were contracted under the OFP, and many French names surfaced on al Mada's list of 270 recipients of oil allocations. Politicians and businessmen close to President Chirac were identified. -Friends of Saddam
And that is to say nothing of the domestic politics these "leaders" were pandering to. The President of France and Prime Minister of Germany used anti-American tirades in their re-election campaigns--and both got re-elected. Or the fact that France and Germany--leaders of the EU--threatened that EU and prospective EU nations could be barred from participation in the European Union if they sided with the U.S. in the Security Council. Or the fact that the French and Germany economies have had an average of 11% unemployment and their economies have been stagnant for almost a decade, to the point that France and Germany violated the very EU rules on deficit spending it had insisted on before to keep their economies affloat by subsidizing them. That was not a good long-term strategy though. Economic relations, bought and paid for in bribes, kickbacks, and other under-the-table deals, with the Saddam regime in Iraq though, was a more long-term strategy they sought to pursue.
And do you think the near dictator and dictator respectively of Russia and China opposed the Iraq War on "principle"? And Iran?
Hardly. All of these nations believe they deserve greater world power and all saw an unprecedented chance to take the U.S. down a peg. Take France and Germany for example.
"Last year, France was indulging its illusion that it could galvanize all the antiwar, anti-U.S. sentiment to make itself the great global Uncola to America's Coca-Cola — the new balancer to America. It would be a win-win for President Jacques Chirac. He would enhance his political stature at home by opposing America and make France the supreme power in Europe, marginalizing Britain.
A year later, France was not only unable to stop the war, but it paid a big price in Europe. "It turned out to be lose-lose for France," remarked Peter Schwartz, head of the Global Business Network. By going to such lengths to oppose the U.S., and by denouncing those Europeans who sided with America, France drove pro-U.S. Europeans, like Poland and Spain, deeper into the U.S. camp, noted Mr. Schwartz. This, in turn, gave Poland and Spain more backbone to resist German and French demands for greater control over E.U. affairs.
France was not quite the elephant it thought it was, and the winds of anti-Americanism couldn't carry it any farther than its real economic and military weight. Thud.
"What we have here are not friendships regained but lost illusions," says Josef Joffe,
editor of Germany's Die Zeit. "With the Bush administration politely asking the U.N. for help in Iraq, Gulliver now realizes that . . . the most important interests require legitimacy and cooperation, especially in Iraq. The French and Germans learned that by trying to make the giant stumble, they ended up splitting Europe. So now you have this teeth-gnashing effort at rapprochement.
It is a sobering up and a rethinking of power on both sides of the Atlantic — and no one is having fun doing it. . . . The Bush team has not really been converted to a more generous view of diplomacy, and the Europeans still have their fears and own agenda."
In short, gravity has moderated everyone's behavior, but big disagreements about how to order the world still lurk beneath this surface calm." New York Times
Are their actions really that difficult to comprehend in this larger context?
But anyway.
Rather than take Bin Laden from the Sudan, Clinton insisted we didn't have a strong enough case under "international law" to hold him. Rather than kill Bin Laden in Afghanistan in the 90s, Clinton used cruise missles because he didn't want to overly upset the "government"--aka the Taliban--of Afghanistan. That would disrupt "international peace and stability". That might "destabilize the region".
Yeah, about like a 747 will destabilize a skyscraper, right?
And now, rather than get Osama Bin Laden "dead or alive" as Bush said he would, the administration in 2005 called off an operation to do just that because they didn't want to cause Pakistan any grief.
"A secret military operation in early 2005 to capture senior members of Al Qaeda in Pakistan's tribal areas was aborted at the last minute after top Bush administration officials decided it was too risky and could jeopardize relations with Pakistan, according to intelligence and military officials.
The target was a meeting of Qaeda leaders that intelligence officials thought included Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden's top deputy and the man believed to run the terrorist group's operations. " New York Times
It doesn't get much clearer.
Perhaps we need better diplomacy, greater international cooperation, and the like. Indeed, I believe we do.
But the next time Ted Kennedy or John Kerry or Hillary Clinton or some whinny Frenchman complains about how mean the evil U.S. is and how we shouldn't do anything without the U.N.'s approval, we should ask oursevles: What price are we willing to pay to keep those whinny babies from crying?
And ask yourself, what would most benefit those who seek to replace or destroy us? You will notice, quite often, that handcuffing the U.S. to the U.N. and "multilateralism" is often the best way for others to undermine the U.S., and most often the course of action they "insist" we take. This is not coincidence.
Remember also of course that the war in Iraq has acted to a significant degree as a breeding and training ground for new and more terrorists. And a magnet for them.
The fact is there is never a zero-sum solution. More likely, we're damned if we do, damned if we don't. It's a balance. Finding that balance is the challenge before us. Our enemies know that as well, and they seek to push us in the direction which will benefit them most, while others do the same from other directions. So read up, think clearly and for yourself, and hope we get it right.
-The Analyst
