Bush's Thousand Days

The Hundred Days is indelibly associated with Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the Thousand Days with John F. Kennedy. But as of this week, a thousand days remain of President Bush's last term -- days filled with ominous preparations for and dark rumors of a preventive war against Iran.

The issue of preventive war as a presidential prerogative is hardly new. In February 1848 Rep. Abraham Lincoln explained his opposition to the Mexican War: "Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose -- and you allow him to make war at pleasure [emphasis added]. . . . If, today, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, 'I see no probability of the British invading us'; but he will say to you, 'Be silent; I see it, if you don't.' "

This is precisely how George W. Bush sees his presidential prerogative: Be silent; I see it, if you don't . However, both Presidents Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower, veterans of the First World War, explicitly ruled out preventive war against Joseph Stalin's attempt to dominate Europe. And in the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962, President Kennedy, himself a hero of the Second World War, rejected the recommendations of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for a preventive strike against the Soviet Union in Cuba.

I seem to remember both Eisenhower and Kennedy authorizing the bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. Had Kennedy succeeded then, the missile crisis might never have happened.

Israel preempted Sadaam's nuclear program, no disaster resulted.

Reagan bombed Libya, Bush invaded Afghan and Iraq, and one result was Quaddafi abandoned his nuclear program.

Reagan invaded Grenada. Schlesinger sure put his historical knowledge on "selective".

"Neither the United States of America nor the world community of
nations can tolerate deliberate deception and offensive threats on the
part of any nation, large or small. We no longer live in a world where
only the actual firing of weapons represents a sufficient challenge to
a nation's security to constitute maximum peril.

My fellow citizens, let no one doubt that this is a difficult and
dangerous effort on which we have set out. No one can foresee
precisely what course it will take or what costs or casualties will be
incurred. Many months of sacrifice and self-discipline lie ahead --
months in which both our patience and our will will be tested, months
in which many threats and denunciations will keep us aware of our
dangers. But the greatest danger of all would be to do nothing.

The path we have chosen for the present is full of hazards, as all
paths are; but it is the one most consistent with our character and
courage as a nation and our commitments around the world. The cost of
freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one
path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender or
submission.

Our goal is not the victory of might, but the vindication of right;
not peace at the expense of freedom, but both peace and freedom, here
in this hemisphere, and, we hope, around the world. God willing, that
goal will be achieved."

---- John F. Kennedy, Oct. 22, 1962

Schlesinger can shove it. We're already at war with facist Islamicists, and have been since '93 when Bill Clinton started his eight years of being a pansy when it comes to fighting terrorism.

WE began fighting the war in October of 2001. I couldn't care less what Arthur "thinks". He's a liberal with a typewriter and a publisher, nothing more.

Keep fighting the libs and the terrorists, G.W. I don't always agree with your policies and your methods, but I know you wanna wipe 'em out. Your counterparts in the body politic want to pretend like this is a negotiable game...and they'll follow Neville Chamberlain until the enemy kills 'em.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.