Posted on 11/08/2004 9:37:29 AM PST by tpaine
The Antiwar Right Is Ready to Rumble
NY TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/07/weekinreview/07kirk.html? ex=1100877650&ei=1&en=1003a79efbe25be2
November 7, 2004 The Antiwar Right Is Ready to Rumble By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
ROUND 8 p.m. Tuesday, a gloomy mood was settling over the dozen conservative stalwarts gathered with martinis and glasses of red wine in an office in Arlington, Va., to watch the returns. Early exit polls showed President Bush trailing, and Richard Viguerie, dean of conservative direct mail, thought he knew who was to blame: the neoconservatives, the group associated with making the case for the invasion of Iraq.
"If he loses, they are going to have a bull's-eye on their back," Mr. Viguerie said.
Ronald Godwin, a top aide to Dr. Jerry Falwell, agreed. "I see a real battle for the Republican Party starting about Nov. 3," he said.
The euphoria of Mr. Bush's victory postponed the battle, but not for long. Now that Mr. Bush has secured re-election, some conservatives who say they held their tongues through the campaign season are speaking out against the neoconservatives, against the war and in favor of a speedy exit.
They argue that the war is a political liability to the Republican Party, but also that it runs counter to traditional conservatives' disdain for altruist interventions to make far-off parts of the world safe for American-style democracy. Their growing outspokenness recalls the dynamics of American politics before Vietnam, when Democrats first became identified as doves and Republicans hawks, suggesting to some the complicated political pressures facing the foreign policy of the second Bush administration.
"Clearly, the war in Iraq was a drag on votes, and it is threatening to the Bush coalition," said Grover Norquist president of Americans for Tax Reform and a strategist close to the administration who had not spoken up about the war's political costs before. He contended that the war reduced Mr. Bush's majority by 6 percentage points to 51 percent of the vote. Mr. Bush now has two years to "solve Iraq" to protect Republican candidates at the midterm elections, he said. His suggestions: withdrawing United States troops to safe citadels within Iraq or by "handing Falluja over to the Iraqis and saying, 'It's your headache.' "
On Thursday, Paul Weyrich, founder of the Heritage Foundation and chairman of the Free Congress Foundation, issued a call to conservatives for a serious debate about the administration's foreign policy. "The consequences of the neocons' adventure in Iraq are now all too clear," he said. "America is stuck in a guerrilla war with no end in sight. Our military is stretched too thin to respond to other threats. And our real enemies, nonstate organizations such as Al Qaeda, are benefiting from the Arab and Islamic backlash against our occupation of an Islamic country."
Proponents of the war, however, argued that Mr. Bush would not have won re-election without it because Americans did not want to change the commander in chief. "Bush's foreign policy decisions seem to have been exactly why he won this huge victory that he did," said the neoconservative David Frum, a former Bush speechwriter and a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He argued that candidates who opposed the war - Gov. Howard Dean the most, and Senator John Kerry to a lesser extent - suffered the biggest losses. IF the Democrats have silenced some of their loudest complaints about the war, however, some on the right said they were turning up the volume on their own previously muted objections.
"A lot of the antiwar conservatives had to hold their tongue during the campaign because the No. 1 goal was to get Bush re-elected," said Stephen Moore, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and an important conservative fund-raiser.
Even on the eve of the election, William F. Buckley Jr., founder of the National Review, was decorously edging closer to full-throated opposition to the war. "At War With What or Whom?'' was the headline of his column on Oct. 19.
A few months ago, Donald Devine, a vice chairman of the American Conservative Union, publicly apologized to Mr. Bush after it was reported that in disgust at the war he had failed to applaud a presidential speech. But in a column shortly before the election, Mr. Devine wrote that conservatives should vote for Mr. Bush precisely because he was likely to withdraw from Iraq sooner than Senator Kerry would.
Arguing that the president had dropped hints like a quickly retracted statement in a television interview about the impossibility of winning a war against terror, Mr. Devine argued that "the president's maddening repetition of slogans" about the war was the "only politically possible tactic for a candidate who has already made up his mind to leave at the earliest reasonable moment." He added: "The neoconservatives will be devastated."
But Trent Duffy, a White House spokesman, dismissed those theories, pointing to the president's statement in his post-election news conference that troops would stay in Iraq as long as needed: "Our commanders will have that which they need to complete their missions," the president said.
IMHO, (and those of several Army officers I know) our strategey is NOT to get Iraq into a stable government right away, although that is one of the long term goals. Our goal is to send a message to the world that if you want to fight the U.S., Iraq is the place to go. We are letting our well trained and well equipped young men and women destroy the terrorists far away from US soil.
Osama would have just loved to plan and carry out a terrorist attack against the US but the truth is that he doesn't have the money or men to do it.
It sends another clear message as well, we don't care what the UN and EU think, we WILL go wherever necessary and do whatever necessary to secure our nation's safety. YOU could be next.
Bottom line: anyone who disagrees that we MUST be doing what we are doing in Iraq doesn't understand why we're waging war there.
The Iraq War is about much more than "democracy" and it's certainly not about anything "altruistic" or the spreading of "Americanism"....or anything like that.
Iraq is about removing a hostile regime that was terrorist-friendly, and rooting out and exterminating radical Islamic extremists who want nothing more than to kill as many Americans as possible -- and as many other "infidels" along the way -- and who will stop at NOTHING to achieve their goals. That's why President Bush labeled them as one of the "Axis of Evil". He did it and he damn well meant it.
Not enough people fully understand this -- and if they had access to just a fraction of the intelligence our President does, they would only partially comprehend.
As much as people on both sides don't want to admit it, President Bush and his team of advisors are VISIONARIES who fully understand the long-term implications of failing to act when absolutely necessary.
Many would rather we have reactionaries like clinton -- who, through his disatrous leadership failures, is directly to blame for the extent of our enemies' abilities to gather and strengthen.
They can paint it any color they want, but all of the above is absolute FACT.
As far as I'm concerned, let the New York Times scream about the fanatical "religious right" for the next four years to their heart's content if it makes them feel better. They're only talking to the Hollyweirdos and the upper-west side Manhattanites in the bagel shops who already agree with every word they're reading.
Fair enough. File in the FReeper thesaurus with "beeber" and "stuned".
Unity: "grat chowder for the MSM"
I expect elections in Iraq by January 2005 and relative calm by January 2006. I expect us to still have troops on the ground in both Afghanistan and Iraq (and Qatar, Yemen, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Uzbekistan) by the time the mid-terms roll around.
And it wouldn't surprise me if we aren't fully engaged in the next country that harbors terrorists or comprises the axis of evil.
I'm getting a pretty good feel for politics, but I don't think the American voting population is going to let themselves be hoodwinked into thinking this should all be over in time for the next election.
How about it, tpaine?
Cutie, do you have family serving over there, or are they retired?
I'm an Air Force brat, myself. Spent a dozen years moving from hither to yon.
Perhaps Norquist wants more fundraisers and events with members of CAIR and other terrorist-supporting groups?
They are still in morning or on a binder. I noticed how the unAmerican nonConservative has started carrying justine raimondo's anti-American BS. He/she's finally found an American distributor...there goes Pravda's monopoly on hatred towards America.
That is not "neo-conservatism" --whatever that means. It is only wisdom.
The whole rationale of the Ostend Manifesto, which the United States Government repudiated more than 150 years ago.
Old idea, knocked down and left behind. Robber-chieftain reasoning.
Watch what Bush does. That is what great powers do. We will defeat the insurgents coming from outside the country, then allow the Iraqis to determine their own future.
The Assyrians invented that policy, and they haven't lived down the reputation it earned them even after 28 centuries. They stank then and were reviled by humanity, and their memory still stinks. The fall of Nineveh in 612 BC is still one of the beacon events of human history.
>>>"My guess is that he'll set up permanent military installations along the Irani border, far from the Iraqi civilian population, and he'll let the Iraqis run their own country after the election in January."
This would be great. But he needs to get it done before mid-term elections. If we're still Falluja-tating then, it will be "quagmire" time for the elections. In fact, the timing is more like 1 year.
I'm all for partitioning into 3 pieces and then doing the base deployment in remote Iraqi territory.
Just partition, declare victory, withdraw to remote bases, and if things get out of whack, go in and fertilize and water every 5 years, if needed.
There are more problems than just Iraq.
Hoppy
Ten seconds ago you were comfortable with transporting entire populations against their will, out of your own discretion, for your own convenience.
Now you won't even admit that the other fellow might like to enjoy a right to maintain his boundaries and his "comfortable" arrangements, for his own convenience.
You're a little inconsistent in the application of a principle.
Oh, wait -- you don't have a principle. I forgot, you're the great robber-chief who would lead us abroad to go a-briganding for blood and plunder.
Well, that's already been done. And anyway, it's not in our scoping document, which see.
Hmmmmmmmm.......
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