Posted on 02/18/2005 8:31:17 AM PST by CHARLITE
It is my guess that most left-wing politicians and media people have become parents, or at the very least have friends or colleagues who have gone through the conception-gestation-childbirth experience. But you'd never know it from the way they've reacted to the multiple births that the Bush administration has been midwife to – in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Palestinian Authority, Saudi Arabia and, soon, Lebanon.
Don't they remember the process of making a baby – the wondering if or when their actions would yield the desired result, the anxiety about what that result would be, the anticipation, the hope and, ultimately, the not knowing?
And if they've remembered, shouldn't they be the first to recognize the arduousness of that process in their political commentary about the nascent democracy of Iraq and cite the words of Isaiah (66:8): "Is a land born in one day? Is a nation brought forth at once?"
Conception
The conception of a child, which was once considered an easy process, has changed significantly. Today, an entire generation of women in their 30s and 40s, who were taught by the "feminist revolution" of the '60s and '70s to scorn procreation and opt for jobs are now spending untold thousands of dollars on reproductive technologies to get pregnant, and carrying around sonogram pictures of their embryos, which they call their "babies."
The same can be said of the once "easy" conception of our past foreign policies. Simply appease tyrannical regimes, overlook their human rights abuses, rationalize their terrorist tactics, and go along to get along – never mind that everything they stood for was antithetical and dangerous to everything we stood for.
All that changed on September 11, 2001. But it should have changed decades earlier and certainly in the 1990s, when al-Qaida was relentless in attacking America: in the World Trade Center bombing of 1993 in which six people died; in the Khobar Towers bombing of 1996 (where our 58th Fighter Squadron was housed) that killed 19 Americans in the line of duty; in the bombing of U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Tanzania in 1998, which left 258 people dead and over 5,000 injured; in the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000, which murdered 17 American sailors.
But during that time, not one of the people in power in the Senate or House and especially in the Oval Office, and no prominent voice in the media, seemed to have any conception of the way to deal with America's sworn – and very virulent – enemies.
Uniformly, they appeased, overlooked and rationalized the threats the Islamofascists posed and either took impotent action or no action at all. In so doing, they emboldened our enemies to plow jet planes into our buildings and snuff out nearly 3,000 innocent lives.
Until, that is, President Bush conceived of a better way, just as the doctors of so many women conceived of a better way to deal with their patients' infertility and childlessness. The president's vision was so simple, so logical, and so infused with clarity and determination that it shocked the snapshot people, who pride themselves on the little picture while utterly failing to see the big one.
The big picture, of course, was that appeasement – in effect, capitulation – would never satisfy our enemies, that the thirst of largely feudal Middle Eastern states to overthrow America could never be slaked by the ineffectual responses of the past.
For decades, Iraq was ruled by a psychopathic tyrant who subjugated his people, indulged in mass murder, provided rape rooms for his henchmen, and accumulated the kinds of weapons of mass destruction capable of destroying the world.
By any measure, his behavior was "sick" – but no "healer" dared suggest a cure. Not the United Nations, which is charged with such a mandate but, we now know, collaborated with the Saddam Hussein vis-a-vis the Oil-for-Food scandal. Not the European community, which we now know was "on the take." And, sadly, not the United States, which sought "containment" over action.
Enter President Bush. "Either you're for us or you're for the terrorists," he announced to a grieving nation after 9/11. Americans applauded his words, and even leftists stood up – for about a minute.
But in truth, the leftists reviled the president's message, which flew in the face of their most ardent beliefs:
Those who attack America are "victims" of poverty and hopelessness (never mind that the 19 fanatics who attacked us were, for the most part, college educated and multilingual).
Capitalist societies are inherently evil and therefore deserving of assault.
All crimes should be dealt with in the courts (which they've tried to stack with liberal judges) and never on the battlefield. This was the platform that Sen. John Kerry ran on, waxing eloquent in his defense of the indefensible. But his opponent, the less-mellifluous President Bush, had a better conception: Sane "victims" don't kill to get their way, a capitalist society empowers, and war criminals (who cloak themselves in unidentifiable camouflage, target innocent civilians and engage in public beheadings) deserve military justice.
Obviously, the public opted for the president's message.
Gestation
But carrying a military strategy forth, just like carrying a baby, is a minefield of unknowns. In spite of the best generals, intelligence and military personnel, war offers none of its combatants the gift of clairvoyance – just as the best obstetricians and midwives, sonograms and amniocenteses, and even a mother's perfect health, do not guarantee prospective parents that their child will be born healthy.
Gestation is a long and strenuous process, fraught with unanticipated land mines. Why does a healthy mother-to-be have such uncontrolled morning sickness that she has to be treated with intravenous therapy, thereby derailing her plans to work at her job until her eighth month and forcing her to create entirely new priorities? Why does another healthy woman develop life-threatening toxemia that compels her doctor to deliver her baby before the due date?
Similarly, why does a superb military like that of the U.S., which is fully engaged in the process of gestation (i.e., carrying a country on its way to the birth of democracy) encounter unanticipated glitches – or disasters – along the way?
Why? Because that is the inherent and historical nature of gestation! The lengthy process that goes into any great creation – be it a child or a democracy, a magnificent cathedral or a soaring symphony – is always arduous and painful and punctuated by unanticipated problems.
Birth
The "moment of truth" for people who create awe-inspiring creations always involves the finished product – the delivery. I think it's safe to say that if you ask any woman – rich or poor, young or old, Caucasian or of-color, the mother of one or the mother of 10 – to describe giving birth, she would say it was the most significant moment of her life.
And that wouldn't be because of the conception of her baby or the gestation period (both of which were amazing enough) but because she has done the impossible! She has delivered a baby that began as a single egg and a single sperm and developed into a human being, who hears and sees and has a perfectly beating heart. Things may go downhill from there (as they sometimes do), but that moment remains indelible.
And if things do go downhill in the postpartum period, what do mothers and fathers do? Run away from the problem? Cede the baby over to an unreliable caretaker? Suggest that the very idea of having the baby was a grave mistake and should be – after the fact – abandoned?
To conservatives, these options are unthinkable.
But to liberals, an "exit strategy" is precisely what they suggest, to their everlasting shame. That's right – abandon the "baby" (the still embryonic country of Iraq) and to hell with what we've been through. This is the "strategy" of those who care less about their country and less about the powerful beauty and strength of democracy than they do about their own poll numbers and chances to regain power.
When it comes to the birth of Iraq as a democratic country – and the hoped-for proliferation of democracy throughout the Mideast – its chief architect and midwife, President George W. Bush, is in sync with those mothers and fathers who appreciate that the entire conception-gestation-birth process is imperfect and unpredictable.
But the president has been guided by the belief that bringing a life into the world – be it a baby or a democracy – is the last best promise of our civilization and the only hope that our species will go on and get better.
And that it's all worth it!
Joan Swirsky is a New York-based journalist and author who can be reached at,
let's just pray that we haven't given birth to another shiite theocracy, or worse, another taliban.
if this great nation building experiment works, it could be very good for the middle east.
It's just as perplexing how anyone who's ever given birth to a baby could possibly consider abortion as a viable option to birth, but there ya have it.
To sum up, the left doesn't think. The ones that do just ignore facts they don't like.
"Snapshot people" - love that term. Never heard it before; if it is Joan's creation, we should continue to use it. What a great definition!
Thoroughly enjoyed this. Thanks for posting it.
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.