The Ideologue

HumanEventsOnline ^ | Jan 25, 2007 | Patrick J. Buchanan

[NapkinUser]

Churchillian it was not. Yet the State of the Union seemed a success if Bush's purpose was to buy time from Congress to wait and see if his surge of U.S. forces into Iraq might yet succeed.

But when Bush started to describe the ideological war we are in, one began to understand why we are in the mess we are in.

"This war," said Bush, "is an ideological struggle. ... To prevail, we must remove the conditions that inspire blind hatred and drove 19 men to get onto airplanes and to come to kill us."

But the "conditions" that drove those 19 men "to come to kill us" is our dominance of their world, our authoritarian allies and Israel.

They were over here because we are over there.

If Bush is going to remove those "conditions," he is going to have to get us out of the Middle East. Is he prepared to do that? Of course not. Because Bush, believing the problem is not our pervasive presence but the lack of freedom in the Middle East, is waging his own ideological war to bring freedom in by force of arms, if necessary.

"What every terrorist fears most is human freedom -- societies where men and women make their own choices."

Very American. But the truth is terrorists do not fear free societies, they flourish in them. The suicide bombers of 9-11, Madrid and London all plotted their atrocities in free societies. From the Red Brigades, who murdered Italy's Aldo Mori, to the Baader-Meinhoff Gang, who tried to kill Al Haig, to the Basque ETA, the IRA and the Puerto Rican terrorists who tried to assassinate Harry Truman, free societies are where they do their most effective work.

Stalin's Russia and Nazi Germany had no trouble with terrorists.

"Free people are not drawn to violent and malignant ideologies," declared Bush. Oh? Explain, then, why 70 million Germans, under the most democratic government in their history, gave more than half their votes to Nazis and Communists in 1933? In every plebiscite he held, Hitler won a landslide. In the year of Anschluss and Munich, 1938, Hitler was Time's Man of the Year and far more popular than FDR, who lost 71 seats in the House.

During 2006, free Latin peoples brought to power anti-American Leftists Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua and Rafael Correa in Ecuador, and came close to electing their comrades Ollanta Humala in Peru and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in Mexico.

In the free elections Bush demanded in Egypt, Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq, the winners were the Muslim Brotherhood, Hezbollah, Hamas and Shia militants with ties to Iran.

If a referendum were held in the Middle East on the proposition of the U.S. military out and Israel gone, how does Bush think it would come out?

"So we advance our security interests by helping moderates, reformers and brave voices for democracy," said Bush. But how many of those "moderates" -- Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Morocco, Kuwait, the Gulf States -- are ruled "by brave voices for democracy"?

Our Islamist enemies would likely endorse unanimously a Bush call for free elections in all those countries, as elections could not but help advance to greater power, at the expense of our friends, those same Islamist enemies.

What is Bush doing? The America that won the Cold War said ideology be damned, we stand by our friends.

"The great question of our day is whether America will help men and women in the Middle East to build free societies," said Bush.

But if we bleed our country to give the men and women of the Middle East the freedom to choose the society they wish to live in, are we sure they will not choose a society where Sharia is law? In liberated Afghanistan, popular sentiment was behind beheading that Muslim who converted to Christianity.

What leads Bush to believe everyone wants to be like us? Is it not ideology?

To characterize "the totalitarian ideology" we confront, Bush quoted Osama bin Laden: "Death is better than living on this Earth with the unbelievers among us."

This is the true mark of the true believer. But did not the Spain of Isabella want the "unbelievers" removed from "among us"? Did not Elizabeth I feel the same about Catholics?

"Give me liberty or give me death!" said Patrick Henry of the Brits remaining in this country that Brits had founded. "Live free or die!" is the motto of the great state of New Hampshire.

This is the heart of the war we are in. Americans believe in freedom first. Millions of Muslims believe in Islam first -- submission to Allah. We decide for us. Do we also decide for them?

Perhaps the best advice we can give our Muslim friends in the Middle East is the hard advice Lord Byron gave the Greeks under the Islamic rule of Ottoman Turks:

Hereditary bondsmen! know ye not,

Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow?

[Thorin]

Buchanan is, of course, exactly right.

[Chi-townChief]

So does old Pat still have that stick up his butt?

[aruanan]

Pat has long since hit the flush button on his political and intellectual life.

[ClaireSolt]

Islamism is starting to look to me more like an adolescent cry for help by acting out than anything else.

[silverleaf]

Pat declares that if we "leave them (middle easterners) alone" and get out of their part of the world (presumably to exploit, enslave, and slaughter among themselves) "they" won't hate us. And oh by the way, let Israel "go gently into the good night"?

How utterly absurdly simplistic.

[patriot preacher]

Of course Buchanan is right! So was Hitler! It's all the Jews fault! And, of course, we capitalist, imperialists who do their bidding....


Gimme a BREAK. This thinking will destroy our country.

JDale

[gas0linealley]

And so are you.

[syriacus]

In June of 1950, Democratic President Truman announced that Americans were going to participate in a "police action" in Korea to fight "bandits."

Within 5 weeks, 3,000 Americans had died for Korean freedom

Within 6 months, 14,000 Americans had died for Korean freedom.

Within one year, 20,000+ Americans had died for Korean freedom.

Within 2+ years (when Truman stepped down) 30,000 Americans had died. That's ten times as many Americans as have died in Iraq.

Millions of South Koreans were saved from starvation and slavery under North Korea's dictator.

It's "cool to say we should avoid "foreign" entanglements, but it takes less time, nowdays, to get from the Middle East to the US than it took, in 1790, to get from Philadelphia to New York.

Americans in Iraq are getting good training in fighting terrorists and insurgents in cities. The more we learn about this type of fighting, the better.

[aruanan]

Islamism is starting to look to me more like an adolescent cry for help by acting out than anything else.

I know someone from my school who was a social worker the size of a linebacker. He was from Africa. He told me that when he was walking down the street here on the south side of Chicago and he saw a couple of adolescent males coming toward him down the block, he crossed to the other side of the street. He said that the adolescent male was the most dangerous of all because they lacked judgment but reacted on a moment's notice to anything they happened not to like. He also said they thought they were invulnerable.

Islamism is adolescent mentality. Its adherents think they're the most important thing in the world. They think there is nothing that they don't know or they think that there is nothing worth knowing outside of what they think. They think that people who don't think the way they think are, therefore, enemies because they oppose what they want and what they want is the only thing worth wanting. Think of Islamists as adolescents with weapons of mass destruction and then remember what my African friend said about urban adolescent males..

[syriacus]

Pat declares that if we "leave them (middle easterners) alone" and get out of their part of the world (presumably to exploit, enslave, and slaughter among themselves) "they" won't hate us.

Pat doesn't seem to realize that we no longer live in the 1790's.

A missile can travel to the US from anywhere in the world in less time, today, than an army could travel from Philadephia to New York in 1800.

It's a small world, after all.

[TSchmereL]

What is Bush doing? The America that won the Cold War said ideology be damned, we stand by our friends.

"The great question of our day is whether America will help men and women in the Middle East to build free societies," said Bush.

But if we bleed our country to give the men and women of the Middle East the freedom to choose the society they wish to live in, are we sure they will not choose a society where Sharia is law? In liberated Afghanistan, popular sentiment was behind beheading that Muslim who converted to Christianity.

What leads Bush to believe everyone wants to be like us? Is it not ideology?

I think Pat's focus on ideology is misplaced. His point is well-taken though that "if we bleed our country to give the men and women of the Middle East the freedom to choose the society they wish to live in, are we sure they will not choose a society where Sharia is law?"

[ArrogantBustard]

They were over here because we are over there.

No, Pat, they are not. They are over here, because they've already taken over, over there. They want the same thing Samuel Gompers wanted: "MORE".

Pat, since you're supposed to be Catholic, I've got one more word for you: "Lepanto".

[ClaireSolt]

If you want to read a fascinating book that fleshes this idea out with much research from many disciplines, read H. Bloom, the Lucifer principle. A Pakistani internet acquaintance told me the West has 80% of the wealth, so why doesn't the US Congress just vote to send money to the people of Pakistan, sort of like hitting up your dad for an allowance.

[aruanan]

sort of like hitting up your dad for an allowance.

The basic principle behind liberals, robbers, and children is the same: they are the center of the universe; their views about life, the universe, and everything are in a one to one correspondence with life, the universe, and everything. Therefore, anyone opposing them must be doing it out of insanity or ill-will.

Learning to control the output of one's actions in spite of the input of one's desires is the essence of learning to live a moral life. Those who aren't even aware of the difference are mostly under the age of six. Those who know but don't care are mostly hedonists, criminals, or liberals.

[Thorin]

>>>>>>Pat, since you're supposed to be Catholic, I've got one more word for you: "Lepanto".

And since you're supposed to be Catholic, I'll leave you with this thought: one result of the American invasion of Iraq is that up to half of all Iraqi Christians (mostly Chaldean Christians in communion with Rome) have been forced to flee the country, and elements of sharia law are now enshrined in the Iraqi constitution. Oh, and this: the war was denounced both by John Paul II and Benedict XVI. But I suppose that, to you, they are just pseudo-Catholics, like Buchanan.

Don John of Austria was fighting to defend Christendom from Moslem attacks, not to bring "democracy" to the Islamic world, where such foolishness will only empower the Islamists, as it has in Iraq.

[ArrogantBustard]

But I suppose that, to you, they are just pseudo-Catholics, like Buchanan.

You can 'suppose' anything you like. It's (still) a (more-or-less) free country. You're wrong of course, but that's your problem.

[Thorin]

Your attack on Buchanan is quite strange, given your tagline, since Buchanan wrote a book, "The Death of the West," arguing that the West is indeed aborting, contracepting, and buggering itself out of existence, and describing "Humanae Vitae" as prophetic. But because Buchanan agrees with the current and former Pope on Iraq, he's just a "supposed" Catholic.

[ArrogantBustard]

Your attack on Buchanan

Attack? Dude ... where's my dictionary? I disagreed with him. That's allowed in this (still, more or less) free country.

[Thorin]

Saying that Buchanan is "supposed" to be a Catholic qualifies as an attack on the sincerity of his religious beliefs in my book. That's what annoyed me, not disagreeing with him on Iraq.