Posted on 02/01/2003 4:39:22 AM PST by knighthawk
WASHINGTON - 'There are days," said U.S. President Bush on Tuesday night, "when our fellow citizens do not hear news about the war on terror. [But] there's never a day when I do not learn of another threat, or receive reports of operations in progress or give an order in this global war against a scattered network of killers."
It was an intriguing little passage in his State of the Union address, for it told his critics they don't know what they're talking about, but also presented careful listeners with a tiny, deft mea culpa.
The attack on critics is plain enough; because no al-Qaeda goon has been vaporized for a month or two, reflexive Bush-bashers assume the dimwit's attention has wandered.
More interesting the hinted acknowledgement of widespread concern that he is preoccupied (with Iraq) and neglectful of the wider war on terror. Mr. Bush perhaps understands that he has been too little of a war leader recently.
It is not enough that the cause of war be just; the public cannot be expected to analyze it carefully and come together to the right conclusion. The President must make the case cogently, persuasively and, most of all, unceasingly. If he does not, the majority's distaste for extreme violence on a vast scale far away, will reassert itself. War is hell and sane people shy away from it if no one gives them reasons to steel their resolve.
It is a lamentable characteristic of the Bush administration that it repeatedly allows momentum to be lost. This White House can be so brilliantly effective in carrying hearts and minds with it when it makes the effort. But again and again it falls into extended periods of lassitude. This has been the case since September when Mr. Bush told the United Nations it must choose either to accept its responsibilities or subside into irrelevance. Back then, Mr. Bush was as forceful and effective as anyone could wish. He sent a thrill of fear rippling through the General Assembly as he instructed it to shape up or get brushed aside.
But then he allowed the Lilliputians to tie him down, and the prospect of a swift and decisive end to Saddam Hussein's globe-threatening tyranny receded into the misty future. The necessary surge toward war was squandered. Now Europe is in anti-American ferment -- the astonishing article by eight European leaders supporting Mr. Bush in The Wall Street Journal yesterday, may begin to stop the rot -- and at home, Mr. Bush has done so little by way of preparing the nation for battle that his support has slipped, and slipped again. So much so that mainstream newspapers can get away with treating Stalinist peace marches, such as the one on the Washington Mall a fortnight ago, as though they were genuine expressions of popular unrest.
The principled and pragmatic case for overthrowing Saddam Hussein and neutralizing Iraq as a source of terrorist weapons of mass destruction is overwhelming. William Safire summarized some of the evidence neatly in The New York Times on Monday. Saddam is the terrorists' bedfellow and they deserve to be sent together into the Big Sleep.
The fact the President has not been stumping the country making the case for action suggests insouciance. Mr. Bush is right about Iraq and knows he is right -- it's time to topple Saddam -- but he has not bothered to keep telling the world why.
The State of the Union address was only the first shot in what will be an intense campaign to marshall public support support for military action this spring. The joint op-ed article by America's staunchest allies yesterday was the second.
Such signs of movement are welcome. The next big one will be Secretary of State Colin Powell's presentation to the United Nations next week, when he will pound the evidence beyond hope of extraction into the concrete cranium of the Security Council. Shortly afterward, the weapons inspectorate will reiterate that Iraq is flouting Resolution 1441 and so violating the terms of the ceasefire it secured 12 years ago. Then ...
Kaboom! That's the sound of French anti-war intransigence imploding. Paris will calculate that Washington and other nations including perfidious Albion are going to war, and France had better go too or miss out on the spoils.
And what of all the crocodile anxiety about the need to finish the war before the hot weather? It will prove as inconsequential as the brutal Afghan winter. By the time it's summer in Iraq, there'll be an Abrams battle tank on every street corner in Baghdad.
Hugo Gurdon is editor-in-chief of The Hill.
The media rants and raves and he gives them lots of rope to hang themselves, which they are wont to do.
Then.....SHAAZZAAAMMM.........the President addresses the nation and all their dirty work is down the drain, AGAIN.
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.