Posted on 03/24/2003 7:27:47 AM PST by CoolGuyVic
When the shooting starts
March 24, 2003
BY ROBERT NOVAK SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
On the day after President Bush delivered his ultimatum, Patrick J. Buchanan stopped debating the war. The former presidential candidate and longtime adversary of the Bushes wrote that ''patriotism commands that when American soldiers face death in the battle, the American people unite behind them.'' On that very day, the country's foremost conservative publication listed Buchanan among ''leading figures in the anti-war movement [who] call themselves 'conservatives' '' but hate their country and want it to lose the war.
To my astonishment, I was among them. David Frum, a Washington journalist and White House speechwriter early in this Bush administration, put Buchanan and me on the top of the dishonor roll in ''Unpatriotic Conservatives: A War Against America,'' the cover story in the current edition of National Review.
We are accused of advocating ''a fearful policy of ignoring threats and appeasing enemies.'' Concluding, he writes of us: ''[T]hey are thinking about defeat, and wishing for it, and they will take pleasure if it should happen. They began by hating the neo-conservatives. They came to hate their party and this president. They have finished by hating their country.''
That demonstrably is not true of Pat Buchanan, and it is certainly not true of me. Anybody who makes a living by dispensing strong comment should be inured to attack, even when the accusations are totally false. During the nearly 40 years that I have been privileged to write this column, I have not subjected readers to my personal controversies. Now, however, I feel constrained to identify myself as a Korean War-vintage Army officer (non-combat) who has always supported our troops and prayed for their success during many wars. This war is no exception. Dealing with statements about me even so calumnious as Frum's might seem petty in time of war. But broader issues are at stake. Frum represents a body of conservative opinion that wants to delegitimize criticism from the right of policy that has led to war against Iraq.
Anti-war activity over the years has come mostly from the left. Those were not conservatives who shut down Times Square on Thursday. Senate Democratic Leader Thomas Daschle went over the line last Monday when he blamed potential American deaths on Bush's failed diplomacy, but he had regrouped by week's end to promise support of ''our troops and our commander-in-chief.''
Like Buchanan, Daschle ended up following the old American custom of supporting the war once the shooting starts. Frum, on the other hand, chose that moment to begin shooting at ''paleo-conservatives.'' He brackets me with his selected paleos--people whom I have never met or read and whose anti-Semitic and white supremacist views I abhor.
Frum cannot find any such statements ever uttered by me. Nor can he find anything I ever have said to indicate hatred for George W. Bush, much less my country. His article cites four quotations from my columns, one reporting that congressional sources predicted the CIA would be unable to find Osama bin Laden, and the other three criticizing an overly close identification of U.S. policy with Israel (especially the Ariel Sharon government). Implicitly, that is unacceptable criticism from a conservative.
''[E]ven Robert Taft and Charles Lindbergh ceased accommodating Axis aggression after Pearl Harbor,'' Frum writes. The implication: After 9/11, conservatives should have refrained from debating the Iraq strategy or questioning Israeli policy.
Nevertheless, Frum's mention of Lindbergh recalls the Lone Eagle's unhappy experience. Gulled by Hitler into regarding the Nazi thugs as saviors of Western civilization, Lindbergh was goaded by Franklin D. Roosevelt into resigning his colonel's commission in the Army Air Corps Reserve. Lindbergh sought active duty after Pearl Harbor but was blocked by a vindictive President Roosevelt. He managed to fly secret combat missions in the Pacific, however illegally, as a civilian. A newly naturalized American, Frum might ponder how Lindbergh handled himself once the shooting started.
Exactly
Yeah, AFTER penning his "J'Accuse" screed.
And thank you for outing yourself.
Pat was extensively Fisked on this site and others.
Are all anti war right wingers anti semites? Are all anti American? Is every argument they make motivated out of a secret hatred of Jews and wish to destroy this nation? That seems to be the argument from the "neocons" (a term used to sweepingly I admit).
A lot of them are. The rest merely lie down with dogs, and then wonder why they have fleas.
A lot of them are. The rest merely lie down with dogs, and then wonder why they have fleas.
Well- I guess that satisfies you. You will excuse me if it doesn't satisfy me.
Novak, in contrast to Frum and many of the others in this controversy, is an adult with decades of experience of actual political life. Whatever one thinks of his positions, they ought to be taken seriously, not tossed into a pot with a variety of dreamers and dogmatists.
The paleo/neo controversy is a squabble between commentators, ideologues and real or wannabe intellectuals. But a lot of Republicans and conservatives don't fit into either category. Novak, John McLaughlin, and some of the Bush I team had real qualms about our current policies, but they certainly aren't paleocons. Whether they're right or wrong, they didn't form their opinions on the basis of magazine or Internet articles, but on the basis of their own experience in politics over the years.
In every controversy there are the more extreme views that appeal to abstract thinkers, and the more mixed or moderate or balanced views of those with experience in the field. Those views may still be wrong. They may be too timid. But they're worth considering sometimes.
Links:
I'm not aware that anyone has called the neo-cons traitors. Or said that "we're only in this war to make the Elders of Zion rich." Those are extreme distortions. For heaven's sake, look up "treason" in the dictionary or the Constitution.
Some critics may have said that the neo-cons allowed their sympathies with Israel or Zionism or Likud to shape their views on the war. That may or may not be true, and it may or may not be an important factor, but it's natural that one's views on one issue will affect one's view on other issues. It's charged against Arabic specialists and former Ambassadors to Saudi Arabia that their sympathies have affected their attitude towards the Middle East, so it's certainly possible that sympathies with Sharon might affect one's views on other questions affecting the region and lead one to make decisions that are less than optimal.
And Frum himself accuses those who disagree with him of hoping for an Iraqi victory -- vicious behavior indeed that goes far beyond anything Novak has said in this quarrel.
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