Sicking The Saddamites #4 - The Honorable Senator Kennedy
by James Kilbourne
As we await the results of the first free election in Iraqi history, Ted Kennedy has declared that our policies for the War on Terror are a complete failure and that we need to pull out of Iraq and admit this fact.
In general, there has been little public reaction to this statement.
It is important to keep certain facts in mind about the Bush Administration’s conduct of the War on Terror:
1) There has never been as competent a team implementing policy—from the President right on down to the foot soldier —as we have seen in Afghanistan and Iraq over the last three years.
2) This administration has tried very hard to present its reasons for and conduct of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in a fair and accurate manner.
3) In the history of American warfare, there has never been an administration as successful in achieving its goals as the current administration.
So why is it that the average American would find these three statements hard to believe and the average world citizen would find them almost incomprehensible? Why do the estimable Senator’s comments make headlines around the world?
After 9/11, George W. Bush realized that the world was suddenly a different place; there now was a movement determined at any cost to stop the development of any free and secular culture. The United States of America was clearly the fountainhead of what was now becoming a worldwide revolution towards freedom and individualism. America had become the target and needed to become more aggressive in defending itself. It could no longer expect its oceans to protect it from a rapidly shrinking world. Even bungling and inept individuals and cultures, with no understanding of the philosophical reasons why America was so technologically advanced, could cobble together the means to cause enormous devastation anywhere in the world, even in America itself. America could no longer afford NOT to know what individuals and nations that wished it ill were planning.
This understanding was followed by a series of actions:
1) The invasion of Afghanistan and the destruction of a government that was harboring the terrorists responsible for the 9/11 tragedy. (Compare the competence of this operation to the Russian invasion of Afghanistan a decade earlier.)
2) The shift in philosophy, started in June of 2002, whereby America would now align itself only with democratic nations and democratic causes rather than the “realpolitik” defense purely of American short-term political interests. This represented the understanding that long-range American interests are best advanced by a consistent defense of the democratic principle. (Its first implementation was Bush’s refusal to deal with a corrupt dictator—Arafat—and his insistence that a democratic Palestinian state must be a goal of future Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. His second term inaugural address was the culminating statement of this principle.)
3) The firmness of resolve of America to stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction, which has led to efforts to control Russian scientific alliances since communism’s collapse, the capitulation of Libya in its development of these weapons, and the exposure and cessation of the Pakistani underground WMD network.
4) The invasion and destruction of the Saddam Hussein government in Iraq. (False optimism and some tactical missteps slowed but did not stop Iraq’s movement towards democracy and a peaceful state.)
If someone had said to you on September 12, 2001, that the United States of America in less than four years would destroy two enemy governments, liberate tens of millions of people, provide an atmosphere in which real negotiations could be started for a process towards peace in the Middle East, enunciate a policy that more consistently is true to its democratic nature, and expose and destroy networks that were plotting its demise—all without ANY attack on its soil and at a cost in American lives that is less than one half of the numbers lost in the 9/11 tragedy—if anyone had told you that there would be democratic elections in Iraq in January of 2005—well, would you would have believed it?
In the annals of American political history, few people have been so consistently wrong about everything as has Ted Kennedy. He has never understood what moves America’s economy, nor the nature of the Cold War and how to end it. All the progress America has made since his election to the Senate in 1962 has been despite his efforts, not because of them.
When Ted Kennedy declares President Bush a failure, the President should chisel it in gold on a badge and wear it like the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.
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