Hoover Institute Fellow and ecnomist, Thomas Sowell says Iraq is in a way like Vietnam, we’re winning the war over there but it’s the media war in the US that we’re losing. Weekly Standard contributing editor and American Enterprise Institute Fellow, David Gelernter, offers some suggestions for the President in his upcoming State of the Union speech. Then Dinesh D’Souza offers up ideas for why the President’s message about the successes in Iraq and Afghanistan aren’t getting through to the left. Read and discuss.
Sowell:
Only after Congress cut off financial support for South Vietnam, while the North Vietnamese continued to get support from the Communist bloc, did South Vietnam fall. Since then, even the Communist conquerors have admitted that they did not win on the battlefield, but in the American media and in the American political arena, surrounded by an atmosphere created by a defeatist media. The Maliki government is politically dependent on one of the very Baghdad militias that needs to be disarmed. We can pressure and warn Maliki all we want, but his real choice will be whether he can survive — either politically or personally — without militia support. Our choice may become whether we are prepared to sacrifice more American lives in order to prop up the Maliki government or whether we are prepared to sacrifice the Maliki government in order to restore law and order in Iraq. That government is a product of our “nation-building” under the banner of a “democracy” for which Iraq may not have been ready.
Gelernter on what the President should say in his SOTU:
“We must fight this war the best and smartest way we can. But realism is a two-way street. So now let me tell you why I am optimistic and why I know we will win; and then let me show you the big picture.
“If the fight to topple the tyrant had dragged on for years, I might be pessimistic today. If Saddam had launched poison gas at our troops and killed thousands, that would have been a disaster. If the tyrant’s foul sons had escaped to rally loyalist opposition, that would have been a serious blow. If Saddam himself had escaped to haunt the world like an evil spirit–if the eminent murderer Abu Musab al Zarqawi were still alive and free–then I might be pessimistic. If the Iraqi people had failed their two largest tests, that would have been terrible–but the election worked beautifully; the trial of Saddam Hussein was managed well under difficult circumstances. If (on the other hand) an outburst of violence had marred or derailed the election, if the trial or execution of Saddam had led to the large-scale violence so many people predicted, I might be pessimistic today.
“But I am not. Many important things have gone wrong. Those that have gone right are even more important.
…Of course some people argue that the war itself was a mistake; that all we can hope for today is to minimize our losses and get out fast. You know their reasons. Let me give you mine for believing that we were right to go into Iraq, righter than we ever knew.
“If we hadn’t, Saddam would still be writing checks to subsidize Palestinian terror against Israel; Israel would still be shadowed by Iraqi Scuds. But maybe those are not our concerns. Breakthroughs in Lebanon and Libya would never have happened; probably we would never have traced a worldwide black market in nuclear know-how to Abdul Qadeer Khan in Pakistan. Those are American concerns. Today we might face two Irans, not one–two America-hating tyrant regimes with their weapons programs heated to max-boil. Those are American concerns. Above all, how many 9/11s did we avert by showing that we would hit back and hit hard, and stand and fight for as long as it takes? Terrorists understand bullets, not baloney. U.N. resolutions don’t impress them. Did we encourage 9/11 by standing down and backing off during much of the 1990s? We’ll never know for sure. But a great nation must act on its best judgment, not hang back and dither, when its safety and the world’s are at stake.
“Now let me show you the big picture in Iraq. This war against terror and tyrants is a war over nothing less than life and death–a war between the champions of life and the party of death. Let me explain.
“First, there is no basic difference between a tyrant like Saddam and a terrorist like bin Laden or Zarqawi. Terrorists are would-be tyrants who hope to rule the world and destroy every trace of freedom. A tyrant is a terrorist in office. Tyrants rule by terror, and maintain their own stable of in-house terrorists called the secret police.
“But our enemies believe in death and say so plainly. Almost 30 years ago, Shiite fanatics gathered in Tehran to scream hatred at this nation; they weren’t content with ‘down with America,’ they screamed ‘death to America’ and meant it. The secular tyrant Saddam Hussein tortured and slaughtered his enemies and their little children. His terrorist friends believe in the same doctrine, ‘murder thy enemy.’ The random killing of men, women, and children inspires their supporters to dance in the streets. Fanatic Muslim clerics preach murder in their holy places. And on 9/11, al Qaeda accomplished what even Hitler never did: the mass murder of American civilians.
“These proud champions of death kill innocent people all over the world, and their own people at home; they have even discovered new reasons to kill themselves. Suicide murderers are in a rush to reach heaven, which they picture as a discount whorehouse. If that’s not sufficiently depraved, behold the ghoulish spectacle of a mother celebrating the death of her own (terrorist) child–a brand new hero by dint of the misery he has inflicted on other mothers and other children. Theirs is the party of death indeed.
“We understand our mission. The champions of life must defeat the champions of death. We must and we will.”
Then part of the Q & A with NRO with Dinesh D’Souza:
But if America loses the Iraq war we are less likely to lose it over there in Baghdad and more likely to lose it over here in the corridors of Congress. Michael Moore’s radical ideology — the insurgents are the Minutemen, they are the freedom fighters, and they will prevail! — has now come to center stage, where it is guiding the actions of the Democratic leadership. Look how the so-called centrist Democrats are caving in one by one to the Left. A huge enemy at home has emerged that seems determined to stop Bush’s war on terror, not because they like Bin Laden or Saddam, but because they hate and fear Bush more. It is Bush and his conservative allies, not Bin Laden and his radical allies, who threaten the Left’s most cherished values. And now suddenly the Democrats, as a group, find it in their interest to inflict a horrendous foreign-policy defeat on Bush and thus ensure that they walk into the White House in 2008.
My point is entirely secular: Why did the guys who did it, do it? Surely five years after 9/11, it’s reasonable to ask this question. And both the Right and the Left have been operating under illusions. The radical Muslims are against modernity and science and democracy. The radical Muslims are upset because of colonialism and the Crusades. It’s all nonsense. That’s not what the leading thinkers of radical Islam say. And Bin Laden’s own views are quite different. In his Letter to America, issued shortly after 9/11, he said that America is the fount of global atheism and it is imposing its morally depraved values on the world. So Muslims must rise up in defensive jihad against America because their religion and their values are under attack. This aspect of Bin Laden’s critique has been totally ignored, and it’s one that resonates with a lot of traditional Muslims and traditional people around the world. …I don’t think “America” is to blame. Muslims in Indonesia and Egypt and Pakistan don’t see “America,” they see the face of American popular culture that is projected by our television and movies and music. They see the dimension of America that in their view corrupts the innocence of children, and undermines the family, and promotes homosexuality as a normal way of life. In fact, this is the America of the cultural Left. What the Left considers “liberating,” much of the world considers a scandalous assault on modesty and decency.
