VICTORY AT SEA
Re: The Washington Prowler’s Lincoln
Landings:
I love the grandeur of a presidential speech given from the deck
of a mighty aircraft carrier. It sounds like … victory.
— Samuel Keck
Indian Wells, CA
GUN PLAY
Re: David Hogberg’s No
Repeat of 1992:
I am happy that Mr. Hogberg is optimistic about President Bush’s
chances in 2004, but he failed to consider the one issue that has
the potential for the same gut-level, re-election-killing reaction
as torpedoed his dad’s re-election: Re-authorization of the “Brady
Act.”
Rumblings from the White House suggest that President Bush
wouldn’t be terribly concerned if the Brady Act were re-authorized.
If he signs any such legislation, I’m afraid that he will lose
enough folks who otherwise like him that he will be slinging hay in
Texas full-time come 2005.
— Paul Wescott
Anchorage, AK
WMD FINDINGS
Re: Wlady Pleszczynski’s WMD
Backlash:
There are many good points in this article. But toward the end,
Pleszczynski says, “Seizing on phantom WMD must give the left a
nice sense of gotcha! But it will leave it clueless to the real
reasons for the Iraq war…. …the U.S. is no longer willing to
put up with those who caused it grief beforehand and then regarded
the attacks of September 11 as their special victory.” He’s right
about September 11, but it is also true that WMDs were a part of
the real reason for war and remain a good reason to have gone to
war, even if we don’t find any here — though I think we will find
out more about Iraqi WMDs than we have.
We went to war because of Saddam’s established past patterns of
seeking WMDs and of defying and deceiving inspectors who
subsequently found WMDs and WMDs research especially thanks to
defectors, and because he was once again defying and deceiving
inspectors in violation of signed accords and UN mandates, not to
mention because of his established past pattern of brutality,
sadism, oppression, imperial ambition and expansionism,
warmongering, WMD use, etc. A repeat perp in many ways, Saddam was
a clear and growing threat. If Saddam could get away with that,
then so could any despotism. Really, all of that was enough.
We never argued that we were going to war premised — premised,
mind you — on the expectation of finding actual WMDs and WMDs
research on a large scale — much less, all set up and ready to
rumble, ready to attack the U.S. and other countries, in which case
we might have hesitated, or taken a somewhat lengthier approach to
the eliminating the danger. Now he is gone, and we are confronted
with one less set of malignant synergies arising from the
co-presence of various evil folks in the world. There is somewhat
less mass-murder-breeding swamp to drain. But drain it we must,
before it’s too late. We have no particular reason to think that,
once the historical window of opportunity is shut, it will open
again.
We couldn’t have kept our armed forces around Iraq forever
waiting for Saddam or Qusay or Uday to slip. Even just one year
would be a lot for us, the “hyperpower,” to handle. For Saddam and
sons it would have been a matter of holding out during the,
historically speaking, brief window of opportunity (a decade?) when
the world’s “hyperpower” has the power to rein in WMDs
proliferation without collateral mass horror. For technology keeps
marching on. We already knew what Saddam & sons were. We got
them before it was too late. Thanks to that action and the manner
in which we performed it, we can more effectively discourage
others.
Technology marches on. There is no sign of any abatement in the
foreseeable future of the general ongoing and, in some ways,
accelerating general development — in power, accessibility,
miniaturization, deadly synergies, etc. — of technologies
adaptable for mass destruction. In general, defensive security
measures will not suffice to meet offensive threats. The Left will
be in particularly weak position to argue against that point,
having opposed “Star Wars” defenses as a destabilizing pipe dream
for decades — and we’re not talking just about incoming missiles
any more. To the extent that technological development drives
geopolitical change, the human adventure has only begun. If we
can’t meet the challenge of reckless/ambitious despotisms seeking
or possessing WMDs, then what’s coming down the pike in the next
decades will destroy us if we survive that far.
— ForNow
New York City
There will be no political problems with the missing WMDs unless
our noble mission to democratize Iraq goes badly and the situation
gets ugly. If that happens, WMDs will return to center stage as an
issue of Words of Mass Deception about a lot of assumptions and
those politically lethal WMDs can be easily be found by a Nexus
search.
Invasion cheerleader Daniel Pipes already sees the hand writing
on the wall for democracy in Iraq. He is suggesting with
“trepidation” a “democratically inclined strong man” (a.k.a.
dictator) to keep a lid on the natives for us as we slip out the
back door. The WMD and the democracy rationale were great
pre-invasion deal closers for the terminally naive. But the
post-invasion reality is that previous attempts by the West at
assuming the white man’s missionary burdens have had a notoriously
bad ten-century track record.
— P.T. Garrett
PURE SILICON
Re: R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.’s Breakfast
at the Carlyle:
Re: Silicon Valley Genius Entrepreneurs: Tom Wolfe’s comments
about them apply to someone who would be hailed as one, had the
Cold War gone on for a few more years, although he was in the
supercomputer industry, whose roots are in the country’s heartland,
from Iowa, up through Illinois, Minnesota, and Wisconsin: Steve
Chen, designer of the Cray X-MP supercomputer and president of
Supercomputer Systems Inc., while it lasted.
— James Drake
DARK KNIGHT:
Re: “A Knight’s Tale in Wlady’s
Corner (scroll down to 4/22/03 entry):
I am astounded by Wlady Pleszczynski’s ode to Bobby Knight and
his paranoid delusion that Knight’s ouster at Indiana University
was due to “trumped up charges by the p.c. police”. Knight was, and
is, a bully and a thug. Now I share many of Knight’s expressed
values, and probably dislike many of the same people he does, but
that does not change the fact that he is a bully and a thug. He is
what he is.
I am only disappointed that it took so long for someone at
Indiana to develop the spine to fire him.
— Glen Hoffing
AMERICA FIRST AND LAST
Those who think 2004 will be a rerun of 1992 (“It’s
The Economic Growth, Stupid,” W. James Antle III, May 2) forget
one major fact: There is virtually no chance that a third-party
candidate will siphon votes from George W. Bush like Ross Perot did
to W.’s dad 11 years ago. The reason is simple. Look at the
third-party (or fourth-party, or whatever) candidates in the past
three election cycles. There was Patrick J. Buchanan, of “Israel’s
amen corner” fame; Perot, who claimed that the GOP was persecuting
him; and Ralph Nader, who, being of Lebanese descent, has made
Israel his sworn enemy.
All of these individuals have one thing in common: an abiding
hatred of Jews. After 9/11, that is the political kiss of death,
since both Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein are virulent
anti-Semites. Why side with the enemy during a presidential
election?
Back in 1944, the same thing occurred, as minor-party “America
First” candidates found themselves rubbing elbows with the
German-American Bund and other pro-Nazi groups. This, while our
boys were hitting the beach at Normandy and taking fire from
Hitler’s Wehrmacht.
It is telling that neither Buchanan nor Nader have announced;
Perot hasn’t been heard from in years. “American First” ranters
such as nationally-syndicated radio talk show host Chuck Harder and
essayist Joseph Sobran have found themselves on the frayed edge of
the political lunatic fringe.
The American polity, post-9/11, has relegated “America First,”
and its 21st-century reincarnation, to the dustbin of history. That
is as it should be. Our terrorist enemies know it; potential
third-party candidates are finding out.
— Daniel K. Weir
Atlanta, GA 30309
W. James Antle III replies:
Mr. Weir appears to be correct on two points: There is no credible
third-party challenger yet on the horizon with the ability to draw
right-of-center votes away from President Bush; 9/11 has increased
public support for an interventionist foreign policy.
But we shouldn’t underestimate the degree to which the election
result is in Bush’s own hands. Exit polls and other data from 1992
disagree about the extent of Ross Perot’s damage to the first
President Bush; I for one think it has been overstated. Pat
Buchanan barely dented Republican vote totals in 2000 and yet still
the election was painfully close. Bush has the advantage of
national defense and homeland security; these are much bigger
issues than they were in 1992. The remaining question is whether he
will neutralize any Democratic advantage on the economy before it
appears.
As for “America First,” this seems to be a slogan that will be
taken up by some quarters of the left. Howard Dean is already
warning us about what he sees as the inevitability of American
military decline, Dennis Kucinich is reprising George McGovern’s
“Come home, America” line and some in the Green Party are buzzing
about nominating Cynthia McKinney for president.
AWARD UPHELD
Re: Enemy Central’s Among
the Feather-Brained:
I’d like to point out a facet of the issue of anti-war
celebrities that I haven’t seen discussed:
There isn’t any reason to think that celebrities as a group know
any more or less than any other group of people about public
issues. Celebrities, however, have a microphone and an audience
which magnify any opinions the celebrities express, even if the
microphone and audience aren’t there because of any expectation
that they have anything meaningful to say about those issues. I
think this is why people with whom the celebrities disagree react
so severely to those opinions. The problem is made worse when the
celebrity then claims that his right to have an opinion is being
limited, that there is a “climate of fear,” etc. The fact is, these
people enjoy a much greater right to express their opinions than
most of the rest of us do.They should grow up and accept the fact
that not everyone agrees with them and that some people will point
that out.
In addition, celebrities are in a position to exploit public
issues to get attention. This is where one can single out the Dixie
Chicks for particular criticism. The Dixie Chicks made an anti-war,
anti-Bush statement in front of a European audience where it was
certain to play well. When their U.S. fans started complaining and
boycotting their CDs, the Dixie Chicks apologized and started
shedding tears. Now, the Dixie Chicks are a country music act; it
should not have taken a lot of insight to realize that many of
their fans are likely to disagree with an anti-war stance. They
should have thought about that fact before they decided to speak
out in public, not after. They succeeded only in making themselves
look greedy. The fact that their next attempt to further the
discussion was to undress for a magazine cover only confirms that
this is mostly about attention and publicity for them, not any real
concern about the war.
I submit that some issues are too important to be manipulated in
this way, just to get publicity and attention. Although the Dixie
Chicks certainly don’t deserve to receive death threats, as they
apparently have, they certainly do deserve a lot of criticism, and
your Enemy of the Week award.
— Charles Eldredge
