paul
Team Owner
Cal Thomas
April 9, 2003
BELFAST, Northern Ireland - There was something comical about the
"anti-war" protesters who gathered here for the abbreviated Bush-Blair
summit meeting. They were opposing a war that is nearly over. They
demonized the victors - who are fighting in a moral cause - and not the
losers, who fight to preserve an immoral rule. These protesters' silence
during the deposed (and possibly dead) Saddam Hussein's three decades of
murder and mayhem makes them irrelevant.
In toting up the winners and losers of this war, the top loser after Saddam
Hussein and his regime must be the political left. From Hollywood's Martin
Sheen and Michael Moore to European "leaders," the United Nations and aging
peaceniks and their illegitimate progeny, the left has suffered a stunning
defeat. These losers were wrong from the beginning because their view of
humanity and of good and evil is flawed. Evil must be opposed, sometimes by
force. As freed Iraqis begin to testify to the horror and degradation
imposed on them by Saddam Hussein, the left will be hard pressed to explain
why they were again on the wrong side of history. Their credibility is on a
par with the Iraqi information minister who claimed that no coalition tanks
had entered Baghdad at a time when the tanks could be seen and heard.
Other losers include the Chinese, Russian and French governments, each of
which supplied more arms to Saddam Hussein than any other nation. According
to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (cited in Michael
Gove's April 8 column in the London Times), between 1973 and 2002 Russia
provided 57 percent of Saddam's arms imports, France 13 percent and China
12 percent. The United States supplied just 1 percent at most and Britain
less than that. War critics are wrong when they claim that the United
States and Britain are primarily responsible for Saddam's weaponry. No
wonder the French, Russians and Chinese opposed coalition efforts. They
didn't want their complicity and duplicity discovered.
Some in the American and especially British media were losers because they
regularly painted a doomsday scenario - from their predictions of a
Vietnam-like quagmire to questioning the wisdom of every military move.
ABC's Peter Jennings was especially guilty of extreme negativity about
coalition policies and progress, but he was no worse than the entire BBC,
which appeared to be in need of antidepressants, to say nothing of a shot
of truth serum.
The notion that free nations can and should do nothing about oppressed
people was a big loser. At a joint news conference with Prime Minister Tony
Blair, President Bush said "free nations have a responsibility to confront
terrorism (and) promote human rights across the world." Call this the Jimmy
Carter doctrine, but with muscle.
The winners in this conflict are many, starting with the people of Iraq,
who have an opportunity (if they will seize it) not only to claim freedom
for themselves but also their posterity and to serve as an example to the
region, as they once did in ancient times.
President Bush endured the most personal invective to emerge triumphant. At
the Hillsborough Castle news conference the president said, "There is a
question in Europe about whether I mean what I say. Saddam Hussein now
knows I mean what I say." So does the rest of the world.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, along
with the commander of the coalition forces, Gen. Tommy Franks, are also
winners. They ignored criticism that their plan was flawed, that there were
not enough troops committed to the task and that casualty rates would be
unacceptably high. None of this proved true.
All of the clergy, academics and commentators who predicted America would
lose the war of public opinion and that this "adventure " would produce "a
thousand Bin Ladens" are also wrong. Why should it not produce a thousand,
or millions, of Winston Churchills and people who want freedom from
religious and political dictators?
History has been on the side of freedom, the side President Bush is on. If
he is able to expand these freedoms in the Middle East and in Northern
Ireland, this president (so reviled by European eunuchs) will be the
biggest winner of all.
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/calthom...t20030409.shtml
April 9, 2003
BELFAST, Northern Ireland - There was something comical about the
"anti-war" protesters who gathered here for the abbreviated Bush-Blair
summit meeting. They were opposing a war that is nearly over. They
demonized the victors - who are fighting in a moral cause - and not the
losers, who fight to preserve an immoral rule. These protesters' silence
during the deposed (and possibly dead) Saddam Hussein's three decades of
murder and mayhem makes them irrelevant.
In toting up the winners and losers of this war, the top loser after Saddam
Hussein and his regime must be the political left. From Hollywood's Martin
Sheen and Michael Moore to European "leaders," the United Nations and aging
peaceniks and their illegitimate progeny, the left has suffered a stunning
defeat. These losers were wrong from the beginning because their view of
humanity and of good and evil is flawed. Evil must be opposed, sometimes by
force. As freed Iraqis begin to testify to the horror and degradation
imposed on them by Saddam Hussein, the left will be hard pressed to explain
why they were again on the wrong side of history. Their credibility is on a
par with the Iraqi information minister who claimed that no coalition tanks
had entered Baghdad at a time when the tanks could be seen and heard.
Other losers include the Chinese, Russian and French governments, each of
which supplied more arms to Saddam Hussein than any other nation. According
to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (cited in Michael
Gove's April 8 column in the London Times), between 1973 and 2002 Russia
provided 57 percent of Saddam's arms imports, France 13 percent and China
12 percent. The United States supplied just 1 percent at most and Britain
less than that. War critics are wrong when they claim that the United
States and Britain are primarily responsible for Saddam's weaponry. No
wonder the French, Russians and Chinese opposed coalition efforts. They
didn't want their complicity and duplicity discovered.
Some in the American and especially British media were losers because they
regularly painted a doomsday scenario - from their predictions of a
Vietnam-like quagmire to questioning the wisdom of every military move.
ABC's Peter Jennings was especially guilty of extreme negativity about
coalition policies and progress, but he was no worse than the entire BBC,
which appeared to be in need of antidepressants, to say nothing of a shot
of truth serum.
The notion that free nations can and should do nothing about oppressed
people was a big loser. At a joint news conference with Prime Minister Tony
Blair, President Bush said "free nations have a responsibility to confront
terrorism (and) promote human rights across the world." Call this the Jimmy
Carter doctrine, but with muscle.
The winners in this conflict are many, starting with the people of Iraq,
who have an opportunity (if they will seize it) not only to claim freedom
for themselves but also their posterity and to serve as an example to the
region, as they once did in ancient times.
President Bush endured the most personal invective to emerge triumphant. At
the Hillsborough Castle news conference the president said, "There is a
question in Europe about whether I mean what I say. Saddam Hussein now
knows I mean what I say." So does the rest of the world.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, along
with the commander of the coalition forces, Gen. Tommy Franks, are also
winners. They ignored criticism that their plan was flawed, that there were
not enough troops committed to the task and that casualty rates would be
unacceptably high. None of this proved true.
All of the clergy, academics and commentators who predicted America would
lose the war of public opinion and that this "adventure " would produce "a
thousand Bin Ladens" are also wrong. Why should it not produce a thousand,
or millions, of Winston Churchills and people who want freedom from
religious and political dictators?
History has been on the side of freedom, the side President Bush is on. If
he is able to expand these freedoms in the Middle East and in Northern
Ireland, this president (so reviled by European eunuchs) will be the
biggest winner of all.
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/calthom...t20030409.shtml