From the WSJ Opinion Archives
The
Politics of War
This morning's Senate vote authorizing President Bush to wage war on Saddam
Hussein's dictatorship reveals much about how American politics has changed
since Sept. 11. Simply put, Democrats have recognized that McGovern-style isolationism
is utterly without broad political appeal. The Senate voted 77-23
in favor of the resolution,
with a solid majority of Democrats (29 of 50) voting "yes." (Joining
the 21 dissenting Dems were liberal Republican Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island
and erstwhile nominal Republican Jim Jeffords of Vermont.)
Contrast this with the slender 52-47 vote by which the Senate approved the 1991 Gulf War resolution. Republicans were virtually as solidly united then as now, with only two dissenters (Iowa's Chuck Grassley and Oregon's Mark Hatfield). But only 10 Democrats voted in favor. By our count, 63 current members of the Senate voted on the Gulf War resolution either in the Senate or the House. Here's how they break down in terms of their votes in 1991 and 2002:
- 34 voted "yes" both times, including five Democrats and 29 Republicans. (Two of the Republicans, Alabama's Richard Shelby and Colorado's Ben Nighthorse Campbell, were Democrats in 1991).
- 15 Democrats voted "no" both times.
- Only two senators who voted for the Gulf War cast "no" votes this morning: Jeffords and Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who chairs the Intelligence Committee. (Graham's objection appears to have been that the resolution didn't go far enough; the Orlando Sentinel notes that he "had tried unsuccessfully to broaden the resolution to allow Bush to attack terrorist groups such as Hezbollah.")
- 12 of today's senators--11 Democrats and one Republican (Grassley) voted "no" in 1991 and "yes" in 2002.
Here's an even more striking statistic. Of the 13 Democratic senators who face the voters Nov. 5, only four--Illinois's Dick Durbin, Michigan's Carl Levin, Minnesota's Paul Wellstone and Rhode Island's Jack Reed--voted against the resolution. Of those four, only Wellstone faces a serious challenge. Among the other nine, six were in the House or Senate in 1991, and all of them voted against the Gulf War. In addition, every senator whose state was hit in the Sept. 11 attack--including New York's Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton--voted "yes."
This is all the more remarkable given that in 1991 many of today's peacenicks' objections didn't apply. The first President Bush already had a broad international coalition, and no one could argue liberating Kuwait was "pre-emptive."
The House approved the resolution yesterday afternoon by a vote of 296-133, with a majority of Democrats (126-81) voting "no." It's not surprising that isolationist sentiment would be greater in the House, where lawmakers answer to narrower constituencies and generally have safe seats.
Say
What?
"War Resolution Hands Bush Narrow Opening for Peace"--headline, USA
Today editorial, Oct. 11
The
Nobel Appeasement Prize
One-eighth of a cheer for the Norwegian Nobel Committee, which greeted us this
morning with a new punchline: Jimmy Carter won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.
A press release says the committee is honoring the former president "for
his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts,
to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development."
Back in May, columnist Jonah Goldberg called Carter (borrowing a line from "The Simpsons") "history's greatest monster":
While the first President Bush was trying to orchestrate an international coalition to remove Saddam Hussein from Kuwait, Carter wrote a letter to the U.N. Security Council asking its members to stymie Bush's efforts.
As the "human rights president," Carter noted that Yugoslavia's Marshall Tito was also "a man who believes in human rights." Carter saluted the dictator as "a great and courageous leader" who "has led his people and protected their freedom almost for the last 40 years." He publicly told Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, "Our goals are the same. . . . We believe in enhancing human rights. We believe that we should enhance, as independent nations, the freedom of our own people." He told the Stalinist first secretary of Communist Poland, Edward Gierek, "Our concept of human rights is preserved in Poland."
Since Carter has left office, he's been even more of a voluptuary of despots and dictators. He told Haitian dictator Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras he was "ashamed of what my country has done to your country." He's praised the mass-murdering leaders of Syria and Ethiopia. He endorsed Yasser Arafat's sham election and grumbled about the legitimate vote that ousted Sandanista Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua.
And, I learned from a devastating critique by my National Review colleague Jay Nordlinger, Carter even volunteered to be Arafat's speechwriter and go-fer, crafting palatable messages for Arafat's Western audiences and convincing the Saudis to continue funding Arafat after the Palestinians sided with Iraq against the United States.
Arafat won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1994.
It's probably an exaggeration to call Carter a "monster"; he seems a well-intentioned naïf, and he has done some worthwhile work for Habitat for Humanity. But his record as president illustrates the folly of seeking peace through niceness. He lectured Americans on the foolishness of their "inordinate fear of communism," and the Soviets invaded Afghanistan. He tried to appease the mullahs in Iran, and they answered him by holding dozens of Americans hostage, releasing them the moment Ronald Reagan was inaugurated. Reagan, in fact, would have been a worthier nominee for a peace prize; the world was far more peaceful after his eight years in office than after Carter's four.
The head of the Nobel Committee, Gunnar Berge, says he and his colleagues meant to send a message about current affairs: "With the position Carter has taken . . . [the award] can and must also be seen as criticism of the line the current U.S. administration has taken on Iraq," Reuters quotes him as saying. (The Associated Press notes that some of Berge's fellow committeemen have distanced themselves from his view.) But sometimes you have to fight a war in order to establish peace. With Saddam out of power, Iraq will be a far more peaceful nation, and the Iraqi people will be liberated from decades of misery and repression. The Nobel Committee disgraces itself when it rewards Jimmy Carter for his moral preening while its chairman denounces George W. Bush for taking a stand that will actually promote peace.
Weldon
Rumproast Dissents
The Weekly Standard's Jonathan Last has an amusing column about the incoherence
of the "antiwar" left:
At yesterday's "Prominent Citizens Oppose War with Iraq" press conference, a large placard sat next to the panelists at the front of the room that read: "UN Inspections--Not U.S. War." A little free marketing advice: "Make Love, Not War" was a lot catchier. . . .
The religious left, in the person of Linda Fuller, of Habitat for Humanity, asked, "Can you imagine the difference if we voted, as a nation, to pray for Osama bin Laden?" Fuller then recounted a story about her son. Evidently, when he was a young boy there was another kid in the neighborhood who always bullied him. Confronted with what to do about this bully, Fuller convinced her son to invite him to his birthday party. The bully came to the party, and afterwards, the two were fast friends. Paul Wolfowitz, take note.
The Chicago Tribune reports things are so bad that a protest rally in Berkeley, of all places, drew a mere 200 people, "a far cry from the tumultuous anti-war rallies of the Vietnam era."
Then again, the "Not in Our Name" petition continues to draw signatures from prominent Americans, including Neville Chamberlain, Sweet Daddy, Just A Slut, Weldon M. Rumproast, George I Like Throwing Bombs On Poor People Bush and Jose Arturo Jiminez, a self-described "intelectual."
That's
the Way the Ball Bounces
The New York Times reports from Phoenix, "a favorite destination for Iraqis
newly arrived in the United States," that refugees there are enthusiastic
about regime change. And little wonder, given what they experienced in their
homelands:
[Jabir] Algarawi said as a 14-year-old schoolboy in Basra, he accidentally bounced a ball against a wall, causing a picture of Mr. Hussein to fall and break. He was arrested, he said, then stripped and tortured for three days by government agents who insisted he knocked the picture down on purpose.
[Ali] Alseed said his brother, Alia, joined an opposition group only to be captured by government troops and executed in 1997.
Abdallah Abadeh, 39, a calligrapher who objected to painting propaganda posters for the military, said he was sentenced to 12 years in prison for quitting the army. After serving 18 months, he said he was released on the promise he return to military service, but he fled the country instead.
If the Jimmy Carters and Weldon Rumproasts of the world have their way, Iraqis will continue to suffer such brutality. "Peace," indeed.
A
Dynamite Story
"The French defense minister said Friday investigators found traces of
TNT on the French oil tanker that exploded in what authorities believe was a
terrorist attack," the Associated Press reports from Al Mukalla, Yemen.
Jimmy Carter won a peace prize named after the inventor of TNT in 2002.
Allies
We Don't Need
It's certainly good to have friends, but some allies aren't worth the cost. Avigdor
Haskelkorn makes the point in a Los Angeles Times op-ed piece on the 1991 Gulf
War:
Hafez Assad, then Syria's president, put so many conditions on his joining the coalition that the Syrian contingent went virtually unused. In the single instance that it engaged in a military operation, Syrian artillery intentionally overshot its assigned targets.
Nevertheless, for this gallant effort Assad was paid $2 billion by the Saudis, which he promptly used to buy Scud missiles and two missile factories from North Korea.
If Syrian Scuds ever hit U.S. regional targets or Israeli cities, it will be thanks to the coalition warfare model of the Gulf War.
Islamists
Gain in Pakistan
It's hard to find much to cheer about in Pakistan's elections. "A coalition
of six fundamentalist religious parties running on vehemently anti-American
platforms appeared headed for their strongest showing ever in the first vote
for a parliament since 1993, winning as many as 30 seats and making them the
third or fourth largest party in the assembly," the New York Times reports:
The hard-line parties, known as the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal, or United Action Front, also appeared to be on their way to winning the largest number of seats in the strategic North-West Province bordering Afghanistan, where Al Qaeda members are believed to be hiding.
The Web site of Jamaat-e-Islami, a radical Islamist group, cheers on the MMA coalition: "JI Ameer Qazi Hussain Ahmad has called upon the people to reject political parties who supported the US campaign of killing the innocent people of Afghanistan and cast vote for the MMA to foil the West conspiracies." The good news, though it's also more bad news, is that Pakistan's military dictator, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, isn't ceding any real power to the elected lawmakers.
We've heard of politicians shooting themselves in the foot, but one parliamentary candidate shot himself in the hand--literally. The Associated Press reports from Peshawar that Khurshid Khan was "upset" that the Pakistan Peoples Party Parliamentarians, or PPPP, failed to field a candidate in Peshawar. (If such a candidate had been elected, the local press would have to learn to stutter to give his party affiliation and home region: PPPP-Peshawar.) "After the local officials decided not to back his candidacy, Khan chose to run as an independent. He said that by shooting himself in the hand he was showing PPPP leaders with his blood that he was still with them."
We
Get Results
As we urged
yesterday, Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott is distancing himself from
an event honoring Harry Belafonte, who made racist
remarks about Colin Powell. Lott tells CNSNews.com he won't attend Africare
Bishop John T. Walker Memorial Dinner Oct. 24. The Africare
Web page, however, still lists Lott as a "national honorary patron,"
along with Majority Leader Tom Daschle.
You
Don't Say--I
"War, Economy Key Election Issues"--headline, Associated Press, Oct. 11
Mistaken
Identity
It turns out a punk-rock band did get booed in California after its lead singer
shouted obscenities about President Bush. The Weekly Standard's Larry Miller
says he's confirmed the story he told in an article earlier this week is true--but
the band in question is Blink-182, not the Buzzcocks. Miller apologizes profusely
to the Buzzcocks for the error, even offering to buy them two rounds of drinks.
Tom
Friedman Driving School
The
New York Times' Thomas Friedman compares President Bush's approach to "a
game of chicken between two drivers barreling head on at one another":
If you are one of the drivers, the best way to win is, before the race even starts, to take out a screwdriver and very visibly unscrew your steering wheel and throw it out the window. The message to the other driver is: "Hey, I'd love to chicken out and get out of your way, but I just threw out my steering wheel--so unless you want to crash head on, you better get out of the way."
Friedman remarks that "it's O.K. to throw out your steering wheel as long as you remember you're driving without one." All we can say is, the next time we go out drinking with Tom Friedman, he's not going to be the designated driver.
This
Just In
From yesterday's Miami Herald:
A man accused of threatening to blow up the White House and a Florida power plant was sentenced Thursday to six months of house arrest and five years' probation.
Safraz Jehaludi, 21, of Miramar, agreed in August to plead guilty to one count of anonymously sending the FBI e-mail messages containing the threats, which he never carried out.
Why did the reporter wait until the end of the second paragraph to tell us the attack on the White House was "never carried out"? We were worried sick thinking it might have been!
Stupidity Watch
The "Opinions Council" of the Daily
Vidette, the student newspaper at Illinois State University, is worried
about American unilateralism. "[President] Bush threatens preemptive military
strikes, and none of his typical allies are behind him," the council opines.
"In fact, even Cuba has criticized this policy."
Water
Torture--II
Yesterday we
noted reader Alan Ogletree's calculation of the number of drops of water
in the ocean. It appears Ogletree's source underestimated the number of gallons
of water in the world's oceans by six orders of magnitude: According to the
U.S. Navy, there are actually 361.2 quintillion gallons of ocean water, not
362 trillion. That would put the number of drops at some 22.2 septillion, not
22 quintillion. We regret the error.
You
Don't Say--II
"California Teachers Here to Stay, Study Shows"--headline, Associated
Press, Oct. 10
You
Don't Say--III
"Killers Often Undone by Their Own Mistakes"--headline, Associated
Press, Oct. 11
Beat
Reporter
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel columnist Eugene Kane pays tribute to Charlie Young
Jr., "a local handyman killed by a mob of young people during a neighborhood
beating that went horribly wrong." Which raises the question: What would
Kane consider a successful neighborhood beating?
Nut
Falls From Tree, Hits Earth First
Another "tree sitter" has died in California. "A man with the
environmental activist group Earth First! has died after a fall of more than
50 feet from a redwood tree, raising concerns about the dangers of tree sits,
often used to stop logging operations," the Associated Press reports. The
man's name hasn't been released, but the AP reports he "went by the forest
name 'Naya.' " An Earth First! spokesman tells the wire service: "Santa
Cruz Earth First! is deeply saddened by this tragic event, we never like to
lose an activist. This was a young man in his first tree-sit."
"The county coroner's office had not determined the cause of death," the AP adds. Here's our theory: gravity.
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Today on OpinionJournal:
- Thomas McInerney: Winning in Iraq won't quite be a cakewalk.
- Daniel Henninger: Medical research falls deeper into bureaucracy.
- Peggy Noonan: Everything's changing, so expect stasis on Election Day.
- John Fund: Did Montana's Democrats exploit antigay prejudice?
- Gabriel Schoenfeld: Nobel laureate Jimmy Carter is an excruciatingly trite thinker.
And on the Taste page:
- Review & Outlook: Foggy Bottom shrugs as Riyadh crushes religious freedom.
- Tony & Tacky: Macy's and Snoop Doggy Dogg.
- Tunku Varadarajan: We need a Nobel Prize in Evil.
- Mark Lasswell: Churchill and anthrax? Mike Davis, the doubt-inducing social critic, is at it again.
- Brendan Miniter: War is hell. But is invading Iraq a sin?
And don't miss "WSJ Editorial Board With Stuart Varney," tonight at 9 EDT and PDT on CNBC.
