From the WSJ Opinion Archives
Vietnam's
Lesson: Win
"Muqtada al-Sadr, the firebrand anti-U.S. Shiite Muslim cleric, warned
the United States on Wednesday that Iraq would become another Vietnam-like conflict
if Washington did not transfer power to 'honest Iraqis,' " the Associated
Press reports from Baghdad.
So Sadr agrees with Ted Kennedy.
What is the "lesson of Vietnam" that we keep hearing about? For foreign foes like Sadr, and Saddam Hussein before him, it is that America can be beaten in any war by appealing to fickle public opinion. For domestic "dissidents" like Kennedy, it is that it is perfectly acceptable, even "patriotic," to oppose an American war effort even after the decision has been made to go to war. But the Washington Times points toward a different Vietnam lesson:
"Let the Iraqis kill [Sadr]," said retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney. "We should not kill him, but we may have to. He's trying to create an uprising. This is their Tet offensive. We're going to kill a lot of them just like we did at Tet."
As the late Bob Bartley noted in November, Tet was a U.S. victory that was misunderstood as a defeat:
After erosion of their position during 1967, the Communists threw all of their South Vietnam guerrilla forces into attacks in more than 100 cities across the length and breadth of the country. Most spectacularly, since it came before the eyes of the Saigon press corps, a 19-man sapper squad penetrated the U.S. Embassy compound. They failed to enter the chancery building, despite early reports, and the last of them was killed or repulsed after a six-hour battle.
General William Westmoreland appeared in the shattered compound to proclaim a great victory. His televised appearance came against a backdrop of destruction throughout the country, and the American elite decided to believe not the general but their own eyes. A widely cited Wall Street Journal editorial proclaimed that "the whole Vietnam effort may be doomed, it may be falling apart beneath our feet." Walter Cronkite turned against the war, editorializing on the need for negotiation. With this home-front reaction, Tet was the turning-point in the war, the anvil of Communist victory and American defeat.
Yet in fact, Westmoreland was right, subsequent analysts have uniformly concluded. The Communist offensive was decisively repulsed. There was no general uprising in favor of the North. The South Vietnamese army did not buckle, though operating at 50% strength because of imprudent holiday leaves. The indigenous Viet Cong were destroyed, leaving the rest of the war to be conducted by troops recruited in the North.
A lesson we would draw from Vietnam is that losing a war has costs that go far beyond the immediate defeat. Losing in Vietnam bred an excessive caution in foreign policy that led, among other things, to Jimmy Carter's impotent response to Iranian terrorism, Ronald Reagan's withdrawal from Lebanon after the Marine barracks bombing, George Bush's failure to finish the Gulf War, and Bill Clinton's retreat in Somalia and desultory pursuit of al Qaeda.
Sept. 11 was supposed to have changed all that, and it did--but not completely. In October 2002, after the resolution authorizing Iraq's liberation passed with strong bipartisan support, we proclaimed McGovernite isolationism dead. Obviously we were too optimistic. So this time let's be hortatory instead of prognosticative: For the good of the country, McGovernite isolationism must die. A decisive victory in the Iraqi "Tet," if it is widely understood as such, will deliver a crushing blow and help to liberate America from Vietnam's enfeebling legacy.
It's
a Quagmire--for Sadr
The New York Times' John Burns, who was briefly taken hostage by Sadr's forces
in Kufa, Iraq, files this report:
If Moktada al-Sadr has chosen a grand mosque in this Euphrates River town for a last stand against American troops, as many of his militiamen have claimed in recent days, he appears to be relying more on the will of God than anything like military discipline to protect him.
Many hundreds of militiamen in the black outfits of Mr. Sadr's Mahdi Army were visible on Tuesday on roads approaching the golden-domed mosque and inside the sprawling compound leading to the inner sanctuary. But they seemed unmarshaled, at least to the layman's eye--more milling about than militant. . . .
Some of the militiamen were in their 50's and 60's, but most were young, some no more than 12 or 13. Weapons training among them appeared virtually nonexistent; Kalashnikovs with loaded magazines and safety catches off were nonchalantly waved in the air.
It sounds as if those here who are shouting "quagmire" may soon end up with egg on their faces.
The Associated Press, meanwhile, reports that Polish troops in Karbala killed a top Sadr aide, Muntadhir al-Mussawi. Poland, of course, is part of what John Kerry calls the "fraudulent coalition."
Europe
Discovers Pre-emption
"With a new threat of terrorism coursing through Europe, intelligence and
police authorities say they are acting more aggressively, with greater emphasis
on pre-emptive action to roll up networks of Islamic militants whose members
may not have committed crimes, but who have the skills or ideological resolve
for violence," the New York Times reports.
Wow, pre-emptive action against terrorists. Wonder where they got that idea?
The March 11 attacks in Spain seem to have made more of an impression across the pond than the Sept. 11 attacks in America--even on the French:
The French had kept a group of Moroccan-born militants under surveillance for some time, but had no specific cause to arrest them when the police struck in dawn raids on Monday, seizing 13 men with suspected links to the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group.
A senior French official admitted as much on Tuesday, saying "There was no evidence they were preparing an imminent attack in France." The crucial factor was that they had traveled to Afghanistan, where they learned to use weapons and make explosives.
"When they come back, they have certain ideas and certainly a technical capacity for action," the French official said.
The new French counterterrorism motto, he said, is "Every time we discover a cell, we eliminate it as a pre-emptive measure."
It isn't clear if word has reached Berlin, though. "In the post-Madrid mobilization in Europe, Germany has been quiet." Worse than quiet, actually; Reuters reports a German judge has freed Mounir El Motassadeq, a Moroccan who was "the only man jailed over the September 11 attacks."
Motassadeq, who has acknowledged being trained by al Qaeda in Afghanistan, was convicted of conspiring to murder 3,000 people and sentenced to 15 years (!) in prison, but his conviction was overturned. The Kerry Doctrine in action.
Now Go Away
or I Shall Taunt You a Second Time!
"British and U.S. intelligence agencies and police foiled a plot to create
a chemical vapor bomb in Britain," the Associated Press reports. But there's
some question as to just how dangerous is the active ingredient in the prospective
bomb:
The U.S. television network ABC reported Monday that U.S. and British intelligence had discovered the plot. ABC suggested that osmium tetroxide would cause victims to choke to death.
However, Alistair Hay, professor of environmental toxicology at Leeds University, told the BBC that osmium tetroxide was "mildly irritant."
If Hay is right, these guys were planning a terror attack that wouldn't have been lethal, only annoying. They sound French.
Are
Muslims Adults?
Canada's National Post reports that a Jewish school in Montreal has been firebombed
in what police are calling a "hate crime":
The Ottawa Citizen is reporting that a "warning" note left outside the school says the attack was intended as retaliation for Israel's assassination last month of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, founder of the Hamas terrorist group.
Television news reports last night said the note warned: "Our goal was only to sound the alarm without causing deaths . . . but this is just a beginning. If your crimes continue in the Middle East, our attacks will continue."
This reminds us of former Enron adviser Paul Krugman. Back in October, as we noted, Krugman penned a column in which he blamed the Bush administration--specifically, "its war in Iraq and its unconditional support for Ariel Sharon"--for "the rising tide of anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism among Muslims." He was referring to Muslims in Malaysia and elsewhere in Southeast Asia, but you could apply this logic just as well to those in Canada and elsewhere. Applying Krugmanic logic, Sharon, who ordered the killing of the terrorist Yassin, is responsible for the Montreal firebombing.
Somehow, though, this way of thinking never seems to work in reverse. The Baltimore Sun reports on a kerfuffle under way in Annapolis, Maryland's capital, where a Republican state lawmaker, Donald Dwyer, "apparently used his state-provided computer to distribute the treatise titled 'Is Islam Really Peaceful?' Purportedly written by his eighth-grade nephew, it cites Islamic scripture to make a case that the religion is not peaceful."
Reactions were predictable. The local spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations called it "very, very alarming" that Dwyer would "send this hate out." A Democratic state senator complained to Dwyer that his message "perpetuates hateful stereotypes at a time when building bridges is necessary."
We haven't seen the message Dwyer sent, so we have no opinion about it. But in any case, mere words are far less offensive than a firebomb. How come when someone expresses an anti-Muslim opinion, liberals who delight in "understanding" our foes never blame it on Muslim terrorists for provoking it by killing innocent people? Quite the opposite, they explain away terrorism as being provoked by American foreign policy, Israel's self-defense, etc.
To the Krugmans of the world, Americans and Jews are responsible for their own actions as well as the reactions of Muslims, who in turn are responsible for nothing. This sort of "liberalism" condescends to Muslims rather than treating them as fully human.
America
Rules, Anti-Americanism Drools
In an Asia Times book review, writer John Parker offers a capsule analysis of
anti-Americanism that deserves to be widely quoted:
Anti-Americanism has ascended from its former status as the preoccupation of a relative handful of Jurassic Marxists, professional victims, Third World whiners, and Islamo-fascist troglodytes to the level of a major new global religion. Like any religion, it has its saints (which include the likes of Che Guevara and Ho Chi Minh), its martyrs (the Rosenbergs, the Guantanamo Bay detainees and Saddam Hussein's sons), its high priests (Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore and Abu Bakar Ba'asyir), and its desperately over-eager wanna-bes (eg, Asia Times Online's very own Pepe Escobar, whose viewpoint on any issue can be predicted with absolute accuracy by simply asking "what interpretation of this situation will put the United States in the worst light?").
Curiously, however, while the religion has a hell (America), and a devil (George W Bush), it lacks both a heaven (the collectivist pipe dream having been found wanting) and a god (since the anti-Americans consider themselves as having evolved beyond the need for a deity--save their Islamist faction, which wants to impose its religion forcibly on everyone else). Still, the anti-American cult provides its legions of drooling adherents with the crucial element of any faith: the illusion of meaning in an otherwise meaningless existence. That priceless psychological salve, in this case, is the comforting delusion that, no matter how hypocritical, backward, bigoted, ignorant, corrupt or cowardly the cult's followers might otherwise be, at least they are better than those awful Americans.
Stupidity Watch
This feature has been dormant for some time, but these two articles were just
too tempting to pass up. The first, by Keiko
Ohnuma of the Honolulu Advertiser, appears under the rubric "About
Women," and is mostly a rambling series of cavils about "family values."
This paragraph, however, reaches heights of idiocy:
Take the 9/11 terrorists: They thought they were defending their own family values against the corrupting influence of American materialism and imperialism. And it was to the great benefit of the people who controlled them to play to the desire to protect their own and buy their loved ones a seat in heaven through martyrdom.
Then there's a piece by one Josh Miller in the Daily Northwestern, a student newspaper at the Evanston, Ill., campus. Miller complains that young Americans don't vote in great enough numbers, and he thinks communist Cuba can teach us a thing or two about democracy:
In fall 2002 my friends and I were among the first Americans invited to witness Cubans vote for the National Assembly of People's Power. The assembly is the island's equivalent of the U.S. Senate.
While ballots featured only members of the Cuban Communist Party--and El Maximo [Fidel Castro] wasn't subjected to polling--I was inspired by something there. Cuban school children were guarding the ballot boxes, taking part in the process, learning experientially. . . .
Through linking elementary schools and neighborhood voting outlets, and allowing students to personally contribute to the election process we may be able to apply a remedy before the democracy-crippling disease arises. We can plant seeds of interest and incubate a sense of duty. Placing children at the polling stations might even motivate no-show parents to show.
In 2000 the Florida voting debacle--remember the hanging chads--prompted Fidel Castro to condescendingly offer the United States assistance in conducting future elections. The United States does not need the help of the bearded one in that department, but we could stand to learn a few things from his country's quasi-democratic example.
What is even quasidemocratic about a system in which people "vote" for preselected "candidates" and have no other option? And hasn't it occurred to Miller that low voter turnout--that is, people choosing not to vote--is a sign of freedom? There's a reason totalitarian societies always report turnout approaching 100%.
Great Orators of the Democratic Party
- "One man with courage makes a majority."--Andrew
Jackson
- "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."--Franklin
Roosevelt
- "The buck stops here."--Harry
Truman
- "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for
your country."--John
Kennedy
- "If the president can find time to throw out the first ball of the season, he can find the time to throw out the first efforts for real peace in the region, and I think it's long since overdue."--John Kerry
Not
Much Steel Here
John Kerry is criticizing President Bush over steel tariffs, the Associated
Press reports. Well, that's fine; we've criticized Bush over steel tariffs too.
We're against them. But Kerry is for them. Or not. It's another one of those
nuanced positions:
Democratic presidential front-runner John Kerry said Monday the White House should not have scrapped steep tariffs on foreign-made steel last year--but would not put them back in place if he is elected. . . .
Kerry, speaking to about 17 reporters from political battleground states on both sides of the matter, said he supported the tariffs because "under the circumstances, it was an important grabbing-air moment."
"I wouldn't re-impose them, but I would have let them play out the way they were promised," he said. "Once you put them in place, people have expectations. . . . And if you, all of a sudden, upset that, you're really wreaking havoc in the market."
This is a rare case in which Bush is vulnerable to the charges of being unprincipled and flip-flopping. Too bad Kerry just can't bring himself to take a clear position on one side or the other.
Risky
Business
"Teenage lesbian or bisexual girls are many times more likely to smoke
regularly than straight girls their age," reports NewScientist.com. "They
are the worst hit by tobacco among all groups of young people, according to
a new US study":
Almost 40 per cent of teenage lesbian or bisexual girls aged between 12 and 17 said they smoked weekly compared with just six per cent of heterosexual girls in an ongoing study of 16,000 adolescents. . . .
"We were surprised," says lead researcher, S Bryn Austin at Children's Hospital Boston, Massachusetts. "Antigay stigma and harassment, rejection from family and friends, and sometimes even physical violence can create a hostile environment for many young people coming to terms with their sexual orientation. This, combined with the tobacco industry's targeted marketing to lesbian and gay communities, is putting lesbian and bisexual girls in harm's way."
In this cloud of politically correct smoke, Austin misses the obvious explanation for the finding: Girls who experiment with sex are more likely also to experiment with other risky behavior such as smoking.
It
Takes One to Know One
"The body of a woman missing since 1990 was found stuffed inside a container
at a rental storage unit, and authorities charged her then-boyfriend with murder,"
the Associated Press reports from Syracuse, N.Y.:
George W. Geddes Jr. was ordered held without bail Monday in the death of Margaret Reome, 31. . . .
Last summer, local authorities learned that Geddes was renting the 5-foot-by-5-foot storage unit. But it wasn't until last month that they realized he had not reported it to federal officials as required by the terms of his probation, Sheriff Kevin Walsh said.
The FBI obtained a search warrant.
"I don't think there's anybody in law enforcement who would think a defendant would be that stupid to keep a dead body in a storage shed rented under his own name," District Attorney William Fitzpatrick said. "Luckily, people like this keep us in business."
OK, Geddes was pretty stupid--but how smart are the law-enforcement guys who took 14 years to figure this out?
Slow
Nukes
StrategyPage.com reports that America is slowing down its nuclear missiles.
The U.S. Air Force "is in the process of replacing the decades old solid
fuel rockets of its 500 Minuteman III missiles":
The last of the Minuteman III missiles will receive their new motors by 2008. It costs about $5.2 million to replace the rockets on each missile. The new rocket motors, which have to comply with EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) rules, will have a shorter range than the original motors.
If nuclear missiles have to comply with EPA regulations, what about the warheads?
Satan Just Isn't Up to the Job
"Devils Need a Leader"--headline, Raleigh (N.C.) News & Observer,
April 7
In
a Dress to Congress
"A candidate for the Texas House rejected calls to withdraw from the race
after photos of him in women's clothing began circulating," the Associated
Press reports from Fort Worth:
Sam Walls, 64, said he will not give in to "blackmail" from opponents who are trying to use "very old, personal information" to force him out of the race.
"Now my opponent is using the private information in an attempt to intimate that I am a homosexual, which I am not," Walls said in a statement.
Good for Sam Walls! There's no reason to think this will hurt his political future. Texans are very open-minded, so much so that the state already has a U.S. senator who routinely appears in public wearing women's clothing.
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Today on OpinionJournal:
- Review & Outlook: Only U.S. pressure can pry open the U.N. Oil for Food scandal.
- Claudia Rosett: Why won't Gadhafi let Fathi Eljahmi answer his phone?
- Nat Hentoff reflects on American music.
