Fear and War

Well before 9/11 I came across Democrats and liberals who hated George W. Bush. The war in Iraq has reinforced that hatred and caused it to become virulent. There are two pre-war factors that seem to be most consistently offered as the reason and one factor that is apparent but never mentioned.

Factor one: Bush favors the Christian right-wing view toward abortion and morality.

Factor two: Bush is anti-environment.

Factor three (the silent factor): Bush is not Clinton.

The silent factor is the true prime mover. The Democrats put up a new age hero and the rest of us discovered he had feet of clay. Some conservatives never liked Clinton and were spiteful in their criticism. I, for one, despised the man and can point out the individual events in his presidency that helped create the vulnerability that led to 9/11/01. Democrats were shocked by this reaction and, in true liberal fashion, responded with negativity and virulence.

All of it is based on emotion. None of it is based on logic. No matter what man became president following Clinton, except for his party-mandated successor, he would have been as castigated as Bush has been.

So, pro-business becomes anti-environment and anti-partial birth abortion becomes totally pro-life right-wing conservatism. Clinton was pilloried by the conservatives, so Bush must be pilloried by the liberals. Tit for tat.

Then, along came the war. First, Afghanistan was targeted. Few could complain (but they did, anyway -- lest you forget) because the people who attacked us on 9/11 were sheltered by the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan. Then, the invasion of Iraq. The liberals predicted military failure. They were wrong. They said the aftermath would be a quagmire.

With the humble assistance of the mainstream press -- Dan Rather and the like -- we are being told that Iraq is a quagmire with no end in sight. While anyone with a brain can see that there are some problems with the handling of the Iraqi situation, it yet remains to be seen if it becomes a quagmire.

We will have been in Iraq two years come March 19, 2005. Because of its long and porous borders with Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iran, youths from those nations attracted to the cause of martyrdom find it convenient to expend themselves against Americans and their allies within the region. And expend themselves they do. Already, liberals are becoming horrified over the numbers of "Iraqis" killed by our military actions.

For instance, have you noted yet that when we bomb a suspected terrorist meeting place, the Al Jazeera network promptly announces that we hit a wedding party, killing women and children. Not once or twice, mind you, but nearly every time we bomb in a residential area. And strange weddings they are with few men ever about to be counted among the dead. Baby Milk Factory, anyone?

Now, we have youth running about protesting the draft due to a cunning campaign on the part of the Democrats to infer that the draft will be reinstated by President Bush, if he is reelected. I had the opportunity to listen to some of them a couple of weeks ago. The ones doing the talking had nothing to fear from a draft, however outraged they seemed to be. I suspect they would be rejected on physical grounds, if not mental or drug-related grounds.

It's funny how the Democrats seem to be able to handle fear, especially the creation of an atmosphere of fear, but they can't seem to handle the idea of really fighting a war -- a war of attrition, perhaps -- but a just war, nonetheless.

In closing, I should say what I think about the handling of the situation in Iraq. I must preface it by saying that I'm the last person in the world to accused of favoring Christianity over Islam. I belong to neither religion or Judaism.

Were I in charge in Iraq, I would be holding their holiest places hostage, as well as their leading clerics. The holy mosque harboring Muqtada al-Sadr would be rubble by now under my rules. I would find their tribal leaders and bring them to "safekeeping" in convenient locations. I would aggressively patrol the oilfields and pipelines and control the flow of money into the country, stockpiling the funds openly in a known account. The first Iraqi leader, other than Saddam or his relatives, who demonstrated an ability to effectively cooperate with our goals would get a shot at the money. Greed conquers all.