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Jewish World Review March 4, 2005 / 23 Adar I, 5765 Bush Doctrine gives libs new dish to eat — Crow By Jack Kelly
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
The New York Times approached a plate of crow Tuesday, took a few nibbles,
then pushed the plate away.
In its editorial on the "Cedar Revolution" in Lebanon, the Times said: "This
has so far been a year of heartening surprises — each one remarkable in
itself, and taken together truly astonishing. The Bush administration is
entitled to claim a healthy share of the credit for many of these advances.
It boldly proclaimed the cause of Middle East democracy when few in the West
thought it had any realistic chance. And for all the negative consequences
that flowed from the American invasion in Iraq, there could have been no
democratic elections there this January if Saddam Hussein had still been in
power."
But the Times wrote about developments in Lebanon as if they were
disconnected from events in Iraq.
A leader of the Cedar Revolution, Walid Jumblatt, demurs. "I was cynical
about Iraq," he said. "But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks
ago, eight million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world. The
Berlin Wall has fallen."
In its concluding paragraph, the Times editorial said: "Over the past two
decades, as democracies replaced police states across Central and Eastern
Europe and Latin America ...the Middle East stagnated in a perverse time
warp that reduced its brightest people to hopelessness or barely contained
rage. The wonder is less that a new political restlessness is finally
visible, but that it took so long to break through the ice."
The Times writes as if communism collapsed of its own accord. It didn't.
It was pushed off history's cliff by Ronald Reagan. At a time when liberals
were demanding accommodation with the Soviet Union, Reagan recognized
communism was as internally weak as it was morally repugnant.
"When we look back on the 1980s now, it's not remembered as a decade in
which a dim cowboy president courted global thermonuclear war, but as the
decade when the USSR was brought down, the Warsaw Pact eliminated, and
democratic governance came to Eastern Europe," said web logger Dale Franks.
It has taken so long for "political restlessness" to "break through the ice"
in the Middle East because presidents before George W. Bush took a liberal
approach toward the despots of the region. The tyrants were too strong to
be opposed; they must be appeased. "Stability" is more important than human
rights for oppressed peoples.
While liberals clung to the peculiar notion that Arabs didn't mind being
oppressed, so long as they were being oppressed by dictators who hate the
United States, Bush believed Muslims want liberty and democracy as much as
anyone else, and would embrace them if the tyrants' boots were removed from
their necks. He then proceeded to remove those boots in Afghanistan and
Iraq. And now the "Arab street" has spoken in a manner liberals never
expected.
Lebanon has become the central front in the war on terror. A bloodless
victory is possible there. But it is possible only because Syria's dictator
fears consequences if he attempts to crush the Cedar Revolution by force.
"The New York Times wants Bush to continue pressuring Syria for a withdrawal
(from Lebanon)," said web logger Ed Morrissey (Captains Quarters). "Do
they think for a moment that Bashar Assad would even consider it without
having 150,000 increasingly available American troops on his eastern
border?"
That Assad is nervous is indicated by the fact that he has turned over to
Iraqi authorities a half-brother of Saddam Hussein and 29 other Baathists.
"Our most lethal weapon against the tyrants is freedom, and it is now
spreading on the wings of democratic revolution" said Michael Ledeen. "It
would be tragic if we backed off now, when revolution is gathering momentum
for a glorious victory."
But backing off is precisely what liberals want to do.
Liberals underestimate what can be accomplished by courage and resolve
because these are not qualities they possess. Liberalism is a can't cant.
Every task is too difficult. Every danger is too great. This is why
liberals don't oppose dictators until after they've been deposed by the
likes of Reagan and Bush. While tyrants are still in power, liberal lips
stay firmly glued to their backsides.
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© 2005, Jack Kelly | ||||||||||
