
 |
|
Nov. 20, 2009
Nov. 19, 2009
Jonathan Tobin: ADL Crosses the Line with Report Bashing Obama Critics
Nov. 18, 2009
JWisdom.com: The (Jewish) Dating Game
with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
Nov. 17, 2009
Steven Emerson: How Does the 4th Amendment Impact Terror Finance Investigations?
JWisdom.com: If Frank Sinatra married Edith Piaf
with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein (2 minutes) Life lessons from what would be regarded as the most inappropriate lyrics ever sung
Nov. 16, 2009
JWisdom.com: Deconstructing faith
with Rabbi Warren Goldstein (9 minutes)
Nov. 13, 2009
JWisdom.com Sarah's subjective reality
with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 6 minutes)
Nov. 12, 2009
JWisdom.com Does God get tired?
with Rabbi Harvey Belovski ( 5 minutes)
Nov. 11, 2009
JWisdom.com Marriages are not made in Heaven
with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (VERY fast 15 minutes)
Nov. 10, 2009
Michael Doyle: Author of book exposing CAIR ordered to remove supporting documents from Web
JWisdom.com If the creation so loudly shouts the existence of the Creator, why aren't more people believers? with Rabbi Naftali Brawer (9 minutes)
Nov. 9, 2009
Mark Steyn: Shooter exposes hole
in U.S. terror strategy
JWisdom.com It's never too late to
have a happy childhood with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes)
Nov. 6, 2009
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How
to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Nov. 5, 2009
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking
Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker
With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater?
With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change
With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
|
| |
Jewish World Review
August 22, 2005
/ 17 Av, 5765
Getting back to Bush basics
By
Diana West
| 
|
|
|
|
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
It's not enough to say that world affairs are in a crazy state, and leave it at that which is exactly what I did last week in outlining how the United States is effectively boosting the spread of sharia law and the Iranian sphere of influence in the Middle East. It's easy to say this is nuts. But what do we do now?
It's time to get back to basics. And by basics, I mean getting back to First Term W, back to when the president's strategy to defend and protect the United States was to take military action against terrorists and the nations that sponsor them. By unfortunate contrast, the security strategy of Second Term W is best described as bringing to these same terrorists and the nations that sponsor them universal suffrage. Getting back to Bush basics requires a re-reckoning of what and why we fight and, just as important, for what and why we don't fight.
Do we fight to spread democracy? Or do we fight to stop jihad? Far better to fight to stop jihad. Second Term W believes democratic principles will neutralize jihad a.k.a. "extremism" in the strangled parlance of political correctness. It may not be polite to notice, but the nasty reality is that jihad is neutralizing democratic principles. The fact the administration must reckon with is that the concept of human rights the ideal of liberty and justice for all isn't a natural byproduct of majority rule. Islamic terrorists still support Islamic terrorism, even when, as in the Palestinian Authority or Lebanon, they are democratically elected; and Islamic sharia erodes human rights, even when, as in Afghanistan and likely Iraq, it is implicitly mandated by a constitution.
It's time for the administration to consider the possibility that the democractic process alone constitutions, legislatures, ballot boxes doesn't result in Jeffersonian democracy. Such a re-reckoning doesn't mean abandoning Iraq. But it does mean reordering our goals. Forget the Iraqi constitution for now. More important is a single-minded effort to eradicate the death squads that destabilize the country and threaten to exhaust our staying power. In getting back to Bush basics, that means taking action against the nations that sponsor these terrorists: Iran, for instance.
Tragically for the human race, the strategy articulated by First Term W is a novel, never-before-implemented doctrine. Re-reading Claire Sterling's "The Terror Network" (Holt, Rinehart and Winston), a 1980 work of careful analysis that unraveled the Soviet-sponsored tangle of terrorists from the Baader-Meinhof Gang (now defunct) to various Palestinian terror groups (now approaching statehood), drives home the shocking fact that throughout the 1970s the first real "fright decade" of terrorist kidnappings, assassinations, embassy takeovers and bombings designed to destabilize mainly Europe, often in the name of Palestinianism the Western democracies never took action against, never even mentioned the names of, terrorism's state sponsors.
This was the time of the Cold War, and a craven policy of "soft neutrality" toward the terror masters in the Kremlin and its proxies prevailed.
More astonishing, the democracies never took action against the extensive network of martial training camps that turned out tens of thousands of deadly terrorists, not only in the Soviet Union and the Eastern European "bloc" countries, but also in Cuba, Libya, Algeria, Syria, Lebanon, South Yemen and North Korea. These camps for killers camps for killing Western democracy functioned freely under clear skies never penetrated by a NATO bomber. This was a moral surrender that undermined Western civilization to an incalculable extent. Nothing really changed (Ronald Reagan's one-time bombing of Libya notwithstanding) until Sept. 11 and George W. Bush.
This little history lesson should ring a bell, particularly in light of Time magazine's report about how Iran has marched its Revolutionary Guard units into Iraq to kill Americans units that, according to Time, train in Iraq's Sadr City district, Lebanon and "another country" (very possibly diplospeak for Iran). Putting this together with a most encouraging discussion of America's massive Air Force potential against proto-nuclear Iran from The Guardian (flagged by the blog View from the Right) makes me wonder: Can Iraq ever be stabilized without de-fanging Iran? Shouldn't there be, for starters, a big bull's-eye on these Iranian training camps?
Such questions need addressing. It's not enough for Donald Rumsfeld to glancingly refer to, in an interview, Iranian interference in Iraq, or for the president to let drop that "all options are on the table" regarding Iran's compliance with international nuclear regulation. We need to be educated, not left wondering in what sounds like pusillanimous silence. We need to be prepared. We need First Term W.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Diana West is a columnist and editorial writer for the Washington Times. Comment by clicking here.
Diana West Archives
© 2005, Diana West
|
|

Arnold Ahlert
Mitch Albom
Michael Barone
Dave Barry
Tony Blankley
Andy Borowitz
David Broder
Stratfor Briefing
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Suzanne Fields
John Fund
Frank J. Gaffney
Lloyd Garver
Jonah Goldberg
Julia Gorin
Jonathan Gurwitz
Paul Greenberg
Lewis Grossberger
Victor Davis Hanson
Betsy Hart
Nat Hentoff
David Horowitz
Laura Ingraham
Cheri Jacobus Jeff Jacoby
Paul Johnson
Jack Kelly
Ed Koch
Ch. Krauthammer
Michael Ledeen
John Leo
David Limbaugh
Kathryn Lopez
Rich Lowry
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Dick Morris
Bill O'Reilly
Jim Mullen
Clarence Page
Kathleen Parker
Dennis Prager
Wesley Pruden
Tom Purcell
Jonathan Rauch
Celia Rivenbark
Robert Robb
Cokie & Steve Roberts
Pat Sajak
Debra J. Saunders
Culture Shlock
Roger Simon
Michael Smerconish
Thomas Sowell
Mark Steyn
John Stossel
Cal Thomas
Bob Tyrrell
Diana West
Dave Weinbaum
George Will
Walter Williams
Byron York
Mort Zuckerman

Robert Arial
Chuck Asay
Baloo
Chip Bok
Dry Bones
Lisa Benson
John Branch
Gary Brookins
John Cole
J. D. Crowe
John Deering
Brian Duffy
Everything's Relative
Mallard Fillmore
Jake Fuller
Bob Gorrel
Joe Heller
David Hitch
Jerry Holber
Steve Kelley
Jeff Koterba
Dick Locher
Chan Lowe
Ranan R. Lurie
Jimmy Margulies
Rick McKee
Michael Ramirez
Kevin Siers
Jeff Stahler
Ed Stein
Danna Summers
John Trever
Gary Varvel
Kirk Walters

How 2
Lori Borgman
The Savvy Consumer
Elder matters
Fixit
Dr. Peter Gott
GET A JOB! by Marty Nemko
Richard Lederer
Tech Maven
Every Monday Matters
Nutrition Myths
Bookmark These
Bruce Williams
How Stuff Works
|