Home
In this issue

July 2, 2009

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: The hallmark of a person

Abe Novick: Up, up, and aliya

July 1, 2009

Rabbi Avi Shafran: The Road Taken

The Kosher Gourmet by Marialisa Calta: Get into the holiday spirit with these Star-Spangled desserts

June 30, 2009

Rabbi Binyomin Ginsberg: What makes a great parent?

Caroline B. Glick: Ideologue-in-Chief

June 29, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Beware of 'Caveat Emptor'

Steven Emerson: ACLU pushing for more money for Hamas

June 26, 2009

Rabbi Yoni Posnick: Learn the secret to a healthy marriage from a scriptural villain

Caroline B. Glick: Barack Obama vs. International Law

June 25, 2009

Rabbi Shimon Apisdorf: The Absurd Power of Truth

Jordan "Gorf" Gorfinkle's strip: Everything's Relative

June 24, 2009

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Advancement of technology is a wake-up call for humanity

The Kosher Gourmet by Andrea Weigl: Summer on a stick: Making frozen treats can be easy, creative and fun

June 23, 2009

Martin M. Bodek: 'On Surnames': And so, We Begin

Caroline B. Glick: The Obama Effect

June 22, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Working for a corrupt firm

N. Richard Greenfield : Where are American Jews?

June 19, 2009

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: Emotion v. intellect

Caroline B. Glick: Israel's rare opportunity

June 18, 2009

Jonathan Rosenblum: Sometimes it is more essential to define the nature of evil than good

Jordan "Gorf" Gorfinkle's strip: Everything's Relative

June 17, 2009

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Language of Confusion

The Kosher Gourmet by Linda Gassenheimer: Nothing pleases Dad more than a thick, juicy onion-smothered steak. Add home-Baked Potato Chips and …

June 16, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Career v. Careersism

Caroline B. Glick: Obama's losing streak and Israel

Richard Z. Chesnoff: ‘Palestinians’: Never Missing an Opportunity …

June 15, 2009

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu: How Judea and Samaria can become 'Palestine'

Daniel Pipes: Where Netanyahu's speech failed

June 12, 2009

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: Some big thoughts about not acting so big

Caroline B. Glick: Obama's High Commissioner

June 11, 2009

Victor Davis Hanson: Our historically challenged President

Mitch Albom: Beware the True Believers

Lewis Grossberger: What we learn from the new Hitler photos

June 10, 2009

Mort Zuckerman: What Obama and his advisors won't -- or refuse to -- grasp about Israel and the Muslim world

The Kosher Gourmet by Steve Petusevsky Lotsa pasta: Tips, techniques and (amazing) taste

June 9, 2009

Anne Bayefsky: Obama's stunning offense to Israel and the Jewish people

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: America's first Muslim president?

June 8, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Merchant must take responsibility for careless shopper?

Mark Steyn: A superpower that feeds on mediocrity cannot survive for long on leftovers from the past

Richard Z. Chesnoff: How do you say 'kumbaya' in Arabic?

June 5, 2009

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: In quest of spirituality

Caroline B. Glick: Obama's Arabian dreams

Charles Krauthammer: The Settlements Myth

June 4, 2009

Paul Greenberg: The War Comes to Little Rock

The Kosher Gourmet by Judy Hevrdejs: Splash it on! Tap your inner jazz musician and improvise when stirring up a vinaigrette

June 3, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q. Should terrible teacher be exposed?

Jonathan Rosenblum: The Israel Lobby: Missing in Action

June 2, 2009

Dennis Prager: The Speech President Obama Won't Dare Give in Egypt

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Pressure on Israel raises war risk

Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Jan. 3, 2007 / 13 Teves, 5767

A tale of three leaders

By Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.


Printer Friendly Version
Email this article

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | This is a tale of three men, all prominent figures on the world stage. Two of them — Saddam Hussein and former President Gerald Ford — have died in recent days; the third, President George W. Bush, is struggling for his political life. How successful Mr. Bush is in recasting and reinvigorating his wartime presidency will depend, in part, on the lessons he draws publicly from the two lately departed.


Of course, the former Iraqi despot and the one-time American president lived very different lives and, appropriately, came to very different ends. Saddam's was dancing from a gallows, in the company of hangmen and witnesses who expressed the sentiment of millions of Iraqis and other freedom-loving peoples in damning him to hellfire. Mr. Ford's demise came quietly in his sleep, surrounded by his loved ones and remembered fondly by the nation he served for decades in war and peace.


Still, the two men constitute bookends of a sort for a Mr. Bush finalizing the strategy he will shortly present for winning the War for the Free World — a war that did not begin and will not end in Iraq, especially if the United States were to be seen as losing there.


There is but one reason that the late "Butcher of Baghdad" and his tyrannical regime are no more, and with them the threat they once posed to Saddam's people, their neighbors — and, yes — to us: Civilized nations, led forcefully by President Bush, acted to remove him from power and thereby enabled free Iraqis to bring him to justice.


By contrast, a year after the liberation of Iraq, Mr. Ford told the Washington Post's Bob Woodward (in an interview embargoed until after the former president's death), "I don't think I would have gone to war [with Iraq]." According to Woodward, his ninety-two-year-old subject declared: "Well, I can understand the theory of wanting to free people....I just don't think we should go hellfire damnation around the globe freeing people, unless it is directly related to our own national security."


Of course, Mr. Bush and those of us who supported his efforts to free the Iraqi people would argue that doing so was indeed "directly related to our national security." The fact-finding Iraq Survey Group determined Saddam was continuing to produce small quantities of chemical and biological agent right up to the end and intended to ship them "in aerosol cans and perfume sprayers" to the U.S. and Europe. The death toll created by such a state-sponsored acts of terror could have been horrific.


A no less compelling case can be made that our national security would be well-served should dangerous despots like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Ali Khameni of Iran and North Korea's Kim Jong Il were also hung by the neck until dead. It should be the object of American policy to help the long-suffering people of those two countries bring about regime changes that would lead to justice being served on such individuals.


We should do so not out of some fuzzy moral sentiment of the kind often sneeringly dismissed by so-called "foreign policy realists" like the Ford Administration's Brent Scowcroft and James Baker. Rather, we should be working to bring about regime change in Iran and North Korea because it is vital to American security that tyrants who have made no secret of their wish to hurt this country — as Ahmadinejad likes to put it, "a world without America is not only desirable, but achievable" — are as unable to act on their ambitions as Saddam Hussein.


The alternative of allowing these threats further to metastasize is to ensure not only that the tyrannies in Tehran and Pyongyang be more dangerous in the future. They will help still other threats to become more formidable, as well.


Accordingly, when President Bush addresses the nation in the days ahead, laying out his vision for "the way forward," he must explicitly remind all of us that we are in a war that is not confined to Iraq. If he chooses to "surge" into Iraq more troops, their mission must be part of a larger plan for defeating Iranian activities and proxies in that country, and working to rebuild what Tehran has helped destroy there.


At the same time, Mr. Bush must firmly reject the views of "stability" and accommodation with despotic regimes that we associate with President Ford's time in office. Assisting the peoples of Iran and North Korea to end (with apologies to Mr. Ford) their "long national nightmares" inflicted by the Islamofascist mullahs and the Stalinist Kim dynasty, respectively, is essential to the survival of the Free World's.


President Bush should provide such assistance in the comprehensive way his predecessor pursued the downfall of Soviet Communism — in sharp contrast to the Ford Administration which effectively sought to perpetuate it via "détente." In fact, Reaganesque economic and financial measures led by the Treasury Department's Under Secretary Stuart Levey are already having a salutary effect by constricting the cash-flow of both Tehran and Pyongyang. These steps need to be complemented by political warfare initiatives, information operations, expanded intelligence activity and, as appropriate, covert action.


In the spirit of "not a Ford but" the Gipper, and with a view to ensuring that more tyrants meet Saddam's fate, George Bush should ask the Nation: "If not we, who? If not now, when?"


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 Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. heads the Center for Security Policy. Comments by clicking here.

Archives


BUY FRANK'S LATEST
"War Footing: 10 Steps America Must Take to Prevail in the War for the Free World"  

America has been at war for years, but until now, it has not been clear with whom or precisely for what. And we have not been using the full resources we need to win.

With the publication of War Footing, lead-authored by Frank Gaffney, it not only becomes clear who the enemy is and how high the stakes are, but also exactly how we can prevail.

War Footing shows that we are engaged in nothing less than a War for the Free World. This is a fight to the death with Islamofascists, Muslim extremists driven by a totalitarian political ideology that, like Nazism or Communism before it, is determined to destroy freedom and the people who love it. Sales help fund JWR.

© 2006, Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.

Insight (Our Columnists)

 Mitch Albom
 Michael Barone
  Dave Barry
 Tony Blankley
 Andy Borowitz
 David Broder
 Stratfor Briefing
 Mona Charen
 Linda Chavez
 Ann Coulter
 Greg Crosby
 Rod Dreher
 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
 Paul Johnson
 Jack Kelly
 Ed Koch
 Ch. Krauthammer
 Jonathan Last
 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

'Toons
 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

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