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Thursday, June 30, 2005

Upon Revisiting The Near Past, A Humble Inquiry

On the evening of September 11th, 2001, President Bush addressed the nation. He said, in part, “We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.”

Nine days later, he said, “…And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.”

Those last two lines received bipartisan applause.

Democrats today rail against the War in Iraq even as we fight it. They call it an immoral war which has nothing to do with September 11th. It is not a part of the war on terrorism, they cried after President Bush’s remarks last night. But for their position now to be credible, they should have condemned the President’s remarks quoted above. From the very beginning this was a wide war. Democrats should have opposed that. But they didn’t. And they didn’t when the Iraq War Resolution was up for vote. These events in our recent past make it clear that Democrats’ object now is political gain by any means, including the politicization of war. It is shameful.

So my question is this: Why? Why did Democrats not protest back in 2001, when policy was being formulated?

The cheap answer is that it wouldn’t have been politically expedient. In response I’d ask just how politically expedient it was for President Bush to tell a shocked world, “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.” But he adopted that hard-nosed offense and it in ensuing years it decimated terrorist infrastructures throughout the world.

That was the ‘core,’ the ‘steadfastness,’ and the ‘resolve’ that liberals have mocked for the past five years.

Where is the analogue on the left? Where was their ‘core,’ to tell them that the Bush Doctrine, as succinctly described in the two passage above, wasn’t right?

Posted on June 30, 2005 08:43 AM. Permalink