This Memorable Day

[R.A. Hettinga]

<http://online.wsj.com/article_print/0,,SB109936293065461940,00.html>

The Wall Street Journal


 November 2, 2004

 COMMENTARY


This Memorable Day

By VICTOR DAVIS HANSON
November 2, 2004; Page A22


In singular moments in our history, the security of the United States
hinged on a single presidential election. Imagine George McClellan
recognizing an undefeated Confederacy in March 1865. Consider an eight-year
Jimmy Carter tenure. Or contemplate Walter Mondale taking over from a
defeated President Reagan to implement unilaterally a nuclear freeze, Mike
Dukakis asking Saddam to leave Kuwait, or Al Gore mobilizing America to
invade Afghanistan. We are now faced with the same critical choice. Today's
vote determines how the United States finishes the present war against
terrorists, and, indeed, whether we continue to defeat Islamic fascism and
those Middle East autocracies that fuel it.

* * *

John Kerry sees our struggle as an unending law enforcement problem, akin
to gambling and prostitution. Thus the terrorist attacks of the 1990s were
not deadly precursors to 9/11, but belong to a now nostalgic era of
"nuisance." In contrast, George W. Bush envisioned September 11 as real war
-- a global struggle against Dark-Age extremism, striving for a modern
nuclear caliphate that could blackmail the industrialized world and destroy
Western liberal values. So Mr. Bush took terrorist killers at their word,
convinced that such "evildoers," like a Hitler or Stalin, had no legitimate
complaint against America. Rather, they murder out of a deep frustration
that Western-inspired freedom is on the march, threatening both Islamic
fascism and those repressive regimes that hand-in-glove with them have
deflected their own failures onto the United States.

John Kerry promises "help is on the way" to remove President Bush, who has,
according to Mr. Kerry, lied when he is exposed as incompetent. Such
strident condemnation ignores the stunning victory over the Taliban, the
first voting in Afghanistan in 5,000 years, the removal of Saddam Hussein
with scheduled elections for next January, positive changes in Libya,
Pakistan and the Gulf States, and the absence of another 9/11-like attack
here at home.

Moqtada al-Sadr and Osama bin Laden now whine about American retaliation
and send out peace feelers. But their apprehension arises not because of
Sen. Kerry's rhetoric or his promises of U.N. collectivism. Rather, the
specter of four more years of a resolute George W. Bush equates to their
continued defeat. Their trepidation was shared by the 1980 hostage takers
in Tehran, who relented in terror of an inaugurated Ronald Reagan warning
them of the impending end to Carteresque appeasement.

Most of Sen. Kerry's allegations about this war ring false or insincere
because he shifts in tune to mercurial polls. The senator's yes/no/maybe
public statements and votes reflect the perceived daily pulse of the
battlefield -- and his lack of either a strategic understanding of the war
or faith in the skill and resoluteness of the U.S. military. He insists
that there were no al Qaeda ties to Baathists, but we see them in
postbellum Iraq, knew of them during the first World Trade Center bombing,
and once accepted President Clinton's claim for them during his 1998
retaliation against the Sudan. WMD are likewise derided as a chimera. But
President Clinton, Sen. Kerry, and Sen. John Edwards are all on record
frantically warning about Saddam's bio-chem arsenal -- with others citing
intelligence confirmation from Vladimir Putin to Hosni Mubarak. During the
three-week war, American troops in the field did not don bothersome
chemical suits because of President Bush's naoveti or duplicity.

In Sen. Kerry's world, brave folk such as Iraq's Prime Minister Allawi, the
Poles, and the Australians are belittled as hollow and bought allies, while
Germany and France, that profited lucratively with Saddam, will be invited
to join "the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time," now dubbed
analogous to the Bay of Pigs. The explanation for Saddam's removal, in
Teresa Heinz Kerry's words, is "blood for oil," a mantra echoed by
"Fahrenheit 9/11," MoveOn.org, and bin Laden's latest infomercial. But
after the invasion, petroleum prices soared. Iraq's national treasure is
for the first time transparent and autonomous. France, Russia and the U.N.
can no longer appropriate it. President Bush, once libeled as the
villainous Texas oil schemer, is now reinvented on the campaign trail as
Sen. Kerry's clueless naof, bullied by a sinister OPEC.

True, much of the Kerry negativism derives from opportunism. Yet there is
also a logic that explains the flip-flopping, rooted in deep-seeded doubts
about both the utility and morality of using American military power. Thus
Sen. Kerry voted against many of our present weapons systems. That
obstructionism explains why in 1988 he looked back at the Reagan strategic
build-up as one of "moral darkness."

Mr. Kerry, as a soldier and a senator, conducted freelance negotiations
with both the communist North Vietnamese and Sandinistas. His opposition to
the 1991 Gulf War might have ensured a Saddam Hussein sitting on 30% of the
world's oil, replete with nukes, and lording over what was left of Kuwait,
the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia. His recent embrace of a "global test" as
the proper requisite of American military action was not novel, but
reflected his 1994 remarks that American efforts to stop Serbian fascism
should be predicated only on U.N. approval -- although Sen. Kerry later
supported Bill Clinton when he subsequently bombed successfully without
either the sanction of the U.S. Senate or the U.N. Security Council. And
when President Clinton reaffirmed America as the "indispensable nation,"
Sen. Kerry predictably lamented the "arrogant, obnoxious tone."

Sen. Kerry insists that President Bush "squandered" global goodwill and
that America is now roundly disliked. But who is angry with President Bush
-- and why? North Korea to be sure -- their Danegeld of oil and food is
gone, their nuclear antics under multiparty scrutiny. Iran is furious as
well -- but even more terrified that the U.S. is no longer in an
investigative, but rather a warrior, mood. The Arafat kleptocracy and much
of the Middle East pine for the good old days of "sensitive" American cops
vainly subpoenaing terrorists snug in safe compounds and palaces.

If Belgium, France and Germany are purportedly seething at Mr. Bush's troop
repositioning, "dead or alive" homilies, and the smashing of Saddam's
cashbox, then billions in India, China and Russia see all that as a larger
effort to stop a globally despised Islamic fascism. Most Americans applaud
the support of Australia and Britain rather than worry over the censure of
New Zealand and Canada. Yes, George W. Bush is a divisive wartime figure --
so were Lincoln, Churchill and Roosevelt. But war itself is divisive
precisely because to end it one side must lose.

In war, it is hard to know when victory is near, since the last campaigns
are often the bloodiest. Yet we are seeing the foundations of a new Middle
East, with terrorists scattered, jailed and dead. And, yes, victory itself
is on the horizon -- but only if on this memorable day we persevere, and
allow George W. Bush to finish the job.

Mr. Hanson, a military historian, is a senior fellow at the Hoover
Institution, at Stanford.


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R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'