Frank’s Case Book

Ours is sometimes an age that seeks to avoid honest confrontations. Edges are blurred, fine distinctions overlooked, and disagreements avoided. Bi-partisanship has come to mean pleasant accommodation, rather then unprincipled compromise. Principles have sharp, honed edges, they incorporate important distinctions, and they compel us, at times, to disagree noisily. There are times for compromises and splitting differences, but on important issues a healthy polity requires principled, forceful, and joyful partisanship. It is, therefore, with great sadness that we mark the untimely passing of the Senate’s most statistically partisan member, Paul Wellstone, of Minnesota.

The dictionary suggests that the defining quality of a partisan is that he is so biased that he cannot not weigh things equitably. This is far too narrow a definition. Partisanship can degenerate into blind allegiance, but in its highest form, partisanship implies fervently held beliefs and principles. Wellstone was one of the few true Liberals left in the Senate. He gladly advocated socialized health care, opposed President Bill Clinton’s welfare reform, avoided tax cuts he feared would hobble his vision of an energetic federal government, fought the moderating influences of the Democratic Leadership Council, voted against the Gulf War in 1991 and recently voted against authorizing President George W. Bush to use force against Saddam Hussein. While others hid behind labels of “moderate” or “progressive,” Wellstone was an unapologetic “Liberal” with a capital-L.

It is hard to know who will assume Wellstone’s place as the Liberal conscience for the Senate. Senator Edward Kennedy’s corpulence is too easy to use as metaphor for bloated government, Senator Jon Corzine of New Jersey is frankly too wealthy to possess the common populist touch, while Senator Hillary Clinton’s ambition is too unseemly. Perhaps, Tom Harkin of Iowa is the logical candidate; though he would be the first to concede that he lacks Wellstone’s cheerful energy.

Wellstone has often been called the first 1960’s radical in the US Senate. There is merit to this proposition, but he differed from many 1960s radicals in an important respect. He loved America and Americans. Wellstone sought to evoke the best in Americans. He did not become an angry scold. If America was not what he wanted it to be, Wellstone believed America was not living up to its ideals and its callings. It just needed to be nudged and cajoled into the right direction. Other radicals would see a problem like poverty in America and conclude that it was just one more piece of evidence that the United States was an irremediably despicable, racist, and evil country. Wellstone was so convinced of the goodness of average Americans, he believe they only needed to be introduced to a problem and their consciences would do the rest. He wanted a government as good as its people.

In a recent, television interview with Bill O’Reilly, Wellstone was asked about how much effort the United States should make in the reconstruction of Afghanistan. O’Reilly was concerned that the money would be squandered. Though Wellstone argued that it is in the US interest to provide economic aid to win the support of Afghani people, his first response was to remind us shamelessly that America was a great and “good” country. The United States should aid the Afghans, because it was simply the right thing to do. Geopolitics was important, but so is doing the right thing.

Like all people, Wellstone could not always live up to his highest aspirations. After promising constituents that he would only serve two terms, he was running for a third term in the Senate. The Left was upset with Wellstone because his stance against war with Iraq was not as outspoken in 2002 when running for re-election as it was in 1990 and for his vote for the “Defense of Marriage Act.” Jeff Taylor of the Left’s CounterPunch.com argued that Wellstone was “a case study to use when looking at the corrupting effects of hanging onto power for too long.” That’s far too harsh and reflects precisely the mean-spiritedness that gives partisanship a bad name.

It is only by disagreeing with intelligent and passionate adversaries that we can confidently hone our own arguments. For Conservatives, Paul Wellstone’s intelligent debates provided such an intellectual whetstone. Conservative arguments will be consequently duller. That’s not so bad for a PhD political scientist, who used to playfully point out that he scored less than 800 combined on his math and verbal SATs.

“Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.” — Baruch Spinoza.“Even peace can be purchased at too high a price.” —Benjamin Franklin.

Any president has an important advantage when he runs for re-election. He has the ability to use the trappings of office to lend prestige and credibility to his candidacy. No one in recent memory has squandered this advantage in such a spectacular way as Jimmy Carter. In 1980, he lost re-election in a landslide by 489 to 49 in the electoral vote and nearly 10 percentage points in the popular vote. Rarely has this country been so united than in its overwhelming and unequivocal rejection of Jimmy Carter’s presidential leadership.

Since then, Jimmy Carter has devoted his time to humanitarian efforts. Through the Carter Center, Carter pursues his vision of peace and health programs. Many believe that Carter is a model ex-president. A cynic might argue that the American people anticipated how good an ex-president Carter would become and in 1980 hastened him into that role.

Carter’s presence overseas has sometimes been salutary as he helped monitor multiparty elections, though sometimes he was disappointed as when his pal Sandinista Daniel Ortega lost in Nicaragua. Subsequent presidents have often been annoyed when Jimmy Carter self-righteously interjected himself into international affairs. Carter took it upon himself to urge the United Nations not to support the US efforts to expel Iraq from Kuwait. He once intervened on behalf of Yasser Arafat to persuade the Saudis to resume funding of Arafat after his ill-judgeded support of Hussein in the Gulf War. Even the Democratic Clinton Administration was so concerned about Carter’s undisciplined approach to Haiti that they sent Colin Powell with him, perhaps to act as adult supervision.

In something of a surprise decision, the Nobel Committee awarded the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize to Carter. In 1978, the Committee selected Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin for the peace prizes for the Camp David Accords that brought peace between Israel and Egypt. Carter helped broker the deal between the two leaders. That would have been a logical time to award Carter the peace prize.

This year, the prize had barely been awarded when the Nobel Committee Chairman Gunnar Berge explained that the selection of Carter “should be interpreted as a criticism of the line the current [Bush] administration has taken…” Like a petulant, ill-tempered child, Berge described the selection of Carter as “a kick in the leg to all that follow the same line as the United States.” A couple of committee members attempted to distance themselves from this interpretation, but according the BBC, Nobel Committee member, “Gunnar Staalsett said he fully supported the chairman’s remarks and agreed that the citation was indeed a criticism of Mr. Bush.”

By revealing the nature of the selection of Carter, members of the Nobel committee had incredibly devalued the peace prize and any indirect message they were trying to send. It was not what Carter had accomplished for peace that was being recognized, but rather Carter was being consciously exploited in a political disagreement with the policies of George Bush. If there were no George Bush, Jimmy Carter may very well have never won the peace prize.

The Nobel Committee has awarded the peace prize to a number of deserving individuals such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mother Therea. Nonetheless, the Nobel Committee over the last century has overlooked obvious candidates for the peace prize like Mahatma Gandhi, who expelled the British from India through non-violent civil disobedience, Alexander Solzhenitsyn who documented to the world the horror of Soviet prisons camps, or Armando Valladres, the Cuban poet who endured Cuban torture and imprisonment. While at the same time, the committee has made some rather conspicuously awful and immoral selections for the peace prize like Yasser Arafat, the Middle East’s enduring terrorist and Le Duc Tho. Tho was awarded a peace prize for the Paris Peace accords he violated at every opportunity. At least Tho refused the prize. There are some hypocrisies that are too large for even brutal communist leaders to swallow. Sometimes, awards are maliciously frivolous like the peace prize for United Nations Secretary Kofi Annan, who must have been Neville Chamberlain in a previous life.

The selection of Carter was not so much a mistake or error in judgment. He deserves recognition for sincere efforts at social justice. God knows he believes he deserves it. The decision was, however, a deliberate abuse of the award.

When President Jimmy Carter left office, the Cold War was still intense. The world had resolved itself to what John Kennedy had referred to as a “long twilight struggle” between the East and West. Nine years later, the Cold War ended with the economic collapse of the Soviet Union engineered by the relentless pressure of the next American president. This same American president demanded at the foot of the Berlin Wall of the Nobel peace prize winning Mikhail Gorbachev that he “tear down this wall.” However, the Nobel Prize Committee has its collective eyes too clouded with ideological cataracts to recognize that Ronald Reagan deserves the peace prize.

“Why was the U.S. Senate so fixated on protecting jobs instead of protecting lives? The U.S. Senate’s refusal to grant this president and future presidents the same power that four previous presidents have had will haunt the Democratic party worse than Marley’s ghost haunted Ebenezer Scrooge. Why did they put workers’ rights above American lives? Why did that 2002 U.S. Senate — on the one-year anniversary of 9/11 — with malice and forethought, deliberately weaken the powers of the president in time of war? And then why did this Senate — in all its puffed up vainglory — rear back and deliver the ultimate slap in the face of the president by not even having the decency to give him an up or down vote on his bill? This is unworthy of this great body. It is demeaning and ugly and over the top.” — Senator Zell Miller, Democrat Georgia, as cited by the Weekly Standard, October 7, 2002.

In Trenton, New Jersey, September 23, 2002, at a campaign stop, President George Bush urged the Senate to pass the Homeland Security Bill. Bush’s words:

“I asked the Congress to give me the flexibility necessary to be able to deal with the true threats of the 21st century by being able to move the right people to the right place at the right time, so we can better assure America were doing everything possible. The House has responded, but the Senate is more interested in special interests and not interested in the security of the American people. I will not accept a Department of Homeland Security that does not allow this president, and future presidents, to better keep the American people secure. And people are working hard in Washington to get it right in Washington, both Republicans and Democrats. See this isn’t a partisan issue. This is an American issue.”

Bush foolishly and unfairly used the phrase, “not interested in the security of the American people” which can legitimately be interpreted as suggesting that the Senate leadership does not care about security. However, the entire context of the speech also emphasizes bi-partisanship and that “both Republicans and Democrats” had been working together. The speech was certainly not has harsh as some have portrayed. Nonetheless, there was certainly enough ammunition for political hacks to venture onto the cable news programs to fret about Bush “politicizing” defense and security issues.

One would have expected that someone of the stature of Senate Leader Tom Daschle to have delegated this sort of rough-and-tumble argument to others. He could have at least expressed his dissatisfaction in his usual quiet manner. Perhaps it was so much more satisfying to delay Senate business and storm to the Senate floor to whine that Bush had politicized the debate. Rather than maintaining a detached dignity, Daschle exploded in am embarrassing fit of pique. The press painted a picture of the normally dormant Daschle erupting in a lava of complaint.

If this were not enough, Democratic, Senator Robert Byrd, who now that Senator Strom Thurmond is retiring is vying for the title of “Senator Who has Served Too Long,” rose to call Bush’s words “despicable.”

All of this, of course, occurred in a context when, former Vice-President Al Gore, who was perhaps setting himself up for a presidential bid in 2004, wondered out loud why Bush was asking for authorization to use military force “in high political season.” Are we to suppose that important issues should be dealt with only in odd-numbered years? Democratic Congressmen Jim McDermott, who recently visited Iraq, informed us that Bush would lie to get us into a war with Iraq. Others have suggested that Bush’s focus on Iraq it a cynical attempt to draw attention away from a weak economy. Or there are the old standby arguments that Bush wants to go to war with Iraq to help the oil industry or to complete in unfinished job of his father in the Persian Gulf War. The polarization of the debate occurred long ago.

Of course, politicians politicize. That is what they are supposed to do. That is what they should do. If Daschle did not want the Iraq issue to be politicized, why did he and others insist that the matter should be submitted to Congress for debate? You can only avoid politics if there is no room for disagreement.

The real problem is that the issues of attacking Iraq and going after Al Qaeda ought to be debated and argued about. It ought to be a political issue. Hashing out these decisions in public is what democracies are all about. There are principled reasons to question Bush’s approach to these issues. Perhaps we ought to resign ourselves to live with Saddam Hussein equipped with nuclear weapons and hope that our own weapons arsenal will act as a sufficient deterrent. Perhaps not. Let’s argue about it.

There are some Republicans who have misgivings, but Democrats appear to be burdened with the most doubts. Except for a few politicians like Senator Edward Kennedy and Congressman Dennis Kucinich, Democrats have been so worried about their prospects in the upcoming elections that their voices have been muted. Even formerly loud and articulate voices like Paul Wellstone’s have fallen almost silent. In 1990, he spoke out passionately against the Persian Gulf War. Now that he is involved in a tight election battle, his sense of moral indignation seems to have fled him.

Daschle is boxed in. The resulting sense of frustration is probably partially responsible for his eruption on the Senate floor. You can tell that like in 1990, in his heart of hearts, he wants to oppose Bush on Iraq, but he does not want to pay the political price, especially with control of the House and Senate in question. Daschle would rather change the argument to who is politicizing what. It is hard to understand why one would want to go into politics if not to debate the important issues of the day. What could be more important than the debate about war? For most Democrats, the Iraq issue is certainly not a “profile in courage.”

The isolation of two large oceans makes most Americans happily immune to a preoccupation with foreign affairs. We expect everyone to be like us, content to raise our families and indulge in commercial pursuits. We simply do not pay very much attention to foreign affairs, even affairs that may be crucial to our well-being. For most Americans, Iraq and Saddam Hussein are issues that concerned us ten years ago, when the US and its allies liberated Kuwait from the Iraqis. Most troops returned home to cheers and parades. Events in the region during the post-Gulf War period made the news, but were largely ignored. Nonetheless, the Gulf War and its aftermath do provide some illuminating insight into the American political landscape.

In the run up to the Gulf War, the Vietnam-era, Democratic anti-war movement had moved into full gear. Extrapolating from the Vietnam experience, there were dire predictions of a quagmire in the desert and massive American casualties. Congress very reluctantly approved military action. A majority of Democrats (including the current Democratic Senate Leader Tom Daschle) and all of the Democratic leadership refuse to endorse military action. The Democrats were deeply and viscerally opposed to any military action and were convinced that sanctions should be used to remove the Iraqis from Kuwait. If that counsel had been followed, Kuwait would now be a province of Iraq.

Despite the military success of the Gulf War, George Bush (41) was not re-elected. Americans once again proved that economic problems trump success abroad. Bill Clinton was elected in 1992, as a “New Democrat” driven less by ideology and more by practicality. Bill Clinton embraced this “practicality” in helping to implement the arms inspection regime to insure that Saddam Hussein was ridding himself of weapons of mass destruction.

For a few years, we believed we were largely successful. It was not until an Iraqi defected that we appreciated the full extent of Iraqi’s program for obtaining weapons of mass destruction. The inspections were a key element in the agreement that suspended hostilities. In the ensuing years, the arms inspectors played a cat and mouse game with the Iraqis. The Iraqis delayed and stalled to prevent a full and complete inspections regime.

By February 1998, Clinton was convinced that Iraqi intransigence implied they were seeking weapons of mass destruction and would use them. In a call for action, Clinton argued that Hussein’s “regime threatens the safety of his people, the stability of his region, and the security of all the rest of us. Some day, some way, I guarantee you, he’ll use the arsenal. Let there be no doubt, we are prepared to act. I know the people we may call upon in uniform are ready. The American people have to be ready as well.”

Unlike the call for action by George Bush (41), this call was welcomed by the Democratic leadership, including Tom Daschle, who co-sponsored Senate Concurrent Resolution 71. The resolution authorized the president to “take all necessary and appropriate actions to respond to the threat posed by Iraq’s refusal to end it’s weapons of mass destruction programs.”

Why were some Democrats so reluctant to authorize the use of force by the first President Bush against Iraq, eager to so empower President Clinton, and again squeamish about support for the second President Bush. Some Republican and Conservative critics argue that Democrats have no real position and are just playing politics with national defense issues. That explanation is far too simplistic.

Despite the grant of military authority to Clinton by many Democrats, others in the party were far less sanguine about permitting open-ended discretion. Senator Richard Durbin (D) of Illinois confessed that the broad language of the resolution made him uneasy. Senator Max Cleland (D) of Georgia drew a close analogy with Vietnam, explaining that “there shouldn’t be a rush to judgment…as there was with the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.” While embracing the idea of broad executive authority in domestic affairs, with some exceptions, the core of the Democratic Party is disinclined to grant such authority to a president and is deeply and habitually distrustful of anything military.

Daschle and other Democrats did not really abandon their scruples about US military intervention. The reason that Daschle and others were so willing to grant Clinton military authority and are parsimonious about such grants to both George Bushs is that they fully understand the consequences of such grants. They know that both Bushs were likely to fully employ and exploit such authority. On the other hand, they understood that Clinton would be unwilling to expend much political capital in going after Saddam Hussein with the full military force necessary.

President Clinton would say the right words about Hussein’s regime and warn about the dangers of weapons of mass destruction. Clinton’s Secretary of Defense, Richard Cohen, would emphasize that continued Iraqi intransigence would put “Security Council credibility on the line [and]…US credibility as well.” However, in the end, he would not be willing to commit the necessary forces to disarm Hussein’s dangerous regime. Passage of Senate Concurrent Resolution 71 was essentially a no-cost action by Democrats that would provide political cover for their antipathy towards the use of military power.

They were right. By October 1998, Iraq ended all cooperation with arms inspectors. Despite the United Nations resolutions, there would be no more inspections in Iraq for weapons of mass destruction. In December 1998, coalition forces launched four days of air strikes, no doubt doing significant damage to Iraqi capabilities. However, after thrashing about for four days, the assault ended. Iraq had successfully remove arms inspectors and were now free to pursue plans for biological, chemical, and nuclear capabilities, while Americans and British provided only a token response. For Iraq, the strategy has worked for at least four years.

Ann Coulter is fortunate that she is thin, blonde, pretty, professional, and glib. Those qualities make her immune to attacks that Liberals sometimes foist on inconvenient women. Despite the fact that Liberals claim to be thoughtful and compassionate feminists concerned that women be treated seriously, their attacks on troublesome women would make Archie Bunker blush. Paula Jones, President Clinton’s accuser, was portrayed as a “sleazy” woman from the “trailer parks.” [1] While Left-wing columnist Julianne Malveaux speculated that, Linda Tripp, the woman who taped incriminating conversations with Clinton’s girl friend Monica Lewinsky, had been beaten with an “ugly stick.” Coulter is too attractive, too academically pedigreed, and too smart for charges of being low class or ugly to be plausible. No, she gets to be labeled a “shrew.” [2]

Ann Coulter is a skilled polemicist of the first rank. In her recent book, Slander, she documents Liberal “slander” against Conservatives. She is certainly not above calling names being herself adept at creative descriptions. Her primary problem is not with invective, but slander, the deliberate use of false characterizations. This is especially disconcerting when the slander comes not from Left-wing polemicist but from purportedly objective news sources.

Coulter’s style is brash and over-the-top. Although Slander provides plenty of red meat for true believers, her shrillness will turnoff the neutral, and inflame her enemies. Nonetheless, the book is an almost infinite source of delicious nuggets of information for Conservatives. If she had been more academic in her prose she would have been even more persuasive, but she certainly would not have garnered as much attention. Some of her themes deserve special attention.

There are Conservatives on the radio waves and conspicuous commentators, but, as Coulter explains, the news divisions of the major networks are dominated by former Liberal politicos. Tim Russert, of Meet the Press, worked for Governor Mario Cuomo and Senator Patrick Moyihan. Jeff Greenfield wrote speeches for Robert Kennedy, the same role Chris Matthews filled for President Jimmy Carter and former Speaker of the House Tip 0’Neill. Brian Williams worked in the Carter Administration. Rick Inderfurth went from the Carter Administration to ABC News and back through the revolving door to the Clinton Administration without skipping a beat. A senior vice president of NBC News was a Clinton special assistant. And, of course, Clinton’s famous advisor, George Stephanopoulos, now helps to host ABC’s This Week. Other members of the Clinton Administration have found their way to US News and World Report, Nightline, and Time magazine. However, when Susan Molinari, the attractive Republican Congresswoman from New York, became a Saturday morning news anchor for CBS (a job that lasted about a year), the New York Times gravely intoned about the “potentially awkward transition from being one the nation’s best known advocates of Republican ideology to being a CBS News anchor.”

It is not so much that these people necessarily do incompetent or overtly biased jobs. Tim Russert asks notoriously difficult questions of both sides. However, when a certain unquestioned perspective permeates the newsroom, it governs the unspoken assumptions about which stories to cover and how to cover them. Is it any wonder that, when a gun was used to stop a shooting spree, this fact was ignored in the press because of its inconsistency with calls for gun control? Is it any wonder, that the press protected Clinton’s goof on not understanding the function of a Patriot missile? Is it any wonder, that while the press was making snide comments on what they considered Reagan’s lack of mental acuity during the 1984 election, that year magazines published more general articles on senility than in all the other election years in the last quarter-of-a-century combined? Is it any wonder that the press treated Gore as the “smartest kid in the class,” despite the fact that Bush got higher grades than Gore in college? Though neither Gore or Bush could lay claim to being the smartest in their class, after college Bush earned a Harvard MBA, while Gore failed out of divinity school and dropped out of law school.

Coulter also documents that in the 2000 elections, individual states were called for Gore faster than comparable states were called for Bush. For example, “Gore won Maine by 5 percentage points and was declared the winner within 10 minutes of the polls closing.” By contrast, when “Bush won Colorado by 9 points, it took CNN 2 hours and 41 minutes to make the call.” Throughout election night, Gore’s states were called earlier, despite the fact that, on average, Bush won his states by larger percentage margins.

Fortunately, in the freer market of the Internet, Conservative political web sites do considerably better than Liberal ones. Moreover, ever since books have been sold over the Internet and not through stores where books can be prominently displayed or hidden based on the outlook of booksellers, Conservatives having been winning on the bestsellers lists. Once such books reach there, they are usually deemed “surprise bestsellers.” It is unclear whether this success is because Conservatives write better books or Conservatives just read more.

This success is surprising given the systematic efforts of the major publishing houses to avoid Conservative books and for major newspaper reviewers to ignore them, at least when they are not panning them. In addition, major publishing houses grant generous advances to Liberal authors and not to Conservative ones. For example, Naomi Wolf (the feminist writer who famously lectured Gore on the necessity of becoming the “alpha male”) has had mediocre publishing success, despite rave reviews in the New York Times. By contrast, the critically ignored Illiberal Education, a critique of political correctness on campuses, by Dinesh D’Souza, sold far better than Wolf’s The Beauty Myth and spent five times longer on the bestseller list. On their next books, Wolf received a $600,000 advance, while D’Souza received $160,000.

One wonders why these publishing houses cannot even act in their own economic self-interest. The brilliant editorial minds at Random House have lost $50 million on advances that did not reap adequate sales. As Coulter concludes, “Conservative books may be snubbed in the elite media, hidden by book stores, and regularly spurned by major publishers, but at least we know who the public wants to read.” Coulter’s book has done well is sales. Mainstream reviews of it have been mostly negative. These reviews whine that Coulter complains that Conservatives are being called names, while she does the same thing. She counters that her descriptions are true. A better response would be to attempt to debunk her or find inaccuracies, but that would be hard work and perhaps not yield fruit.

1. Evan Thomas, Newsweek.
2. Richard Cohen, Washington Post.

In February of this year, 60 scholars published an open letter to our European friends attempting to explain “What We Are Fighting For.” This letter outlines a justification for the American war against the al Qaeda organization and other terrorist groups. The letter begins with an assertion of universal principles. Among these are:

* “all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights,”
* the “role of government is to protect and help foster the conditions for human flourishing,”
* religious freedom is an “inviolable right” and the “killing in the name of God is fundamentally contrary to faith in God.”

For the letter’s signatories, the war against terrorism and terrorists’ state supporters represents a defense of these principles.

The attacks against innocent civilians in the United States were not an attack on particular policies and actions. With respect to these, give-and-take and negotiation are at least possible. No. War was explicitly declared by al Qaeda years ago because the United States represents a free, prosperous and pluralistic society open to all faiths. This freedom and pluralism is an anathema to an all-too-large, angry portion of the Islamic World who in the words of the letter, “betray fundamental Islamic principles.” We need not speculate on obscure motives for the attacks. Bin Laden was more than happy to characterize the “blessed attacks” as direct against the “head of world infidelity.” The attacks were launched because of who we are, for what we believe, and for our unwillingness to conform to a demented, dehumanizing perversion of Islam.

War is a severe measure with profound consequences and ought not be entered into upon lightly, without due consideration. Like our forefathers who asserted that “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires… [that we] should declare the causes which impel” our action, the signatories openly outline the moral justification for a war on terrorism. The letter notes the general acceptance of some version of the “Just War Theory” by persons of many faiths. A just war must be undertaken only as a last resort by a legitimate authority, must be proportional and moderate and directed against combatants, and must be likely to reduce suffering in the long run. It is in this context, that the war is explained and rationalized. There are really only two legitimate points of view. One is a complete pacifism: the argument that killing is never justified, even in mortal self-defense. The alternative is to embrace a Just War Theory.

It is unfair to characterize and tarnish any political or ideological position based on its silliest, least thoughtful, or extreme elements. Such ploys are a typical tactic for polemicists of all kinds. For this reason, it is an embarrassment to consider the responses to this thoughtful open letter, by 100 US “intellectuals” in a corresponding letter.

This American response refuses to address the issues raised in the original letter, but indulges itself in a drunken brawl of anti-Americanism. One has to wonder whether this is really the best that 100 intellectuals from institutions as prestigious as Duke, Georgetown, Columbia, Rutgers, Harvard, and the University of California, Berkeley could muster.

The counter open letter ominously warns of intimidation against those that “fail to provide unquestioning support” for the war on terrorism, but fails to explain how in the face of this intimidation so many fearlessly signed the letter. Were any of the signatories dismissed from their positions or denied federal grants? No, rather than intimidation, on parts of college campuses, anti-Americanism is rewarded with encomiums and self-aggrandizing moral posturing.

These American respondents whine that “self celebration is a notorious feature of United States culture.” The flags festooning private homes and businesses or proudly displayed on lapels infuriate these people. They find it incredible that American yahoos really see themselves, as “prosperous, democratic, generous, welcoming, open to all races and religions, the epitome of universal human values and the last best hope of mankind.” They deny “American exceptionalism.” Their letter’s argument reduces to the assertion that American culture and government are at best flawed, possibly evil, and defense of them cannot be justified.

The signatories of the American response letter argue that since the attacks were “anonymous” and without any “claim of responsibility,” we must assume that the attacks were against American economic and military power not against American values. Given that the original letter quoted Bin Laden rejoicing in “blessed attacks” against “world infidelity,” the assertion that the attack was anonymous with hard to discern motives can only be seen as deliberate and willful ignorance. There was not even a weak attempt to adduce evidence to refute the original letter’s citation of al Qaeda and Bin Laden as the source of the attacks. This response by American intellectuals betrays an utter lack of intellectual honesty and moral seriousness.

To the credit of Europeans, the original letter and the responses have received far more attention there than in the United States. If there is any hope of the US garnering the support of its European friends, it is important to engage in a serious dialogue. Unfortunately, the response by European intellectuals does not address the issues raised in the original letter and at best collapses into the fallacy of moral equivalency. Perhaps it is best that this dialogue has not received much attention in the US, lest Americans begin to believe that the ranting of some European elites represents a European consensus.

The original thesis, in the first American letter, was that the war against terrorism is a just war. Although they are not explicit, the European respondents do not reject this argument and embrace a principled pacifism. The European letter, originally published in Frankfurter Allgermeine, acknowledges “the United States made an outstanding contribution to the liberation of Europe from the yoke of Nazism.” Hence, they unambiguously acknowledge that a just war is, in principle, possible. However, rather than directly addressing the issue as to whether the war against terrorism is just, they descend into historical revisionism. For example, rather than acknowledging the joint and remarkably peaceful victory of the West in the Cold War against a totalitarian power that divided Berlin with a wall, they suggest that “as a leading superpower during the period of East-West confrontation, [the US] was also largely responsible for grave abuses in the world.”

If we are to engage in a meaningful dialogue, European intellectuals ought not be so ethically obtuse as to argue that mass murder by the attackers of September 11, does not justify “mass murder of the Afghan population.” Are these intellectuals really incapable or just unwilling to recognize the evident moral distinction between attacks deliberately intended to inflict as many civilian casualties as possible and incidental and unintended civilian deaths in a war? If they wish to make the charge of “murder” ought not they at least produce some evidence of a deliberate intention to kill innocent civilians?

The canard of 4,000 innocent Afghan civilian deaths is even trotted out. This figure is based on third party reports and has largely been discredited. The Associated Press puts the number of civilian casualties in the hundreds and MSNBC reports “Afghan journalists for the official Bakhtar news agency, whose reports were used as a basis for Taliban claims, now say their dispatches were freely doctored.” Yet the number 4,000 is lent credence by unquestioning repetition because it is rhetorically convenient to suggest that as many civilian as were killed by Americans as by the terrorists. It feeds into to fallacy of moral equivalency.

The European signatories agree that the threat is misguided fundamentalism, but apparently not Islamic fundamentalism. No, they fear the “fundamentalism” of American religiosity and patriotism. “Many of us feel that the growing influence of fundamentalist forces in the United States on the political elite of your country, which clearly extends all the way to the White House, is cause for concern.” Islamic fundamentalists rejoice at the death caused by slamming commercial airliners into buildings, while some European elites fret that Americans have a president that takes his faith seriously. It is clear that most Europeans are not anti-American like the intellectuals who signed the recent letter. Indeed, these intellectuals remain concerned that “the political class in Europe” is engaged in “obsequious submission to the superior and sole superpower…” One would hope that the European intellectuals are as out-of-touch with the average European as their American counterparts are with average Americans. Once again Americans and, we hope, some Europeans will have to fight for the right for intellectuals to freely and ungratefully engage in moral posturing and deliberate distortion. You’re welcome.

“I am the only President who knew something about agriculture when I got there.” — Bill Clinton, Washington Post, April 26, 1995.

“I’m sure I spent more time in Texas than anybody else who had run for President recently.” — Bill Clinton in Longview, Texas, U.S. Newswire, September 27, 1996.

“John Kennedy had actually not been back to the White House since his father was killed, until I had became president — and first he was on an advisory committee that made a report to me, and he came back to the Oval Office where he saw the desk that he took the famous picture in — you know, coming through the gate, for the first time since he was a little boy.” — Bill Clinton press conference July 21, 1999. [1]

Part of Bill Clinton’s enduring charm was his ability to engage in self-aggrandizing behavior with impunity. For his supporters, it was all part of Clinton’s magnetism and charisma. You did not have to believe what he said in order to admire his sheer brilliant impudence. For his detractors, this ability was frustrating and infuriating.

With respect to the above outlandish claims:

• George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Jimmy Carter were farmers and probably knew a little “something about agriculture.”
• It is unlikely that Clinton spent more time in Texas than George Bush (41), Ross Perot or Phil Gramm, all of whom ran for president.
• President Nixon had the young John Kennedy in the White House in 1971.

It is not clear if Clinton or only Clinton apologists are behind the recent Time magazine article. Nevertheless, we can often recognize “the lion by his paw.” The article revealed the existence of a secret Clinton Administration plan to go after Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda. Though the plan was not as ambitious as the attack against Bin Laden’s Afghan refuge that began shortly after September 11, 2001, it did purportedly contain many of the same elements: support for the Northern Alliance, going after terrorist assets and charity fronts, and covert military action.

The fact that such a plan existed is almost certainly true. The Pentagon sprouts plans like a untended lawn sprouts weeds. There is probably someone in the Pentagon who, as an academic exercise, is discerning the optimum means for conquering Canada. The fact that a plan existed to attack al-Qaeda is no indication that there was any realistic possibility that the plan would have been implemented.

According to Time, Clinton Administration officials now say, though they were prepared to act against al-Qaeda, they did not want to start a war with only a few weeks left in the Clinton Administration. However, if there was a real plan of high priority and near implementation, discussions should have not only taken place between advisors but, also between the outgoing and incoming presidents. It, therefore, seems improbable that the Time-discovered plan was under serious consideration.

Time readily admits that perhaps even the implementation of such a plan would not have prevented the September 11 attacks. However, it strongly and sinisterly suggests “another possibility:” that the al-Qaeda organization would have been so disrupted that the September 11 attacks would never have happened.

This latter possibility is very small, considering that the planning and the predicates for the attack had been in place well before September 11. Ironically, if the US had launched a pre-emptive strike and had not succeeded in preventing the September 11 attacks , it is likely that Time magazine would now be ominously speculating that the attacks against al-Qaeda initiated the retaliation of September 11. They would be speculating that perhaps the US brought the attacks upon itself.

Clinton is nothing, if not politically astute. An attack on al-Qaeda would have required an enormous investment of political capital. It would have also been extremely difficult to obtain international support or even acquiesce to toppling the Afghani government without the September 11 attacks. The attack on the World Trade Center Towers and the Pentagon stiffened American resolve. This conspicuous resolve made it far easier to garner unlikely allies like Pakistan. Without the logistical advantage of staging troops out of Pakistan, the Afghan campaign would have been considerably more difficult.

In February 2002, Clinton tried to justify his inaction against al-Qaeda:

“Now, if you look back — in the hindsight of history, everybody’s got 20/20 vision — the real issue is should we have attacked the al-Qaeda network in 1999 or in 2000 in Afghanistan.”

“Here’s the problem. Before September 11 we would have had no support for it — no allied support and no basing rights. So we actually trained to do this. I actually trained people to do this. We trained people.” [Note the wise switch from first person singular to first person plural. — FMM.]

“But in order to do it, we would have had to take them in on attack helicopters 900 miles from the nearest boat — maybe illegally violating the airspace of people if they wouldn’t give us approval. And we would have had to do a refueling stop.” [2]

It is clear that no president, not George Bush nor Bill Clinton, anticipated an attack as large and as horribly successful as the one that happened. If Clinton could have remained in office, it is doubtful that the president that backed down when the Iraqis refused to allow unfettered access to weapons inspectors, launched cruise missiles against tents in the Afghan desert, and that refused to take custody of bin Laden would have launched a potentially unpopular attack.

When the history of the Clinton Administration is written, there may be minor criticism for a lack pre-emptive actions against a murky threat. However, this Time story provides conspicuous evidence of the former Administration’s vanity. This desperate effort to prop up the Clinton legacy provides yet another example of how spectacularly small and self-centered it was. For this we owe Time a debt of gratitude.

1. For Clinton quotes, see http://www.gargaro.com/clintonquotes.html.
2. NewsMax.com.