Defining Victory Down
Way down.
Mark Steyn's latest, much-linked column is entertaining as always, and as usual, there's some substance between the one-liners:
For over a year now, nothing has been asked of Muslims, at home or abroad: you can be equivocal about bin Laden and an apologist for suicide bombers, and still get a photo-op with Dubya; you can be a member of a regime whose state TV stations and government-owned newspapers call for Muslims to kill all Jews and Christians, and you'll still get to kick your shoes off with George and Laura at the Crawford ranch.This is not just wrong but self-defeating. As long as Dubya and Colin Powell and the rest are willing to prance around doing a month-long Islamic minstrel-show routine for the amusement of the A-list Arabs, Muslims will rightly see it for what it is: a sign of profound cultural weakness.
As things stand, there are only three countries that are serious about the "war on terror": America, Britain and Australia. And, even within that shrunken rump of the West, there are fierce divisions... President Bush's resoluteness doesn't extend to his Secretary of State or even, during Ramadan, to himself. The longer this already too long period of phony war continues, the more likely it is that even these stalwarts will decay and Canadianize. I worry about the thin line on which our civilization depends. This last year has been too quiet.
That's a tough one. But I wonder if some of it might not have to do with the fact that Bush partisans have constructed a giant self-congratulatory feedback loop, declaring Victory in advance of action; constantly reassuring each other, for example, that "defeating" the moribund, politically-retarded Democrats and diplomatically out-manoeuvering the French makes GWB into some kind of cross between Abe Lincoln and Winston Churchill. Anyone who can handle Tom Daschle and Jacques Chirac with such aplomb will make short work of our real enemies, right? That is, when the time is right, by and by, after the process has run its course. All part of the master plan, for regime change or disarmament or cooperation (which is a kind of regime change, isn't it?) Or preemption or containment or unilateralism or multilateralism, that sort of thing. Some of us might prefer a more direct approach, but that's just Dubya's way, and who's to say it's not the best solution, whatever it is?
And anyway, back to the main point, isn't that Nancy Pelosi just awful?
Steyn himself wrote one of these victory-dance columns just last week. Maybe Bush read it along with all the others, and forgot that technically he still has to trot around the bases before he gets official credit for hitting another one out of the park.
OK, I'm kidding. Mostly. But it is amazing that GWB hasn't come in for stronger criticism from the right, given the lackadaisical post-Afganistan phase of his own war on terror, and the non-confrontational attitude towards countries which some consider to be our most dangerous enemies. Steyn's column (the second one, I mean) is a rare example to the contrary. Granted, from the perspective of those who would like a war to occur, the situation might have been far worse under Gore; but one must assume they'd consider that to be a pretty low standard. At any rate, I don't think there's any doubt that had a President Gore decided to entrust the fate of Iraq and its WMDs to the UN and to continue the Saudi suck-up policy, they wouldn't be putting much energy into devising ingenious rope-a-dope theories to sustain their wishful thinking; rather, they'd be fisking him from here to kingdom come morning, noon, and night. I'm sure Bush means well, but some constructive criticism from his friends wouldn't go astray.
I see merit in both columns, contradictory though they may be. The French were wrong (though it may yet turn out that they were wrong "like a fox"), and the Democrats deserved to lose, in part because of their lack of credibility on defense. But on what, at this point, is Bush's unquestioned credibility based? How long does he get to enjoy such uncritical credit for striking intermittently tough attitudes and articulating aggressive policies that somehow never get put into practice? As Bill Quick memorably put it, you can only dine out on Afghanistan for so long.
Now I may be wrong, but it seems like the principles articulated on 9/20/01 and in the 2002 State of the Union address, the ones which won over so many skeptics among his critics, the ones that led many who did not vote for Bush to express, to their own astonishment, relief that the guy they voted for was not in the White House-- these principles appear to be in a shambles. Taking the fight to the enemy, making no distinction between the terrorists and their abettors, dismantling the "axis of evil," the newly unapologetic confidence in American power-- much of this seems to have been diluted into a kind of low-grade mush. Afghanistan was the necessary preliminary step; but it was supposed to be peripheral to the main order of business, which was to challenge, de-fang, and if necessary defeat the states that sponsor, shelter, and encourage Islamofascist extremist proxies in their collective war on America and her interests and allies. After Afghanistan fell, hawkish pundits crowed that the only way to earn the respect of these enemies was to face them head on and defeat them utterly, and that only such crushing defeats would quell their ardor for launching further campaigns. This may have been true enough, but for some reason we failed to take the next step. I fear that much of this momentum, this progress toward an Islamofascist attitude adjustment, if such it was, has now dissipated. Do they still see the US as a "paper tiger" that lacks the will to challenge them in any serious way? It seems as though Saddam Hussein does. Well, why wouldn't he? He has no reason to fear the UN (his partner in obfuscation) and the US doesn't seem to be all that into dropping bombs these days.
In the meantime, Bush spent several months thrilling the hawks and scaring the bejesus out of the Europeans with a series of bellicose speaking engagements and sabre-rattling commencement addresses on unilateralism and the "doctrine of preemption" that, it now appears, served no purpose other than to thrill the hawks and scare the bejesus out of the Europeans. What was gained during all those months of empty rhetoric and "Homeland Security?" Incremental progress in tracking down and gathering intelligence on al Qaeda members, which is laudable to be sure, and time to prepare and organize our forces for a theoretical future engagement with Iraq and others, which is only prudent. (Iraq has had a year to continue its programs, too, of course; but, on the plus side, we've introduced rigorous shoe inspections at airports and soon we're going to have a giant database of domestic credit card purchases.) We (and they) will have even more time now that we have deliberately enmeshed ourselves in a UN inspections process intentionally designed to hamper and impede American action.
There are those who maintain that the Bushies, in keeping with a carefully-formulated long-term plan whose brilliance is yet to be revealed, entered into this inspections charade with the express intention of abruptly disentangling themselves from it on December 8th. The Europeans won't like it, but there's not much they can do. There was never much they could do. And the point is... ? Never fear, my poppet, all will be revealed in time. They've been saying this sort of thing for a year, like Jehovah's Witnesses telling you to mark your calendar for successive Second Comings-- the only thing that changes is the date. You know, I'm beginning to wonder if they know what they're talking about.
These are tough decisions, with serious risks and grave consequences, and I don't propose that they be taken lightly or hurriedly. They were never going to be easy. Someone has to make them though. I remember thinking, during the 2002 State of the Union address, that Bush would have a lot of explaining to do if Saddam Hussein were still in power in January 2003. At the time it seemed scarcely conceivable. Now it's all but certain.
We'll be deliberate, yet time is not on our side. I will not wait on events, while dangers gather. I will not stand by, as peril draws closer and closer. The United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons. (Applause.)