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David Horowitz - Columnist
David
Horowitz is a noted author, commentator and columnist. His
is the founder of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture
and his opinions can be found at Front
Page Magazine. [go
to Horowitz index]
 Softening
Us Up for the Kill
The anti-American "religious" Left..
[David Horowitz] 11/1/04
On
Sunday, the New York Times featured a political
ad counseling defeatism in Iraq a counsel that has become
commonplace in its pages. It was sponsored by an organization
called "Church Folks for A Better America," and based in
Princeton. The signatories included the same "church folks" among
them William Sloane Coffin Jr., Robert Drinan, and Robert
Edgar (National Council of Churches) who counseled defeat
in Indo-China, aided the torturers of American POWS in North
Vietnam, and fronted for the Soviet dictatorship’s "nuclear
freeze" campaign. (If successful, this campaign would have
consolidated a Soviet missile advantage and prolonged the
Cold War.) Robert Edgar was a leader of the campaign to force Elian
Gonzalez into the clutches of Fidel Castro, a sadistic dictator
who has made his nation an island prison.
The
church folks ad is called "A Call to Recover America's Moral
Character" and rehashes the many lies the Left is currently
using to demoralize Americans' resistance to terror and thus
to soften us up for the kill. "Supposedly we went to war
to eliminate weapons of mass destruction,” the ad declaims. “But
there were no weapons of mass destruction."
In
the current campaign to undermine the War on Terror, this
is the really Big Lie. It is never backed up with statements
from the president because there were no such statements.
One can read in vain the State of the Union address given
one month before our troops entered Iraq for example.
Before
September 11th, many in the world believed that
Saddam Hussein could be contained. But chemical agents, lethal
viruses and shadowy terrorist networks are not easily contained.
Imagine those 19 hijackers with other weapons and other plans—this
time armed by Saddam Hussein. It would take one vial, one
canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a
day of horror like none we have ever known. We will do everything
in our power to make sure that day never comes.
The
President continued:
Some
have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since
when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions,
politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this
threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions,
all words, and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting
in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy,
and it is not an option.
This
is why we went to war in the spring of 2003.
We
did not go to war to eliminate weapons of mass destruction,
but to prevent Saddam from retaining the ability to produce
weapons of mass destruction and provide them to his terrorist
allies: Abu Nidal, Abu Abas, Abu al-Zarqawi, Yasser Arafat.
The joint
congressional resolution authorizing the use of force
in Iraq and passed by majorities in both political parties,
Democrats as well as Republicans and John Kerry and John
Edwards in particular, has 23 "whereas" clauses articulating
the rationale for the use of force. Only one of the 23 focuses
on weapons of mass destruction that is on actual stockpiles
of WMDs rather than the programs to develop them (once the
UN inspectors were gone).
However,
twelve of the clauses refer to Saddam's violation of 16 UN
resolutions resolutions which constituted the terms of
the truce in the 1991 Gulf War, and which most commentators
on the war seem to have forgotten. For those who have indeed
forgotten, these are the facts: We have been continuously
at war with Saddam Hussein since 1990. The conflict in 1990
was caused by Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait and was ended by
a ceasefire, not a peace. The terms of the truce were
embodied in UN resolutions 687 and 689. Fourteen subsequent
UN resolutions were designed to compel Saddam to adhere to
the terms of this truce which he continually violated but
which the UN and the Clinton administration failed to enforce.
Thus,
it was Saddam Hussein's violation of these 16 resolutions
and a 17th Resolution 1441, a final ultimatum that caused
us to go to war. The presentation to the UN by Colin Powell
about laboratories for producing weapons of mass destruction,
which was the only significant White House presentation of
such a case took place after the decision to go
to war was made. The presentation was made to satisfy Tony
Blair, who was under attack from his own anti-American appeasers.
The equivalent of 4 million American leftists most from
his own party had recently poured into the streets of London in
an attempt to save the Iraqi dictatorship. Powell's presentation
to the UN was not the justification for the war. It was a
misguided attempt to sway the UN Security Council, which
couldn’t be swayed because France and Russia, two Saddam
allies, had vetos on the Council. The justification for the
war is contained in the 23 clauses in the congressional authorization
and even more specifically in UN resolution 1441.
UN
Resolution 1441 called on Saddam Hussein to disarm and to
provide an accounting for the disposition of all weapons
of mass destruction that the UN inspectors had already identified.
A deadline of December 7 was given for Iraq to comply with
resolution or face "serious consequences." In his book Disarming
Iraq, chief UN inspector Hans Blix declares that this
resolution was diplomatic language for a war ultimatum and
that Saddam failed to meet the terms of the ultimatum. That
was why we went to war.
We
went to war because we could not maintain 200,000 troops
in the desert indefinitely while Saddam played games with
the UN inspectors. We went to war because 17 defied UN resolutions
had made the word of the UN and the United States meaningless an
extremely dangerous situation in itself. Here is how Bill
Clinton justified the use of force to remove Saddam in 1998,
when he expelled the UN inspectors: “If we fail to respond
today, Saddam and all those who would follow in his footsteps
will be emboldened tomorrow by the knowledge that they can
act with impunity, even in the face of a clear message from
the United Nations Security Council, and clear evidence of
a weapons of mass destruction program.” Unfortunately in
1998 Bill Clinton was pre-occupied with an intern named Monica
Lewinsky and was unable to respond to this threat except
by firing 450 futile missiles into Iraq, more than the first
President Bush had used in the entire Gulf War.
We
went to war against Saddam Hussein in the spring of 2003,
because to withdraw the 200,000 troops without a war and
without Saddam’s capitulation to the UN demands would be
a catastrophic defeat for the forces of freedom and peace.
It would mean with absolute certainty that Saddam would reactivate
the weapons programs he had launched and spent more than
40 billion dollars to implement before the United States
obstructed them. Saddam was in the process of negotiating
an off-the-shelf purchase of nuclear weapons from North Korea,
in fact, when the United States entered Iraq to remove him.
The
leaders of the Democratic Party have betrayed the war they
signed onto and in the process have misled the American people
about the nature of the war and of the post-war struggle.
That is, they have misled the American people about the War
on Terror. In doing so they have gravely damaged our efforts
to fight this war, sapped our will to resist, and softened
us up for the kill.
William
Sloane Coffin, Robert Drinan and the other "folks" in the
church of anti-American defeatism, needed no such misleading
to come to their conclusions. But they have certainly capitalized
on it to mislead others: "Supposedly we went to war to sever
the connections between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. But
there were no connections to sever." This is two lies to
make one argument. The administration did not justify the
war in terms of a connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.
Here is the only reference to al-Qaeda out of 23 clauses
justifying the war in the congressional authorization for
the use of force, which was supported by a majority of Democrats
and Republicans:
Whereas
members of al Qaida, an organization bearing responsibility
for attacks on the United States, its citizens, and interests,
including the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001,
are known to be in Iraq.
Perhaps the "folks" at
the chuch of defeatism know something that we don't for
example that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was not in Iraq or
that the al-Qaeda faction “Ansar al-Islam” did not have a
base in Iraq, or that Abdul Rahman Yasin (one of perpetrators
of the World Trade Center attack of 1993) did not escape
to find refuge in Iraq. But until they provide evidence to
convince the rest of us, we will continue to take statements
like this as confirmation of what we already knew that
the Left doesn't care about the facts of the war, or about
defending America against its Islamic enemies because for
the Left America is guilty before the facts. It is guilty
in its very nature as the Great Satan himself.
"Supposedly
we went to war to remove a brutal regime, but we allowed
torture cells to exist, including sexual humiliation and
shamelessly photographed the results." This lie comes from
the New York Times/Ted Kennedy school of American
betrayal morally equating us with Saddam Hussein in an
effort to undermine the war on terror in Iraq. We did not "allow
torture cells to exist" at Abu Ghraib. As all the world
knows, as soon as we discovered the humiliation games played
by some low-level prison guards we prosecuted them. Abu
Ghraib was a minor incident blown up to major significance by
forces in this country who are conducting psychological
warfare operations against our efforts to prosecute the war
on terror in Iraq, and who are thus doing the work of al-Jazeera
and al-Qaeda for them. The only purpose of putting such incidents
front and center to the American public at a time when America has
liberated 50 million people in Afghanistan and Iraq is to
sap our will to continue the battle and soften us up for
the kill.
Conducting
psychological warfare for the enemy is exactly what William
Sloane Coffin, Robert Drinan, Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, and
Howard Dean did during the Vietnam War. They slandered
our troops as “war criminals,” in the case of John Kerry
and went to Hanoi and covered for the torturers of our POWs
in the case of William Sloane Coffin. All of them worked
to get America to cut and run, and eventually they succeeded.
The result was the slaughter of two and a half million peasants
in Indo-China by the Communists, whom this "anti-war" Left
helped to win. If we cut and run this time as Terry
McAuliffe and the church folks advocate this time
there will be a bloodbath in Iraq that will spill into the
streets of Washington and New York.
"Supposedly
we went to war to establish democracy. But in truth we have
still done little to grant 'full sovereignty' to Iraq, and
much to keep the country under our control." First, the Iraqi
people have more sovereignty now than they did under Saddam
Hussein or any regime in Iraq of the last 5,000 years. Second,
we have already shown our good intentions in Afghanistan
by holding the first real elections there since the beginning
of time. Anyone who does not believe that America is guilty
before the fact understands this. There is only one alternative
to American authority in Iraq and that is the authority
of Muqtada al-Sadr and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Since America
is the only authority in the world with the ability and the
will to oppose them, to call for “full sovereignty” now is
to invite the rule of the beheaders and the torturers.
The
church folks want us out ("a clear timetable to end the occupation,
not perpetuate it by other means") and suggest that this
can be achieved by replacing American forces with “a truly
international peacekeeping force to be established by the
United Nations.”
This
solution reveals the true nihilism of the church folks and
of all the attacks on George Bush and present American policy
from the “multilateral” point of view. The UN has done nothing
positive in its entire history in regard to peace or peacekeeping
that the United States has not done for it. When the United
States (under Bill Clinton) was absent from the massacres
in Rwanda, the UN could not raise 5,000 troops to save the
lives of a million Tutsis. The UN is a moral cesspool. Its
Human Rights Commission is run by Libya. Ten days before
9/11 its Human Rights Commissioner, Mary Robinson, hosted
a hate-fest in South Africa, whose agenda was drawn up in
Iran and whose targets of opportunity were the world’s most
humane and tolerant democracies: the United States, Britain
and Israel.
In
Iraq, the UN secretariat has colluded in the theft of $10
billion earmarked to feed Iraqi children. Instead, the UN
officials fed the dictator in Baghdad, and the French, Russian
and British political figures he needed to bribe. And, of
course, themselves. The UN fled Iraq the first time a bomb
blew up in its face. The call for the UN to preside over
the Iraqi future without the United States to provide it
with moral judgment and military means is simply a call to
return Iraq to the control of the Islamic predators who have
already raped Iraq and want to destroy us.
By
destroying the tradition of bipartisanship in war, by betraying
a war policy they signed onto, and by conducting a scorched
earth campaign against their own commander-in-chief, the
Democratic Party has opened the public square to a political
zoo of America hating radicals. Personified in such figures
as Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore, their agenda is exactly
the same as it was during the Cold War and the war in Vietnam:
to demoralize our troops, to sap the will of our citizenry,
to weaken our ability to stay the course and resist, and
to soften us up for the kill. CRO
This
opinion piece first appeared at FrontPageMagazine.com by
permission of David Horowitz.
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