I guess I am not the only one to realize that Dean’s speech yesterday was breathtaking in its simplicity and naivete. In short, it was like a poly-sci undergrad gathered all the anti-Bush unilateralism diatribes and co-mingled them with some of the isolationist and ‘peace at all costs’ rhetoric of the loony left, and then disguised it all as an appeal international ‘cooperation.’
Howard Dean declared on Monday that “the capture of Saddam Hussein has not made America safer,” provoking an avalanche of new attacks from rivals who have seized on Sunday’s surprise news as a way of redrawing the foreign policy debate in the Democratic presidential campaign…
Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, who supported the war, spent a second day in row hammering Dr. Dean on the Iraq issue, and scheduled a speech for Tuesday in New Hampshire to highlight their differences on national security.
“If he truly believes the capture of this evil man has not made America safer, then Howard Dean has put himself in his own spider hole of denial,” Mr. Lieberman said. “I fear that the American people will wonder if they will be safer with him as president.”
Mr. Edwards, in his first major speech on foreign policy in months, said that while Mr. Hussein’s capture “did not end the danger in Iraq,” it had “kicked the door wide open for all of us to hope that sooner and not later democracy will thrive for the Iraqi people.” He called on the administration to include the international community in rebuilding Iraq and in trying Mr. Hussein.”
Dean and his supporters are living in some parallel universe- that much is clear. This statement from his speech is just a gem:
Let me be clear: My position on the war has not changed.
Which is why you are entirely unelectable. Standing on principle is great, but it helps if you are right, and it also helps if your principle does not appear to be a construction based upon political calculus. Gephardt said it best:
“We can’t beat George Bush by playing politics with foreign policy,” Mr. Gephardt told reporters in a campaign swing in Ecorse, Mich. “We’ve got to stand up for what we think is right. That’s what I’ve always done and that’s what I’ll always do.”
In a rational Democratic party, Lieberman and Gephardt would be the only candidates getting any attention. The Democrats are not rational, however, and as I have predicted for the last year, Dean is still their favorite. The Democratic party needs to get rid of McAullife, spend a year or two soul-searching, take some anger management classes, and pull themselves together. They have simply lost it- and with another southern Democrat retiring from the Senate, the executive branch is the only branch they have a remote chance of recapturing in the next 6 years.
Andrew Lazarus
1. Yes, the GOP has a sure Senate pickup in Louisiana, following on their winning the other LA Senate seat and the Governor’s race over the last two years. (Snort.)
2. I haven’t had time to listen to all of Dean’s speech, but my first thought is “compared to what”? That magnificent State of the Union addressed—based on forgeries? Colin Powell’s forceful speech to the UN, not a single slide of which appears to be true? (In finding the link, I found myself re-reading the part about the centrifuge tubes. Powell lied. Even at the time our own experts, contrary to what he said, knew they were for a rocket launcher and were useless to the fantasy nuclear program that was a product of fevered—or is that fervid?—imaginations.)
Sean
Right on, Andrew.
“Standing on principle is great, but it helps if you are right.”
Well, Dean stood on principle, and he is right. As opposed to Bush, who went for a neocon utopian fantasy war, based on the “hit someone” reaction of ignorant Americans who believed his implied links between 9-11 and Iraq. Saddam has nothing to do with terrorism, and more specifically had nothing to do with the terrorists who attacked America, who Bush let get away at Tora Bora, and still hasn’t focused on, while he coddles their fundraisers in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Dean’s by no means a “peace at all costs” pacifist, and I think he’d be more than happy to lay the pressure down on the real terrorists in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, and handle North Korea intelligently, unlike Bush. I’d love to see it.
JPS
Andrew,
Did all our experts say that? Or did some say they might be for centrifuges, while others felt they might just be for rockets? Big difference between “lied” and “may in retrospect have been wrong.”
OK, Sean, I’ll bite: What would Howard Dean do about North Korea? Why would it work better, or be less risky, than the current approach? What is unintelligent about the current approach?
Sean
kind of a big thing to be wrong about, even in retrospect, dontcha think? if you are gonna attack someone, you better be damn sure they are an actual threat, like north korea (to bite, either negotiate with them, put on the economic and diplomatic pressure, threaten their ally china economically to put the screws on NK instead of coddling them too, or blast the NK nuclear plants, just NOT this nonsense “i’m going to call you evil and ignore you” game where they are pushed, and allowed, to develop missiles and nukes to sell to Yemen and the highest terrorist bidders because bush is more focused on his daddy’s opponents and short-sighted neocon fantasies than real threats).
Anyway…another distinction to bring up:
“pre-emptive” war = Israel, 1967. Immediate Threat. Can be justified. Possible other example would be NK developing nukes-we can see the plants, and selling the missiles abroad, which we also see.
“preventive” war – you think someone might be a threat, maybe, at some unknown time, down the road = US invasion of Iraq. not justified. (other examples might include Nazi invasion of USSR, and hell most of their invasions in general).
What makes us in a Democracy more civilized, and gets us the respect and moral upper hand, is that we agree to fight with one hand behind our back. We don’t strike first. We respond. We are not invaders, we are not attackers, we are not aggressors, unless it is our only hope left, as in the Six Days War.
Andrew Lazarus
I wouldn’t pick a Nazi example, Sean, when the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor would do at least as well.
If you followed the link, JPS, it seems all our real experts who work with these tubes knew they weren’t suitable for a nuclear purpose. Not even dual-use. In fact, they’re apparently an off-the-shelf item for rocket launchers. This makes sense when you realize that there wasn’t any matching nuclear program or material to use in them. Basically, starting from the mistaken conclusion, we made repeated scientific misjudgment to fill out the intermediate steps. (Another link on the tubes, not quite as strong in its conclusion. Alas, not free.)
We had a similar problem when David Kaye showed off the alleged CW canvas trucks, whose cover story for balloons “didn’t pass the laugh test”. The British [?] company that manufactures and sells the trucks for filling artillery balloons, which even had the receipt for what was apparently a standard order, wasn’t impressed.
JPS
Sean, Andrew: I wouldn’t pick the Nazi invasion of the USSR or the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. I would prefer the what-if where Britain and France went to war with Germany after Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland. A clear casus belli (albeit a technical one), and all-but assured victory.
Of course, then we never would have known just how necessary the war was.
So I don’t feel much like arguing about whether aluminum tubes of a certain grade could plausibly have been used for centrifuges, or whether they couldn’t have and we should have known it.
It’s enough for me that Iraq was frighteningly closer to having nukes at the time of the Gulf War than any U.S. intel agency realized (oh, and good ole Hans Blix gave them a clean bill of health not long before).
It would bother me if our govt knowingly lied, but I don’t buy it. They had a range of possible threats. You two seem to wish they had assumed the most benign possibility. They chose to assume the most malevolent possibility. They might have been wrong. In this case, I can live with that.
(Sorry for the length of this, John.)
Kimmitt
I’d be more happy with that analysis if Bush had been straight with us after the invasion, rather than claiming that a pair of hydrogen balloon-producing trailers were evidence of a functioning bioweapons program.
Chris Lawrence
Methinks you insult poly-sci undergrads. Try social work majors :-).
M. Scott Eiland
“Sean, Andrew: I wouldn’t pick the Nazi invasion of the USSR or the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. I would prefer the what-if where Britain and France went to war with Germany after Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland. A clear casus belli (albeit a technical one), and all-but assured victory.”
On the other hand, the failure of the Brits and the French there to act swiftly and ruthlessly against the Germans in the Rhineland prevented what would have been one of the most despicable injustices in human history; namely, that those who had directly prevented the slaughter of tens of millions of human beings would undoubtedly have been viciously smeared as warmongering monsters by the third rate utopian dimwits who were the brighter lights of the social sciences at the time. Of course, suggest that the situation these days might be similar, and the usual suspects will sneer at you and call you naive.
So be it.
Kimmitt
Ah, but if the British and the French had been magnanimous and humane in victory after WWI, rather than brutish and oppressive, we wouldn’t have had to fight WWII. There is a time for war and a time for peace, and a time for things in between.
In addition, you continue to dishonor the American soldiers who lost their lives fighting Naziism and Japanese fascism by implying that Saddam was a threat on the same level as Hitler and Tojo.
Jay Random
A threat on the same level as Hitler and Tojo? The only one who said anything about that, Kimmitt, was you. A threat of the same kind, and with the same opportunity (missed in 1936, seized in 2003) to stop it early? Definitely.
Robin Roberts
Kimmitt writes: “In addition, you continue to dishonor the American soldiers who lost their lives fighting Naziism and Japanese fascism by implying that Saddam was a threat on the same level as Hitler and Tojo. ”
Actually, Kimmitt, you dishonor them by wrapping yourself in them with that non sequitur cheap shot.
Kimmitt
“Of course, suggest that the situation these days might be similar, and the usual suspects will sneer at you and call you naive.”
This is from the post directly above mine. I was responding to it. Work with me here.