March 18, 2003

GIVE WAR A CHANCE

       For those of us old enough to remember WWII, the runup to Gulf War 2 has been instructive. We re-learn that human nature doesn't change. The lessons of history are forgotten. Appeasement seems more comprehensible, when we notice today's intellectual elites parading their anxieties and cowardice as high moral principle. Has it taken less than 70 years to forget appeasement of Hitler? Memories of Chamberlain announcing "peace in our time" to cheering throngs hold no lessons for our chattering classes. They argue that demonstrators chanting "peace" require us to continue the UN charade, that the easily swayed crowds must be right. The history of "peace" movements as protectors of tyrants like Stalin, is meaningless to contemporary utopians. Our 21st century peace marchers do not remember Picasso's peace doves, held aloft by an earlier generation's 'useful idiots',marching for Communist tyranny. Whether it's Tom Friedman, turning against the war following conversations with his nervous spouse, or Maureen Dowd, Pat Buchanan and others sounding like the pro-Hitler anti-semite, Charles Lindbergh, the sorry spectacle of academics, artists and opinion makers expending energy in denial of the obvious--that there are people with the means and motive to kill us---is painfully edifying. Alistair Cooke, remembering the debates in England during the 1930's, notes that "..so many of the arguments mounted against each other today, in the last fortnight, are exactly what we heard in the House of Commons debates and read in the French press. The French especially urged, after every Hitler invasion, "negotiation, negotiation". They negotiated so successfully as to have their whole country defeated and occupied. But as one famous French leftist said: "We did anyway manage to make them declare Paris an open city - no bombs on us!"
      Surprisingly, it is not the wordsmith intellectuals, and not the editorial opinion shapers who have learned from the past. The NYTimes editorial page once minimized Stalin's barbarism and now does the same for Saddam. While Gail Collins and Howell Raines verge on hysteria in the editorial pages of the NYTimes, our unverbal, much disdained "cowboy" President is able to face down the threat using blunt declarative sentences. Collins, Raines and Dowd share the French view that George Bush, not Saddam, constitutes the main danger to the world order. On the eve of a necessary military response to the attacks of 9-11, let us be thankful that George W. Bush managed to survive the grim political correctness of an Ivy League education with his sense of reality intact. Thank you, Mr. President. Now, let's give war a chance.

Posted at 06:48 PM by