October 12, 2004

Ramirez Summarizes Bush’s Achievements

On the eve of the third Presidential debate, this Ramirez cartoon says it all.

On one hand, you have a president who inherited a recession, which cost millions of jobs…

Who has been a strong leader through the tragic loss and devastating economic consequences of 9/11…

And has led our nation through two victorious wars against countries that harbored and supported terrorists…

Whose tax cuts have fueled a remarkable economic recovery and a low, low unemployment rate…

Whose administration has exposed nuclear programs in North Korea, Iran and Libya…

All the while, he has stood firm and resolute in the face of enormous political pressure and Monday morning quarterbacking…

On the other hand,

John Kerry sure is a good debater…

Orson Scott Card on Richard Minniter’s “Shadow War” - Packed with Great Observations

I have permission from Orson Scott Card to post excerpts from his forthcoming essay, “Why We Are Winning and How We Can Still Lose”.

The dominant issue in this election is the war on terror.

Kerry and the other Democrats have made a series of charges against President Bush and his administration that the Iraq campaign was a distraction from the real war against Al Qaeda; that the Patriot Act is not necessary and that it is being abused; that Bush let Bin Laden get away at Tora Borah.

Are these charges true?

The best answer is a book called Shadow War: The Untold Story of How Bush Is Winning the War on Terror, by Richard Miniter. This is the one book that every American should read before this election.

BIN LADEN’S ESCAPE AT TORA BORA

Contrary to Kerrys deliberate deception, Bush did not let Osama get away at Torah Bora. It was winter in extraordinarily rugged country. All the forces that could be brought to bear were deployed, but no one, not even Bush, can defeat weather and terrain all the time.

It’s just Kerry doing his usual Monday-morning-quarterbacking. “I could do better,” he claims. Anybody can claim that about anything.

RUSSIA AND THE WAR ON TERRORISTS

From the start, Chechen Muslims have been in the highest circles of Al Qaeda. After all, Bin Laden got his start waging war against the Soviets in Afghanistan; Al Qaedas hatred of Russia is deep and unforgiving. So when we complain about Russias lack of support for us, lets remember that they are fighting the same war we are and have borne just as heavy a burden.

We should also remember that the monstrous attacks that Russia has suffered from Chechen rebels are exactly the sort of thing Al Qaeda would happily do inside America.

Russia may be more of an ally than we realize.

THE PATRIOT ACT

Above all, World War IV requires us to be able to respond instantly to information that will only be useful for hours or minutes. Those who would add new layers into the process of obtaining warrants for wiretaps and searches, or who would deny our operatives the right to make a search that is designed to be undetected, can wrap themselves in the flag and pretend that they are protecting the American way of life.

But if they succeed, then when our forces, hampered by the inability to take necessary actions, fail to prevent a massive attack on American soil, you can bet that the very people who eviscerated the Patriot Act will be the first to attack the government for failing to keep us safe.

KERRY AS A POSSIBLE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF

John Kerry is quite possibly the worst possible commander-in-chief for a nation at war that has ever been seriously considered during a political campaign. There is no aspect of the war on terror that his record shows him capable of or even interested in promoting.

And despite his claim that he could assemble a multinational force to firmly pursue our enemies, we know this crucial fact: In 1991, when we had a U.N. resolution, a multinational force, and an enemy that had invaded another country, threatened to control the worlds supply of oil, and had a record of using weapons of mass destruction which we knew he had, Kerry still voted against the Gulf War.

Kerry is the enemy of American military power, even when used multilaterally in support of international law. He will never, ever be capable of using our military effectively or carefully, despite the lies he tells during the process of a campaign.

And I call them lies because they so obviously are lies. Democrats speculate without evidence about President Bushs and Vice-President Cheneys motives all the time, accusing them of deception without a shred of evidence.

But Kerrys claim to being tougher and smarter about military matters than Bush is so obviously false that we should be laughing whenever he makes it. He has been wrong on every defense system, on every vote in his entire political career. If Kerrys will had prevailed, we would have no military that was capable of resisting our enemies.

The full essay should be online this coming Monday.

Kerry’s Nuisance Approach to Terrorists, Wrongly Assumes that No Nations Support Them

Dick Morris shows that treating terrorists as a police matter cannot succeed.

...terrorist gangs are only truly capable of mayhem when they’re aligned with nation-states, able to use a government’s resources to spread destruction globally.

...Complex operations require as the empowering accoutrements of nationhood: secure boundaries to plan and train for operations; import-export trade with other nations to use in smuggling; intelligence and diplomatic contacts worldwide; foreign currency reserves. With these tools, terror gangs become global threats.

It isn’t hard to smash a gang. It is very, very difficult to topple a foreign government and then restore the country to order. But it is only by going nation-by-nation and getting rid of those regimes that sponsor and promote terror gangs that we can be successful. President Bush began with Afghanistan and Iraq. While terrorists are still at large and causing damage in both places, they don’t control either country, and can’t use them as bases for global operations.

Bush flipped Libya by his aggressive and successful action against Saddam. Now he must use a robust American presence in Iraq to intimidate Syria and Iran and to get the Saudis to be tougher on terror. Then, with a successful track record behind him, Bush (along with China, South Korea and Japan) can begin to close in on North Korea.

But this model of a War on Terror is far from the mindset and the planning of the leadership of the Democratic Party. Shortly after 9/11, Leon Furth, Al Gore’s chief national-security adviser, warned against attacking Iraq and urged a law-enforcement approach to terror in language almost identical to Holbrooke’s and Kerry’s. The same misguided mindset characterized the Clinton administration’s core thinking on terror – that is, the “defense” that paved the way for 9/11. It is fundamentally, deeply and unalterably wrong.

Read the whole thing.

Going after individual terrorists and not the nations that support them, is to pretend that the leaders of those nations are not involved in the actions of those terrorists.

It is as if Kerry were to pretend that there were no Osama bin Laden, as long as Osama was the leader of a country.

By turning a blind eye to the very leaders of terrorist operations, Kerry would make it impossible for us to halt those operations.

Conclusion: if a nation is trying to get you nuked, and your president regards that as a nuisance, you are in deep trouble.


Update. See also these articles regarding Kerry’s “nuisance” speech:

Kerry Calls Terrorists ‘a Nuisance’—And What Bush Can Do To Appeal To Skittish Dems

Saddam’s Chief Nuclear Physicist Confirms Saddam’s Drive to Acquire WMDs