The Discerning Texan
All that is necessary for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing.
-- Edmund Burke
-- Edmund Burke
Friday, December 23, 2005
Senate Demagogues: living in a pre-9/11 dream world
Hugh Hewitt and Mark Steyn discuss the extent to which the US Senate is betraying the people it represents (excellent transcript, as always, courtesty of Radio Blogger):
HH: Mark Steyn joins me, columnist to the world. Mark, I want to begin with a report today from Jane's Defense Weekly, one of the preeminent publications in the world on such matters that Iran has acquired medium and intermediate range ballistic missiles from our friends in the democratic people's republic of Korea. At what point does the world get serious about the nutters who will now have medium and intermediate range missiles?
MS: Well, the honest answer to that, Hugh, I would say, is probably about three years ago is when we should have got serious. Every month that goes by makes it more difficult for us to get serious, because every day that goes by, they've got more, they're closer to perfecting their delivery systems. They're closer to being able to do what they want to do with them. In fact, they're already exercising a kind of nuclear blackmail over both the Middle East and the European Union, which is the insane reason for having nukes, is to wipe Israel off the map. The sane reason is to make Iran the de facto power in that part of the world. And looking at the craven negotiations the Europeans have been conducting, they're already well on the way to that. So I think every day that goes by now...we're already in extra time, and the options are getting extremely difficult, even for the Israelis.
HH: It's also been reported over the last week that the fellow...the president of Iran continues to say the sorts of things we associate with the Holocaust deniers in the United States and around the world, who we put into that cabin of nutters. And this guy has a lot of power. Is that intentional on his part? Or does he really believe it? Is he trying to provoke? Or is he trying to be believed?
MS: Well, I think if you look at this guy's background, he was one of the fellows involved in the hostage crisis 25 years ago. He does believe it. You hear this all the time in the Middle East. I like an awful lot of Arabs, and an awful lot of Persians. But when you're out there, there comes a point in the conversation, sometimes it's two minutes into the conversation, sometimes it's forty minutes into the conversation, where an apparently well-educated, intelligent person will say something to you about Israel and the Jews that is utterly insane. And the only surprise here is that this guy is saying it in public, and when he sees the Western press, and I gather that several of the bigshot ayatollahs are telling him to ease up on it, instead of saying he was misunderstood, he actually clarifies it each time.
HH: Yes. Yes, he says no, I really do mean this, and Israel's got to go.
MS: Yeah.
HH: So at what point does Europe...forget us...does Europe get serious? Or is Israel going to have to do this on their own?
MS: There will be...nobody in Europe is going to get serious, I think with the possible exception of the British government. But even the British government has gone along with this pretense that Iran is, in fact, a Muslim democracy in the Middle East. And many of these continental countries, after America withdrew in the wake of the fall of the Shah, the Germans and the French were eager to jump in there and take up the big trade deals and everything that were an offer, and they are simply too locked into that. And they...I think not so much in London, but I think in Paris and Berlin, they've already adjusted to the reality of a nuclear Iran. In other words, they understand that Iran is going to be a nuclear power, and they accept that.
HH: That is remarkable. Will Israel accept it, in your opinion, Mark Steyn?
MS: I don't think so, but that isn't the easiest flight to make, to take out the Iranian nuclear program. And again, I think insofar as there's any kind of sane strategy between what Tehran is doing, it's basically trying to stretch out these sort of joke European Union negotiations for long enough to close off the Israelis' options. That's really the interest in them from Tehran's point of view.
HH: All right. Let's switch to the United States, where the United States Senate is hardly covering itself in glory this week. Have you watched much of the last couple of days, Mark Steyn?
MS: I find the Senate unwatchable. I mean, I think they are the House of Lords, and I think these people...these guys with hundreds of staff. I lost a beloved assistant of mine in my own New Hampshire office, Melissa, who went off to work for Senator Sununu. And I assumed, you know, that she was going to be his executive supremo, like she was for me. He's got hundreds of people working for him, and I don't understand why citizen legislators need these sort of...the size of court that a self-respecting Middle Eastern emir would have. I think that's part of the problem. That's why they're out of touch. It's effectively become the House of Lords, literally in the case of Lincoln Chafee, whose only there because of his dad. He inherited the title. It's like inheriting a dukedom or an earldom. And I think it's an obnoxious and disgraceful offense for American democracy, even if it hadn't performed abysmally in the last four years, which it has. It's a September the 10th Senate.
HH: It is. That's on my list of questions for you. Are we living in a 9/10 or a 9/12 world, and you've just answered it for the Senate. And I think it's even...it's spreading through the House of Representatives, etc, which came back to the proposed six month extension of the Patriot Act, and it's turned into a one month extension of the Patriot Act, when nobody's there, Mark Steyn. It's like a carnival.
MS: Well you know, I mean just to clarify my position on that, I'm a small government guy. I think the ATF and the DEA and the FBI have way too many powers. I think there's a big bureaucratization that has gone on in the name of homeland security, which has nothing to do with homeland security. But at the same time, I think if you do want a government that has extraordinary powers in wartime, the ability to conduct foreign intelligence is the one corner of the world where they should be free to do things. And you know, it's not even that we're back in a September 10th America, it's worse than that, because effectively now, what's happened under the Democrats and weak-willed Republicans is the United States government is effectively extending the rights and privileges of United States citizens to foreign terrorists in foreign countries. They're saying now that if you really want to act against some guy in an al Qaeda cell in Hamburg, or in Pakistan, he's effectively got the same rights that O.J. Simpson had when he was accused of something. I mean, this is preposterous.
HH: Have you been following the legal argument today, the Deparment of Justice released a brief, my friend, John Hinderacker at Powerline put everything up, I have been writing about it extensively. Even liberals like the University of Chicago's Cass Sunstein, who will join me next hour are agreeing the president has this power. But have you been following this debate? And as a very well-informed non-lawyer, is the correct analysis getting through in your opinion?
MS: I think...Well, I think there are two things. I mean, I think on the legal side is absolutely right. In other words, I don't believe they have a legal case. But I think that in the big picture things, this is the very least that most Americans would expect their government to be doing. And so I think the politics of it would be disastrous for Democrats, even if they could prove that they were right in the very narrow, legalistic sense. I still think the politics would be disastrous. But I think the legal grounds are absolutely clear here. And even in the bits where it gets a little murkier, this distinction in law between what they call a U.S. person and non-U.S. person. Even their way does get a little grayer. The preponderance of the evidence is that the president is within the rights to do what he's been doing, and we would expect him to do it.
HH: I agree with you completely. Let's go to the politics of it then. Ought the Republicans in the Senate yesterday to have forced the Democrats to A) shut down the Pentagon, or let us drill in ANWAR, or B) force them to filibuster the Patriot Act. Should they have gone the extra mile?
MS: I think so. I think ANWAR is something where I think you can fault Republicans in general, and also, I think, the president for not making this case in the fall of 2001. But basically, our only interest, the interest of the Western world, and the interest it has in the Middle East, is basically that it's an oil producer. And so the way to in effect the Middle East less critical to our interests, is to play up North American sources of energy. And the idea that you prioritize at a time of war the world's largest mosquito herd, which is what all that...you know, wilderness sounds very nice. In fact, it's extremely ugly up there. I've been north of 60, as they say, a few times, and anyone who thinks this is sort of pretty is wrong. It's basically a wilderness with a giant mosquito herd. And the elks like the pipeline, and the caribou like the pipeline. It would be fine. And if you can't do it in wartime, then when can you do it?
HH: Exactly. And thirty seconds, Mark Steyn. Senate leadership, Bill Frist, up or down this week in terms of your esteem?
MS: Down. You know, we keep talking about getting to the sixty seat Senate. Looking at the way some of these Senators behave, you'd have to have seventy nominally Republican Senators, and even then you'd be in doubt on a lot of votes.
HH: Always a pleasure, Mark Steyn. You can read everything he writes at Steynonline.com, America. Mark Steyn, thank you.
HH: Mark Steyn joins me, columnist to the world. Mark, I want to begin with a report today from Jane's Defense Weekly, one of the preeminent publications in the world on such matters that Iran has acquired medium and intermediate range ballistic missiles from our friends in the democratic people's republic of Korea. At what point does the world get serious about the nutters who will now have medium and intermediate range missiles?
MS: Well, the honest answer to that, Hugh, I would say, is probably about three years ago is when we should have got serious. Every month that goes by makes it more difficult for us to get serious, because every day that goes by, they've got more, they're closer to perfecting their delivery systems. They're closer to being able to do what they want to do with them. In fact, they're already exercising a kind of nuclear blackmail over both the Middle East and the European Union, which is the insane reason for having nukes, is to wipe Israel off the map. The sane reason is to make Iran the de facto power in that part of the world. And looking at the craven negotiations the Europeans have been conducting, they're already well on the way to that. So I think every day that goes by now...we're already in extra time, and the options are getting extremely difficult, even for the Israelis.
HH: It's also been reported over the last week that the fellow...the president of Iran continues to say the sorts of things we associate with the Holocaust deniers in the United States and around the world, who we put into that cabin of nutters. And this guy has a lot of power. Is that intentional on his part? Or does he really believe it? Is he trying to provoke? Or is he trying to be believed?
MS: Well, I think if you look at this guy's background, he was one of the fellows involved in the hostage crisis 25 years ago. He does believe it. You hear this all the time in the Middle East. I like an awful lot of Arabs, and an awful lot of Persians. But when you're out there, there comes a point in the conversation, sometimes it's two minutes into the conversation, sometimes it's forty minutes into the conversation, where an apparently well-educated, intelligent person will say something to you about Israel and the Jews that is utterly insane. And the only surprise here is that this guy is saying it in public, and when he sees the Western press, and I gather that several of the bigshot ayatollahs are telling him to ease up on it, instead of saying he was misunderstood, he actually clarifies it each time.
HH: Yes. Yes, he says no, I really do mean this, and Israel's got to go.
MS: Yeah.
HH: So at what point does Europe...forget us...does Europe get serious? Or is Israel going to have to do this on their own?
MS: There will be...nobody in Europe is going to get serious, I think with the possible exception of the British government. But even the British government has gone along with this pretense that Iran is, in fact, a Muslim democracy in the Middle East. And many of these continental countries, after America withdrew in the wake of the fall of the Shah, the Germans and the French were eager to jump in there and take up the big trade deals and everything that were an offer, and they are simply too locked into that. And they...I think not so much in London, but I think in Paris and Berlin, they've already adjusted to the reality of a nuclear Iran. In other words, they understand that Iran is going to be a nuclear power, and they accept that.
HH: That is remarkable. Will Israel accept it, in your opinion, Mark Steyn?
MS: I don't think so, but that isn't the easiest flight to make, to take out the Iranian nuclear program. And again, I think insofar as there's any kind of sane strategy between what Tehran is doing, it's basically trying to stretch out these sort of joke European Union negotiations for long enough to close off the Israelis' options. That's really the interest in them from Tehran's point of view.
HH: All right. Let's switch to the United States, where the United States Senate is hardly covering itself in glory this week. Have you watched much of the last couple of days, Mark Steyn?
MS: I find the Senate unwatchable. I mean, I think they are the House of Lords, and I think these people...these guys with hundreds of staff. I lost a beloved assistant of mine in my own New Hampshire office, Melissa, who went off to work for Senator Sununu. And I assumed, you know, that she was going to be his executive supremo, like she was for me. He's got hundreds of people working for him, and I don't understand why citizen legislators need these sort of...the size of court that a self-respecting Middle Eastern emir would have. I think that's part of the problem. That's why they're out of touch. It's effectively become the House of Lords, literally in the case of Lincoln Chafee, whose only there because of his dad. He inherited the title. It's like inheriting a dukedom or an earldom. And I think it's an obnoxious and disgraceful offense for American democracy, even if it hadn't performed abysmally in the last four years, which it has. It's a September the 10th Senate.
HH: It is. That's on my list of questions for you. Are we living in a 9/10 or a 9/12 world, and you've just answered it for the Senate. And I think it's even...it's spreading through the House of Representatives, etc, which came back to the proposed six month extension of the Patriot Act, and it's turned into a one month extension of the Patriot Act, when nobody's there, Mark Steyn. It's like a carnival.
MS: Well you know, I mean just to clarify my position on that, I'm a small government guy. I think the ATF and the DEA and the FBI have way too many powers. I think there's a big bureaucratization that has gone on in the name of homeland security, which has nothing to do with homeland security. But at the same time, I think if you do want a government that has extraordinary powers in wartime, the ability to conduct foreign intelligence is the one corner of the world where they should be free to do things. And you know, it's not even that we're back in a September 10th America, it's worse than that, because effectively now, what's happened under the Democrats and weak-willed Republicans is the United States government is effectively extending the rights and privileges of United States citizens to foreign terrorists in foreign countries. They're saying now that if you really want to act against some guy in an al Qaeda cell in Hamburg, or in Pakistan, he's effectively got the same rights that O.J. Simpson had when he was accused of something. I mean, this is preposterous.
HH: Have you been following the legal argument today, the Deparment of Justice released a brief, my friend, John Hinderacker at Powerline put everything up, I have been writing about it extensively. Even liberals like the University of Chicago's Cass Sunstein, who will join me next hour are agreeing the president has this power. But have you been following this debate? And as a very well-informed non-lawyer, is the correct analysis getting through in your opinion?
MS: I think...Well, I think there are two things. I mean, I think on the legal side is absolutely right. In other words, I don't believe they have a legal case. But I think that in the big picture things, this is the very least that most Americans would expect their government to be doing. And so I think the politics of it would be disastrous for Democrats, even if they could prove that they were right in the very narrow, legalistic sense. I still think the politics would be disastrous. But I think the legal grounds are absolutely clear here. And even in the bits where it gets a little murkier, this distinction in law between what they call a U.S. person and non-U.S. person. Even their way does get a little grayer. The preponderance of the evidence is that the president is within the rights to do what he's been doing, and we would expect him to do it.
HH: I agree with you completely. Let's go to the politics of it then. Ought the Republicans in the Senate yesterday to have forced the Democrats to A) shut down the Pentagon, or let us drill in ANWAR, or B) force them to filibuster the Patriot Act. Should they have gone the extra mile?
MS: I think so. I think ANWAR is something where I think you can fault Republicans in general, and also, I think, the president for not making this case in the fall of 2001. But basically, our only interest, the interest of the Western world, and the interest it has in the Middle East, is basically that it's an oil producer. And so the way to in effect the Middle East less critical to our interests, is to play up North American sources of energy. And the idea that you prioritize at a time of war the world's largest mosquito herd, which is what all that...you know, wilderness sounds very nice. In fact, it's extremely ugly up there. I've been north of 60, as they say, a few times, and anyone who thinks this is sort of pretty is wrong. It's basically a wilderness with a giant mosquito herd. And the elks like the pipeline, and the caribou like the pipeline. It would be fine. And if you can't do it in wartime, then when can you do it?
HH: Exactly. And thirty seconds, Mark Steyn. Senate leadership, Bill Frist, up or down this week in terms of your esteem?
MS: Down. You know, we keep talking about getting to the sixty seat Senate. Looking at the way some of these Senators behave, you'd have to have seventy nominally Republican Senators, and even then you'd be in doubt on a lot of votes.
HH: Always a pleasure, Mark Steyn. You can read everything he writes at Steynonline.com, America. Mark Steyn, thank you.
