The Discerning Texan
All that is necessary for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing.
-- Edmund Burke
-- Edmund Burke
Sunday, November 27, 2005
Ben Stein comments on a Democratic recipe for an Al Qaeda victory
(With a well-deserved h/t to Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs), Ben Stein has a sensational column up in the latest American Spectator. Some key grafs:
Conducting the war against al-Qaeda and the terrorists is a major drain on the energies of this administration. It would be a major drain on the energies of any administration. For Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald to be further draining the energies of the administration with his perjury indictment of Scooter Libby would be a matter for the most urgent concern if the charges against Libby were serious. But since by common consent of every serious criminal lawyer I have talked to, they are simply matters of routine politics being made criminal so that Fitzgerald can get on the cover of magazines -- this is scandalous. That is, to bring perjury charges over a matter where there is no underlying crime is always considered highly questionable behavior by a prosecutor. But to do so against an official helping to wage a war is almost unbelievable.
And this:
It is not just a guess, but a certainty that if the U.S. were to abruptly withdraw from Iraq, as the Democrats are urging us to do, there would be a bloodbath in Iraq far worse than what we have seen so far. There would be outright civil war, large scale massacres of civilian populations beyond what we have seen by an order of magnitude, and a Middle East in chaos as Iran, the Kurds, and the Sunnis fought it out for land and oil and power. The word of the United States would be mud. Is this really what the Democrats want? Can they really contemplate with calm equanimity the mass murders that will follow a sudden U.S. withdrawal?
I see a frightening pattern here: the Democrats wanted us out of Vietnam, and never mind the genocide that followed. The Democrats want us out of Iraq and never mind that the Baathists will fill the vacuum and all Iraq will be screaming in pain except the murderers, who will exult -- especially Osama bin Laden. Can it be that the Democrats really want to surrender to the same man who killed 3,000 civilians on 9/11 and laughed about it? Are we so weak that in only four years, after a war smaller in casualties than many unknown battles of the Civil War, we are already eager to surrender to the man who murdered women and children and made terrified couples hold hands and leap to their deaths from the World Trade Center? If so, there really is little hope for us as a people. My prayer is that careful reflection will convince the Democrats that while we are all unhappy about the war, war is hell, and surrender is far worse. Maybe the Copperheads in the Democrat party, like those who wanted appeasement of the slave owners one hundred and forty years ago, will be a minority, and those who want to keep up the fight for human decency will prevail even as the Neville Chamberlains speak of peace at any price.
I have a voluminous correspondence with soldiers and Marines in Iraq. To a man and woman, they do not want to walk away and make their comrades' deaths meaningless. They hate the war. They hate the dying. They grieve. So do their families. But they believe in their mission and they do not want their brothers' losses to be in vain. Their voices should be listened to.
By all means, read the whole thing. Stein is in top form here.
Conducting the war against al-Qaeda and the terrorists is a major drain on the energies of this administration. It would be a major drain on the energies of any administration. For Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald to be further draining the energies of the administration with his perjury indictment of Scooter Libby would be a matter for the most urgent concern if the charges against Libby were serious. But since by common consent of every serious criminal lawyer I have talked to, they are simply matters of routine politics being made criminal so that Fitzgerald can get on the cover of magazines -- this is scandalous. That is, to bring perjury charges over a matter where there is no underlying crime is always considered highly questionable behavior by a prosecutor. But to do so against an official helping to wage a war is almost unbelievable.
And this:
It is not just a guess, but a certainty that if the U.S. were to abruptly withdraw from Iraq, as the Democrats are urging us to do, there would be a bloodbath in Iraq far worse than what we have seen so far. There would be outright civil war, large scale massacres of civilian populations beyond what we have seen by an order of magnitude, and a Middle East in chaos as Iran, the Kurds, and the Sunnis fought it out for land and oil and power. The word of the United States would be mud. Is this really what the Democrats want? Can they really contemplate with calm equanimity the mass murders that will follow a sudden U.S. withdrawal?
I see a frightening pattern here: the Democrats wanted us out of Vietnam, and never mind the genocide that followed. The Democrats want us out of Iraq and never mind that the Baathists will fill the vacuum and all Iraq will be screaming in pain except the murderers, who will exult -- especially Osama bin Laden. Can it be that the Democrats really want to surrender to the same man who killed 3,000 civilians on 9/11 and laughed about it? Are we so weak that in only four years, after a war smaller in casualties than many unknown battles of the Civil War, we are already eager to surrender to the man who murdered women and children and made terrified couples hold hands and leap to their deaths from the World Trade Center? If so, there really is little hope for us as a people. My prayer is that careful reflection will convince the Democrats that while we are all unhappy about the war, war is hell, and surrender is far worse. Maybe the Copperheads in the Democrat party, like those who wanted appeasement of the slave owners one hundred and forty years ago, will be a minority, and those who want to keep up the fight for human decency will prevail even as the Neville Chamberlains speak of peace at any price.
I have a voluminous correspondence with soldiers and Marines in Iraq. To a man and woman, they do not want to walk away and make their comrades' deaths meaningless. They hate the war. They hate the dying. They grieve. So do their families. But they believe in their mission and they do not want their brothers' losses to be in vain. Their voices should be listened to.
By all means, read the whole thing. Stein is in top form here.