Tonight, I saw two contrasting views about a possible U.S. military action in Iraq, and two contrasting visions of America’s place in the post-9/11 world. The contrast was clarifying, if a bit dismaying.
The first was President George W. Bush’s impressive appearances before a world television audience. After brief remarks from the White House, he took questions from the White House press corps and answered them clearly and persuasively. I heard a compelling case against Saddam Hussein, and for the need to act resolutely and finally to end his threat to the U.S., the West, and the Middle East. A bit scripted and careful at first, the president loosened up as the hour neared its close, reverting to the clear and precise language for which he is caricatured by some – and respected by many more. The Washington Post had a quick, useful summary of Bush’s press conference. He’s no orator, of course, but he exudes decency, firmness, and confidence.
Compare this, if you have the stomach for it, with the cover screed published in the Triangle’s Independent Weekly newspaper this week. Penned by longtime columnist Hal Crowther, the piece is little more than a rant by a frustrated relic of the past who is angry that his misapprehensions aren’t universally shared and that a president he despises is about to wage a war against a terrorist state. Frankly, the article is an embarrassment – not only for someone who was once an interesting and talented commentator (though one I rarely agreed with) but also for the publication itself. The article wasn’t persuasive. It wasn’t reasoned. It was woefully misinformed, as if an aging hippie wandered in from a few years of tripping out at a desert commune, heard America was about to go to war, and started having Vietnam flashbacks.
It reads, actually, like the ravings of a lunatic. If you disagree, please help me see something else in it. Indeed, help me understand more generally why the Left has come to despise Bush so deeply, why it has devolved into self-parody and irrelevance in its desperate attempt to keep an abhorrent, dangerous tyrant from meeting his just end. As was the case during the Afghanistan operation last year – about which the usual suspects were, as usual, so very wrong – the academic and loony elements of the left wing in America and around the globe are proceeding rapidly and thoughtlessly in shredding their credibility with regard to human rights, to freedom and democracy, to equality for women, to the appreciation of racial and ethnic diversity, and all the other sentiments they have at least claimed to hold so dear for so long.
There’s just not anything else to say at this point. Either you believe in military action as one of the tools a free society can and just use to protect itself, or you don’t. If you do, but don’t think it should be used in this particular case, I think you are mistaken. But Hal Crowther and others of his ilk aren’t speaking for you. They are speaking, no screaming, on behalf of a political movement in the latter stages of self-immolation. Too bad.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of Carolina Journal.
p.s. Look for many changes to Carolina Journal Online on Monday. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised. As always, keep the comments and suggestions coming.