As recent events show, the cabinet of Pres. Bush has taken a drastic turn since his reelection.
First, Attorney Gen. John Ashcroft resigned his position. This itself was cause for cheering by liberals who saw Ashcroft as not being permissive enough with regards to their left-wing agenda. However, Ashcroft has to be commended. On his appointment, he was a known opponent of anti-gun legislation -- a veiw consistant with the government's responsibility to safeguard, rather than violate, citizens' individual rights. He was also an opponent of legal abortion -- a dangerous veiw suited more to statism than liberty. However, Ashcroft assured critics that he would both enforce gun laws, even though he believed them unjust, and enforce the legal status of abortion, even though he did not approve of it -- because both were the law of the land.
This stood in sharp contrast to Clinton's AG Janet Reno, who not only failed to enforce laws due to her own political beliefs and pragmatic concerns of her President, but actually broke laws in the course of enforcing his policy.
Another comparison to Clinton's Attorney General -- and Clinton himself -- is in order. It is clear that many people disproved of Ashcroft. Many people disproved also of Reno. The difference is that Bush, though he has been described as arrogant and careless by the Press, has listened to his apparent critics, despite the partisan nature of their words, and Ashcroft is no more. Clinton, of course, who had a reputation as a much more "likeable" president, whose slogan was "I feel your pain", told concerned citizens to hell with you when he, in effect, ignored legitimate concerns about Janet Reno and kept her on for a second term, even after massacres of innocent children and pistol-whiping of reporters, at Waco, Texas, and the Elian incident in Florida, respectively.
This change probably bears ill for the nation; the criticisms of Ashcroft were directed at him largely for what he was doing right [such as upholding the law even when he personally didn't want to or when it was unpopular]. If he left for this reason, his replacement will likely be one who is less likely to do so.
However, not all changes are for ill. President Bush's Secretary of State, the dovish Colin Powell, has been replaced with Condaleeza Rice, his National Security Advisor. This can only indicate a bold new direction for the Bush Administration.
Powell was known for tip-toeing around many of the necessities of defense. There is a reason it was Powell who was picked for taking the case of America to the U.N., prior to action in Iraq, in what was essentially the Bush Administration's water-down version of John Kerry's "global test". Powell no doubt served honorably in his own mind, but his pragmatic veiws often led to an permissive attitude towards terrorists -- at a very time when we aught to be eradicating them. Whatever you may say about the man, his role was, at best, one of diluting America's defense. Ms. Rice was, and is, known as more of a "hawk". There is a reason that Rice is so hated by the leftist media and Powell so liked. One recalls an interview in which Rice was asked, prior to the Iraqi War, of a possible use of nuclear arsenal against terrorist regimes. The reporter asked her "Wouldn't that be a tragedy?" Rice responded in words that should make every American proud, turning the questioning back to its real focus, when she said that the real tragedy would by the use of an unconventional weapon by terrorists against an American city.
The departure of Powell opens a door for a more effective defense of U.S. interests and lives. It leaves open the possiblity that America will spend less time showing flowcharts and photographs to shaking heads in the U.N. chamber, and more time eliminating the killers who are chopping off heads in places like Iraq and threatening the world with nukes from the minerets in Iran. Already, the invasion of Fallujah following Bush's reelection was a promising ring. That troops found hostages slain, and rescued some imprisoned survivors, calls to mind the heartbreaking videos of Americans and others being murdered by terrorist kidnappers. One wonders, though, how many lives would have been saved, and how much quicker our troops would have gained control, if we had not withdrawn from the city in the first place, allowing terror a safe haven. At risk of comparing the war to a cancer, the fact is you cannot heal a person if you kill all the cancer but leave one spot untouched; it will grow back and spread again. The same is true of insect infestation; if exterminators do not fumigate the entire house, the roaches will hide, then crawl out when the exterminator has left and take over once more. This is as true for terrorists as roaches. In Iraq -- as in the pro-terrorist Islamic fundamentalist world entire -- our efforts have been peicemeal, permitting the enemy to relocate, rearm, and return. Weapons, goods, fighters and fugative, travel from Iraq to nearby nations, sold illicitly by the friendly or averacous in Europe, emenies migrate to terror-friendly cities like Fallujah, or import support from neighbors like Iran.
The current restructuring of the Bush Administration has – in the eyes of the leftist media – been proof that they are right. Whilst most of this restructuring has been positive – such as the replacement of the reluctant Colin Powel with the no-nonsense Condaleeza Rice – the media is insistent that the bush administration is “firing everyone who was right” – according to one media commentator heard on the radio.
The media is still in a huff about the Democrats losing the election. Yet, they talk about how voters went out of their way to avoid Democratic candidates – alleging voters in one swing state chose a “mental patient” over the Democratic contender – they fail to acknowledge WHY – why would voters be so eager to avoid the Democratic party?
The reason is the Democrat’s stand on national defense; namely, they do not believe in it. It is in line with this that the Bush Administration is taking its leave from officials who were closer to the Democratic line than its own. Yet, the left feeds its fire of righteousness by proclaiming that the administration is “purging” itself of “everyone who was right”.
Right about what? Right about the war in Iraq? The threat of terrorism?
Rice’s appointment is criticized by critics who bash her focus on terror pre-9/11. In their view, the Bush Administration should be judged by what it didn’t do in the few months leading up to September 11. However, after Sept. 11, when Bush acted, the media criticized him for his unilateralism. What could he have done pre-9/11 – had he known – that would have been effective and not grounds for the same denunciation of “unilateralism”? Rice is accused of presiding over the “two worst foreign policy debacles” of our time, Sept. 11 and Iraq, respectively.
The focus on Rice’s background pre-September 11, with criticism for her not heeding Clarke’s alleged warnings, rest on the credibility of Clarke himself, which does not appear to exist. And even if Dick Clarke was taken as credible, and the left’s criticism of Condolezzea Rice considered valid, it would still be tantamount to exposing the hypocrisy of the left itself. Whilst criticizing the Bush administration – and Rice – for not “doing something” to prevent 9/11 in the few months it was in office, Clarke, the leftist media, and the Bush bashers ignore the fact that they all did nothing either, for the eight year leading up to September 11. Even if Clarke could be believed, and Rice revealed as thereby unqualified, all it would prove is that the darlings of the left – the Clintons – are and were just as unqualified for presiding over eight years of non-responses to escalating terrorist attacks.
In fact by extension, Clarke could be similarly regarded as unqualified. So even if you believe him, you ultimately have to disbelieve him. What he accuses Rice and the Bush Administration of, is exactly what he himself has been doing to the nth degree, for almost ten years.
So where does that leave America? Is the Bush administration really “purging” itself of “those who were right”?
To the contrary, most of those who have gone by the wayside, with the possible exception of Ashcroft, were wrong, not right.
Yet, put things in context; Clinton had eight years to deter 9/11 during which he did nothing despite escalating terror attacks by Al Qaeda and other such terrorists. Bush had a matter of months.
And once the attacks of September 11 happened, Bush did something.
America suffered dozens of terror attacks on Clinton’s watch, and waited in vain for a proper response, which never came. “Boy Clinton’s” disdain for the U.S. military and his distracting scandalous pastimes meant he could not be bothered to discharge his duties of national defense. Indeed, the only use of US military Clinton engaged in was to involve us in questionable wars on altruistic pretense. About terrorism, Clinton did and said virtually nothing.
Yet, we are asked to believe by a questionable media that Condaleeza Rice “failed” to heed Dick Clarke’s “warnings” about terror pre-Sept. 11. You do perhaps you recall him? He’s the guy who used the 9/11 hearings to advertise his anti-Bush book. Clarke, who claimed the Clinton administration that utterly neglected American defense, had “no higher priority” than combating terrorism” – this is the source of the allegedly credible warnings Rice should have listened to pre-9/11?
Whether or not the intelligence community and the government knew of the specifics of the upcoming Sept. 11 attacks, it was well known that groups such as Al Qaeda were engaged in terrorist warfare against the U.S. Why was it known? Because the attacks had been going on uninterrupted by any credible defense since the first half of President Clinton’s term! Those who would have America believe that Rice is unfit for her post because she “ignored” Clarke’s warnings, is asking the citizenry to accept that Clarke himself is credible. This assault on the Bush administration – and Rice’s – credibility rests on the acceptance of Dick Clarke’s credibility. And Clarke – a man who has helped create the myth of “Clinton the Terror-fighter” and thus virtually obstructed any meaningful examination of the policy failures of the Clinton years – has little in the way of credibility.
What America needs to do is reverse the trend of the Clinton years, which has found a refuge in some of the more lackluster Bush appointments; indivifduals who were often at odds with the administration when it was right, and supporting it when it was wrong. The very fact that the media regards these individuals as being fired for "being right" sends a frightening message about the crediblity of the media itself.
America needs adn administration unafraid to treat the entire pan-Islamic fundamentalist threat as what it is; a mosaic of enemies with the common goal of our destruction. Dealing with one nation at a time is better than nothing but will not solve the problem, only chase it about the globe.
Perhaps this new administration will be in a position now to take the country in a better direction, and fight the war like it means to win.
11/30/04
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