The left's war for international affection

June 14, 2005

© 2005 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

If I hear one more time how the United States better clean up its
image in the world so we don't further alienate foreigners and
generate more terrorists, I think I'm going to retch.

There is no small amount of irony in the fact that the people who are
doing their level best to make sure the news is dominated by stories
portraying America as imperialistic and inhumane are the same ones
warning that we dare not permit our image to deteriorate.


They are determined to bring us stories week after week that depict
the United States as a heartless monster. They have been telling us
since we attacked Iraq that the Bush administration manipulated the
intelligence data on WMD and lied to get us into war, and that we
preemptively struck Iraq without provocation and in contravention of
international law.

It didn't matter to them that all of the independent investigations
they touted rejected their ultimate conclusions: that President Bush
pressured the intelligence agencies to doctor the evidence in favor of
war and that he misrepresented their unanimous assessment that Saddam
was stockpiling WMD.

They just kept disseminating the same lies - to the point that 90
percent of the Democrat base was actually taken in by them. And,
finally, after waiting patiently for years for a smoking gun to
incriminate the Bush administration, the American Left thought it had
received a gift from the God it doesn't believe in: the Downing Street
Memo.

This "scandalous" record of a meeting among British officials would be
no less powerful than the DNA-stained blue dress that jogged Bill
Clinton's memory during the days of the Kenneth Starr witch hunt. But
though the memo said, "the intelligence and facts were being fixed
around the policy," an honest contextual reading revealed that "fixed"
didn't mean "manipulated."

All but Bushophobic readers understood that this same memo disclosed a
genuine belief by the Brits that Saddam did in fact have WMD and that
he might unleash them on allied forces if we attacked. Even liberal
columnist Michael Kinsley doesn't seem to buy that the memo is a
smoking gun. The memo has turned out to be much ado about nothing.

Not to worry. There's always Gitmo: the story that just won't die -
the Left will see to that. Their relentless mantra is that the Bush
administration systematically abuses and tortures terrorist war
prisoners - at Gitmo and elsewhere.

Forget that we mostly bend over backward to treat enemy combatants
with kid gloves, feeding them better than our own troops, providing
them with copies of the Koran and enforcing special rules to ensure it
is treated respectfully. Forget that the toughest interrogation
techniques to which many objected only lasted two weeks, and still did
not result in the 20th 9-11 hijacker being physically assaulted. But
they did result in the ascertainment of critical information that may
have saved many American and Iraqi lives.

The Left steadfastly chooses to ignore the positive, hype the negative
and presume American culpability. They deny their reflexively
anti-American instincts and congenital softness on terrorism,
insisting they are more committed to winning the war than even the
evil "neocons." It's just America's methods they disapprove of.

But where did they get this rarely challenged, counterintuitive and
nonsensical idea that terrorism is spawned primarily by American
misconduct - or America's cavalier image? How can anyone with the
slightest hint of objectivity conclude that Islamic terrorism is a
reaction to, or a byproduct of, evil emanating from the United States?
Who, besides the terrorist themselves could possibly take such garbage
seriously?

Leave it to the American Left, which bristles at the slightest
insinuation that it sometimes goes to extensive lengths to conceal its
patriotism, to figure that the outcome of the war will be determined
by means of a popularity contest - America's image abroad - rather
than bombs, guns and bullets.

Indeed, the Left and squishy moderates are now saying we should close
down Gitmo, even if it is clear no mistreatment of terrorist prisoners
is occurring there - because such a gesture will show the world our
goodwill and rehabilitate our image.


Such thinking is pathetic and promises disastrous consequences. Of
course we should comport ourselves consistent with our high moral
standards - because it is the right thing to do. But we must not
delude ourselves into thinking the war is a public-relations contest
and place ourselves and our troops into a politically correct
straightjacket in order to score higher on the next international
poll.

The notion that our success in the war will depend on our image is
appeasement-driven psychobabble. But if the Left is so convinced of
it, isn't it time they ceased and desisted doing everything in their
power to destroy our image?

Attorney David Limbaugh is the author of the pull-no-punches expose of
corruption in the Clinton-Reno Justice Department, "Absolute Power."

The left's war for international affection

June 14, 2005

© 2005 Creators Syndicate, Inc.

If I hear one more time how the United States better clean up its
image in the world so we don't further alienate foreigners and
generate more terrorists, I think I'm going to retch.

There is no small amount of irony in the fact that the people who are
doing their level best to make sure the news is dominated by stories
portraying America as imperialistic and inhumane are the same ones
warning that we dare not permit our image to deteriorate.


They are determined to bring us stories week after week that depict
the United States as a heartless monster.