My Ideology

I am disappointed with the right and I am disappointed with the left. My liberal tendencies might explain my disappointment with our current administration, even as hope of a November upheaval continues to grow. I speak little of political conservatism/rightism because I know comparatively little about it.

I know the long-term goals of the right: slashed taxes (possibly repealing the income tax and instituting a sales tax), appointing judges to overturn 1950s-1980s-era liberal reforms (abortion and otherwise, the otherwise dates back to 1937), and for a dwindling few, plans to execute regime change in more than just Iraq and Afghanistan.

I never supported going to war, but I hoped it would succeed. I am not going to pretend to know whether President Bush's methods have created/radicalized a new generation of terrorists, whether his foray into Iraq made us less safer despite five years without a terrorist attack on home soil; history will take care of that. Yet, as others have pointed out, the president's decision to fight the war/occupation continues to astound.

I cannot conceive of a greater miscalculation: the American people would have supported even massive losses of life if they saw suitable progress to revamping the Middle East; yet, Bush, Cheney, et al decided against overwhelming force on the scale of WWII, on the gamble that their superb military, of which I was to take part, could handle any problems. Except that Saddam Hussein's regime didn't shatter, it merely imploded into the countryside, so many Baathist loyalists were not defeated.

We might say, though the situation in Iraq is far more important than Vietnam ever was, that the Right continues to make the same mistakes of depending on military force to solve (perhaps) mainly political problems and adopting the Jacksonian attitude of stubbornly holding on to even fairly dubious policies. What the right is putting America through is reprehensible, what the left is putting America through is outright unconscionable.

The same folks that marched against other Republican presidents and with the USSR and Viet Cong (some more explicit than others) are now at it again with George W. Bush, the man often branded as the world's number-one terrorist. The deep (albeit mildly successful--for now) partisanship polarization engineered by this president's political team has several effects: it poisons opportunities for moderation in Washington, but worst of all, it leads otherwise reputable people on the left to acquiesce (if not worse) to the dangerous designs of Iran, to name just the most glaring. Standing with the contemptible Chavez, as Cindy Sheehan and other "peace" activists have done, is one thing--in effect marching for Hezbollah and supporting the Iranian government's quest for nuclear weapons is entirely another.

It would seem that liberals and progressives have too much time to bash our president (whether some of us like it or not) and not enough time to address the real enemy: Islamic extremism. The silence of feminist women on this issue, presumably out of fear of losing their cherished multiculturism plaudits, defaces the accomplishments of their legendary predecessors. Comedian Bill Maher once said, "Don't become so tolerant that you tolerate intolerance." Yet, we do. The strong isolationist wing of the Democratic Party prevented John Kerry's election as U. S. President. I believe most Americans trusted Kerry on national security--but not his friends, not the people who nominated him and paid for his campaign. The Senator's inability to effectively distance himself, Clinton-style, from these folks is the main reason he is still a legislator and not an executive.

It is true, liberals are so many years removed from actual power (twelve, actually) that some have forgotten to speak up even with the current administration doesn't care to listen. Consider the last two weeks: Hezbollah probably achieved their greatest victory, owing to the nerves of an inexperienced Prime Minister, and Iran's detestable goon charmed Mike Wallace before millions of American viewers, likely earning further points along the Arab Street.

Now, we learn, Egypt is close to normalizing relations with Iran, after nearly three decades of suspended diplomacy. Meanwhile, an increasingly erratic Bush administration cannot break a bitter intra-house conflict over how to proceed, we'll refer to it as the Rice Diplomacy Wing and the Cheney Expansionist Wing. The Secretary of State is tired of taking a beating in the world press and tired of Islamic extremism receiving a free pass while the United States is smeared as the enemy: she wants to change course, engage and learn from Syria, believing that Mr. Cheney's agenda, the ultimate removal of present governments in Teheran and Damascus, unrealistic to utterly infeasible. Who knows how Mr. Bush will decide on the issue? Who knows which is the right decision?

Democrats will likely return to power in January (and armed with no small number of scared Republicans) and look to turn off the spigot to our present misbegotten venture in Iraq, whether the party will have the courage to cut the purse strings is unknown. Even so, the opposition, irrespective of its gains of sixteen House seats or the more eye-raising forty, will remain the second fiddle in foreign policy.

The real challenge does not arrive until 2008, when, I should pray, at least one of the contenders for the national nomination advocates a strong rebuke to Islamic fascism in a potential administration. Let none of them sound like Ned Lamont, naively aspiring to replace US troops with multinational forces. No, I think the job is largely left up to us and us alone. We have two legitimate choices, which bookend the current policy. Empowered liberals can return the country to a form of normalcy that obliterates and strongly repudiates Bush policy, i.e. ABB. By withdrawing from the ideological war, liberals can focus on fairer taxes, health care, rebuilding our infrastructure, etc--in other words, the selfish method.

If America wants selfishness, the same form that doomed a generation of victims in Southeast Asia thirty years ago, I suspect liberals are only to happy to provide it. Yet, we should not assume the airs of self-congratulation if, say, a Democratic Congress works with a Democratic president to retool the nation's domestic agenda. Of this I am almost certain, no Democratic candidate wants to spend the entirety of their presidency escalating a war against Islamic fascism, anything beyond the comfortable if misleading directives such as increasing the size of special forces.

Yet, I fear it is exactly what we need to do, for the world. The United Nations is not going to smash Islamic extremism, and neither, however impressive, is soft power. Only American lives. Many in the Middle East, correctly, doubt American resolve, and echo the old retort of Ho Chi Minh. Mr. Bush, plainly, failed to rally the country behind this worthy objective, and while his political adversaries escape the vast majority of blame, they do not escape all of it.

The dangers of launching a liberal war are too numerous to state, but the dangers of not doing so are frequently not given a fair hearing. Unlike any such time in our history, there are substantial numbers of world citizens that want Americans to die, period. We need to make this distinction and we cannot forget it; we are not fighting nationalists (brutal or otherwise) and we are not fighting individuals impressed by diplomacy and mutually-assured destruction. Admittedly, our intelligence is weak and while there is reason to assume it would improve under a Democrat, the difference could be slim. We simply don't know enough about our enemy and as to their true capabilities, beyond "merely" ushering Israel into the sea.

As previously stated, it is very tempting to look the other way, as scores of progressives and liberals (the world over) have already done. It is also very tempting to proclaim the failure the president's alone and wash out hands of the matter in 2007. Yet, in either case we are in error. Health care for every American, a fair minimum wage, fair taxes, and even liberal, modern judges on the federal bench are not as important as clearing the world of a true menace that continues to grow and likely plot its next moves.

Whether the president politicizes the so-called War on Terror is of no relevance here, individuals need to stand up and be accountable to themselves, and cannot use the misguided approaches of others to buttress the rationale for their own inaction. If the American president legitimately stood as the greatest threat to the world, well, we have mechanisms for dealing with that crisis--but just because we don't support their policies doesn't mean we should adopt their ideology of confusing reality with fiction.

Is it too terribly much to expect the Left, exceedingly silent during the terrors of Stalinism and Maoism, to put forth more of an effort this time? We should underestimate the effect that religion plays in our current crisis, we are bearing witness to a generation of people willing to endure the greatest personal sacrifice for some unknown reward around the bend; this phenomenon is as new as it is frightening.

We cannot pretend to live in the world of 9/10, as so many good people (conscious of this notion or not) would have us do. Mr. Bush chose to stir up a hornet's nest worth of trouble in the region, but he did not create the hornets, he did not create the radical philosophy that threatens to corrupt several generations of Islamic youth. We're not seen as tough enough by our adversaries, and we're not. But the present does not have to stand for the future. We need politicians, media outlets, and regular individuals to understand the magnitude of the possibly quite treacherous next few decades of this century, to, in short, get over their disillusionment with a regime that departs in roughly nine hundred days.

If all we do is toss aside unfinished doctrines and unhelpful dogma, we will not have learned our lesson, as many on the Left will awaken to the bitter reality of blood on their hands, and not for the first time. The Left does not need to continually make the same mistakes, but signs are ominously pointing in that direction. There is no denying it; the fight will require more courage and conviction out of more people than any we've ever known, in terms of capital and lives ultimately shattered. Yet, when America turns on the war machine we're a sight to behold. Under brighter days, one could presume to involve the United Nations, to put forth a resolution requiring the enforcement of international law on countries currently doing as they please, but, sadly, we know better. It's our fight, and ours alone. If we choose to evade this responsibility, we'll owe a substantial apology to our successors, none more so than the people in the Middle East, who may still wave terrorist banners and soak the Stars and Stripes in flames. It needn't be that way, yet...