Politics Blog

Doug Bandow, a former Reagan administration official, on the consequences of American foreign policy: Terrorism cannot be treated in isolation from American foreign policy. It’s not that Americans deserved to die, that the blame falls on U.S. policymakers instead of the killers who hijacked and crashed four planes. Rather, terrorism must be understood as an inevitable consequence of global intervention.

Doug Bandow’s position is that other nations ought to set American foreign policy. He describes terrorism as a tool of weak nations, and believes that the US is provoking attacks against itself by taking positions that are contrary to the interests of terror-sponsoring countries. The problem with this approach is that it is an invitation for our enemies to attack us by sponsoring terror groups in order to separate us from our allies.

Doug Bandow’s approach is pretty radical - the American way has always been to respect those who respect us and punish those who attack us. He is proposing that the US abandon its allies to appease its enemies. It is the Cato Institute’s (Bandow’s think tank) penny-wise, pound-foolish approach that has led to China’s ever-expanding push into the South China Sea (through the American abandonment of the Filipino bases in the early 1990’s) and the extinction of the only Christian government in the Arab world in Lebanon. The Cato Institute is misnamed - it wants to bury its head in the sand about the danger from abroad, whereas Cato the Elder pushed for the destruction of Rome’s enemies, the most famous example of which was the leveling of Carthage.

It is time that the US made clear to foreign countries that either directly or indirectly kill Americans that there is a price to be paid for their hostile foreign policy vis-a-vis the US and its allies. This is the point we have attempted to drive home to our enemies via the campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. It is time for them to appease us, and not the other way around.

-- Zhang Fei

If it were determined that shortly prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, chemical WMD was transported from Iraq to Syria and later ended up in the hands of al Qaeda, who then attempted to bring it into Jordan for a 9/11 scale terrorist attack, most thinking people would determine that Saddam Hussein had, in fact, posed a threat to the rest of the world. They might even consider it was an imminent threat. Those dots have not yet been connected, but there is a lot of evidence that points to just such a possible scenario.

Today, a Wall Street Journal editorial asks why a story that I provided links to (here and here) in a post last week, has yet to be seriously investigated or even prominently reported by most major news outlets.

Jordanian authorities say that the death toll from a bomb and poison-gas attack they foiled this month could have reached 80,000. We guess the fact that most major media are barely covering this story means WMD isn’t news anymore until there’s a body count.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi–the man cited by the Bush Administration as its strongest evidence of prewar links between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, and the current ringleader of anti-coalition terrorism in Iraq–may be behind the plot, which would be al Qaeda’s first ever attempt to use chemical weapons. The targets included the U.S. Embassy in Amman. Yet as of yesterday, most news organizations hadn’t probed the story, if at all, beyond the initial wire-service copy.

Perhaps the problem here is that covering this story might mean acknowledging that Tony Blair and George W. Bush have been exactly right to warn of the confluence of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction…

The provenance of the operation is also of note. The bomb trucks and funds are said to have entered Jordan via Syria. Last fall General James R. Clapper Jr., director of satellite intelligence for the Pentagon, said there had been an unusual amount of traffic–including possibly WMDs–between Iraq and Syria in the lead-up to war.

This post provides links to another story about Iraq WMD you won’t see getting widespread media attention this week.

Do these stories not deserve at least as much attention as the final episode of Friends?

-- Lorie Byrd

Mickey Kaus looks at another question about Kerry’s anti-war protester days that has yet to be “put to bed.”

-- Lorie Byrd

Some interesting tidbits from the county by county breakdown of PA primary results.

1-As expected Specter carried the Philadelphia region impresively, yet turnout was lower than expected. Possible reasons include: turn-off from negative campaigning, Specter fatigue, and as I wrote yesterday some of Specter’s Republican voters in the past have migrated to the Democratic Party.

2-Toomey’s utter dominance in the Pittsburgh region. He carried Allegheny County about 55-45, won Washington and Beaver Counties, and trounced Specter 2-1 in Westmoreland County (one of the few counties to vote Mondale in 84 and Bush in 2000.) This is good news for social conservatives as it appears that these issues resonated stronger than most had expected in this region.

3-Central PA which is the conservtive bastion in the state went to…Specter. The results from the central counties show a remarkably tight race with Specter generally pulling out wins by a few hundred votes. This indicates that the rural conservative voters who were expected to vote Toomey instead voted for Specter. Draw your own conclusions about the Bush/Santorum endorsements. Another fator I imagine is the inability to reach these voters with the kind of saturated issues pieces/calls received in the Pittsburgh region thus leading them to rely more on the weight of the president’s endorsement.

-- Mark

I just realized there are now well over 100 blogs participating in Wictory Wednesday! When I started it in September last year, I couldn’t even imagine the list growing this long. Now there are over a hundred bloggers who ask their readers to donate and/or volunteer for the Bush campaign every week.

-- PoliPundit

If patriotism is defined as being proud of your country, Democrats are much less patriotic than Republicans:

Among Bush voters, 83% say that American society is generally fair and decent. Just 7% say it is basically unfair and discriminatory.

While Bush voters are united behind this perception, Kerry voters are divided–46% say fair and decent while 37% say unfair and discriminatory.

…

Eighty-one percent (81%) of Bush voters also believe the world would be better if other nations were more like the United States. This view is shared by just 48% of Kerry voters.

-- PoliPundit

Mickey Kaus notes that SurveyUSA’s robo-polling came the closest to predicting the razor-thin Specter win.

As I’ve noted before, SurveyUSA has proven to be the most reliable polling firm in key races over the last few years. There’s even a University of Oregon study that proves it.

-- PoliPundit

What with John Kerry’s ever-changing positions on medalgate, the issue has become so murky that it’s hard to explain it all anymore. So here’s a clip-n-save list of talking points that you can use to explain medalgate to your friends:

1. John Kerry participated in a 1971 anti-Vietnam-war protest where veterans angrily threw away their medals. This is a questionable action by a man who wants to be commander in chief.

2. At the protest, Kerry threw away his ribbons and two medals given him by someone else. Clearly, he wanted to hang on to his medals in case they would be politically useful later.

3. In 1971 interviews, Kerry fed the impression that he had thrown away his medals. Specifically, a video shows him saying, “I gave back, I can’t remember - 6, 7, 8, 9 medals.”

4. In 1984, when Kerry was running for Senate, concerns about the medal-throwing incident prompted him to bring out his medals, which had been safely stored. In a 1985 interview with the Boston Globe, Kerry said, “I did not want to throw my medals away.”

5. In 2004, a 1971 video surfaced, where Kerry claimed to have thrown away his medals. Faced with this, Kerry’s answer was to equate medals and ribbons, saying they were essentially the same thing.

6. The medal incident typifies Kerry’s worst qualities. He threw away his ribbons and kept his medals so that he could be on both sides of the issue. When it was politically convenient, he claimed that he’d thrown away his medals. When new political needs arose, he claimed that he’d kept his medals.

-- PoliPundit

Daniel Drezner describes Kerry’s Iraq predicament:

At this point, Kerry has to wonder whether he’s in a parallel political universe. It seems neither logical nor fair that problems in Iraq should boost the president who sent U.S. troops there in the first place, while imperiling the challenger who voiced qualms about the invasion before it happened.

…

The problem is not that Bush is unbeatable; the problem is that he seems unbeatable when compared to Kerry.

This is because Kerry is in an impossible box on Iraq. Mainstream Democrats like Kerry may have opposed going into Iraq last year, but now they’re stuck with the proof of purchase. Few Democrats want to see the U.S. pull out of the country. It’s worth remembering that even Howard Dean, the most vocal of the antiwar candidates, said last summer that he wanted to increase the number of U.S. troops in Iraq. Kerry’s conundrum is that the politically coherent position of opposing the war both before and after the invasion is substantively unappealing. On a normal issue, if a challenger disagrees with an incumbent–and, moreover, if the incumbent’s initiatives are both objectively failing and increasingly unpopular–then the challenger can simply advocate taking the opposite approach. But Iraq isn’t a normal issue; there is no opposite approach (or, at least, no responsible opposite approach). There are also political considerations–Kerry is fighting a decades-old perception that the Democrats are soft on national security issues. So Kerry needs to find a way to oppose Bush on Iraq without advocating a pullout of U.S. troops. Simply reminding everyone about his prewar qualms is not doing the trick.

…

Put simply: Kerry has no good political options on Iraq; it would be in his political interest for the entire situation to fade from the spotlight. The only way for that to happen is for the situation to improve.

-- PoliPundit

It’s Specter by about 15,000 votes. This is a good result. It allows the GOP to put forward a 4-term incumbent as its candidate in November.

And “moderate” Republican senators have just had a loud warning shot fired across their bow. The next time they’re voting on a bill, they should remember not just the ultra-liberal Washington press corps, but their conservative constituents back home. If a 4-term incumbent in a swing state can almost be defeated by a young challenger who’s outspent 3-1, then no Republican senator is safe from a conservative primary challenge.

-- PoliPundit