We Are Number One
Ledeen, Michael
THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR VOL. 24, NO. 3 / MARCH 1991 Michael Ledeen WE ARE NUMBER ONE America's performance in the Gulf war charts the outlines of a one-superpower world. As misconceptions die in...
...But the United States, headed by that tough cow-boy, Ronald Reagan, turned and ran...
...So should the desire of Arab nations to support it...
...Use it to organize your notes and ideas, plan your papers...
...Secondly, the Palestinians who had been gainfully employed in Israel are redundant, because Israel, now inundated with Russian-speaking manpower, no longer needs Palestinians to sweep the streets and do the dirty work...
...The role of diplomacy is to advance national interests...
...Call us now at 617 277 9222, or write us at the address below...
...After 30 days of use, if you want to keep it, send us just $99, (rather than our list price of $199...
...The French went too far in their efforts to achieve an independent foreign policy in the Gulf Michael Ledeen is resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute crisis, and their obsequiousness to Iraq was disgusting...
...Surely President Bush will now read the riot act to the Soviets, who up to the last week were smuggling shiploads of materiel to the Iraqis—and who continue to provide aid...
...Researchers, Writers...
...There are substantial differences between these countries, and the American public is ill-served by such oversimplification...
...It wasn't so very long ago—just about a decade, in fact—that the French thought they were fighting side by side with us in Lebanon, only to find that a few well-placed car bombs were sufficient to sap our will and drive us out...
...As more than one terrified journalist in the Gulf pointed out during the fighting, it would certainly be nice to have Star Wars up and working the next time Americans have to go to war to protect our interests, and those of mankind...
...Like his predecessors, he came to believe that he was invulnerable...
...Squarenote gathered all the research, organized it, and even printed out my lecture notes...
...2) The implacable hatred of all Arab countries for Israel...
...By the time the war is over, even our own broadcasters and journalists may realize that the might of the United States is quite unlike that of any other nation in the world...
...We are making a special offer to readers of the New York Review who have been our most loyal users and buyers for years...
...Like the Shah of Iran before them, they are perfectly suited to play the role of constitutional monarchs, but America will not support dictators indefinitely, even if they sit on oil wells...
...Their initial sorties were over Kuwait, where Iraqi armed forces had had five months to dig in against our air power...
...His instinct is always to do nothing...
...Or return it and you owe us nothing...
...Both countries want a durable friendship, and this will eventually require the liberalization of their polity...
...One of the great lessons of the war is the irrelevance of the Soviet Union, exposing the embarrassing shortsightedness of hinging so much of our foreign policy on the personage of Mikhail Gorbachev...
...In seconds, you can select out certain notes, order them in four different ways...
...like the index card files you have used for years, but simple to cross-reference, and each card holds twenty times [!] more information...
...When this thing is over, we should mercilessly denounce the wretched Germans, who almost single-handedly gave Saddam his chemical capability (and then had the nerve to demonstrate in the hundreds of thousands against our intervention in the Gulf...
...Squarenote 3.0 (new I) allows you to collect all your research information into one accessible, printable, sortable index card file...
...Thirdly, there is a chance that the Saudis and the Egyptians will actually remember that the Palestinians sided with Sad-dam Hussein, and will accordingly take a somewhat jaundiced view of the merits of giving these people their ownpiece of the earth, complete with their own armed forces (the better to ally themselves with future Saddams...
...The notion that the Saudis, the Egyptians, and the Kuwaitis would sabotage the war effort against their mortal enemy simply because Israel decided to respond to an attack by Iraq was to say, in effect, "These Arabs are so stupid they'll cut their own throats in order to call Israel names...
...France, for example...
...4) The 'Palestinians...
...And the Palestinians are in terrible trouble...
...This explains French behavior in the Gulf, but it does not entirely justify it...
...Gives you instant access to any bit of information on any index card...
...So their policy was a double-track one: if we were to fight,they would join (and they had fully integrated their armed forces under General Schwarzkopfs command long since...
...Indeed, because of this war we may well be in the best position in decades to advance the cause of long-term peace in the Middle East, precisely because the war has destroyed several regional myths: (1) Israel as an aggressive power...
...Saddam Hussein has given this movement greater impetus, and given the -United States greater authority and prestige...
...This is a country—excuse me, a family—that had hitherto conducted its foreign policy on the principle of buying protection from its potential assassins, including Iraq and the PLO...
...We are on the verge of fulfilling our destiny as the leader and the inspiration of the Second Democratic Revolution...
...Mitterrand told his people on national television that the time had come to fight, and that French forces were under American command...
...Prince Bandar, the ambassador to Washington, recruits the Jewish lobby to push for a hawkish American policy in the Gulf, for example...
...It's for researchers and writers, not just computer experts...
...No other country on earth could have mustered the force, the intelligence, and the coordination to launch such a relentless attack against Saddam Hussein's armies...
...Sometimes that requires war...
...The role of diplomacy is to advance national interests...
...Call now...
...But, as in virtually every other crisis in the past, when the time came to fight, the French were there, were there in force, and fought in the toughest places...
...As long as the KGB and other such institutions survive, one cannot confidently declare the death of the old order...
...Mary's Court, Brookline, MA02146 Telephone 617-277-9222 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 1991 13...
...few governments doubted our power, but many questioned our resolve...
...This stereotype—a racist one at that—seems to be used primarily to criticize American policy...
...Thatcher took quite a different approach...
...They should reflect on the fact that most of the rest of the world knew this all along...
...In the end, we all owe her a debt of gratitude, for this, as for so much else...
...If Bush and Baker were not seized by the thrill of the moment before the Gulf war, they should be overwhelmed by it now...
...So the next time you hear someone talk about the "Arabs," please honk...
...The Best Way: On Your PC, With Squarenote TM Index Cards...
...Squarenote 3.0 is the easiest-tolearn, easiest-to-use software ever created for the PC...
...The point is not that the French are particularly heroic—nor would they consider themselves so—but that they were entitled to wonder if we were really going to fight at all...
...And this time, his instinct was right...
...This program saved my neck when faced with teaching two new courses and only two months to prepare...
...And Saudi pilots fly alongside us and the Brits against another Arab country...
...They took the opportunity of the Gulf crisis to crack down on the Baltics and other freedom-seeking republics...
...Could this finally be the moment when several Arab leaders figure out that a working alliance between their money and Israeli entrepreneurship, technology, and inventiveness would be a great thing for all of them...
...Yet Israeli radio now starts its broadcast day with the phrase "God bless America...
...We must make it clear to the likes of President Assad of Syria that it is time to start sharing power with his people...
...We should encourage democrats like Yeltsin rather than those who still believe some sort of Communism can be salvaged at the point of a gun...
...There were moments when her Foreign Office told her she was being a fool—that the Americans weren't reliable, that Bush would cut a deal, that she would be all alone, just as she had been on the Europe question—but she made it a matter of principle...
...The implications are staggering...
...The first two nights of the war showed the awesome difference between a superpower and a regional power...
...It fits on any PC...
...As misconceptions die in the Middle East, the Western alliance grows stronger...
...if we were going to cut a deal, they wanted to make sure that they got theirs...
...Send No Money...
...The real ally, the true friend, has been, as usual, Great Britain...
...Send No Money...
...To near-universal astonishment, the Arab members of the coalition (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait-in-exile, and even Syria) all said that Israel had every right to defend herself, and that they would not split the anti-Saddam alliance simply because Israel exercised that right...
...They urged a joint military response, in order that the anti-Western forces (Syria, Iraq, Iran, miscellaneous terrorists and other nuts) not draw the conclusion that "if you kill enough of the infidels they will turn and run...
...The Second Best Way To Keep Your Research Notes And Information Is On Index Cards...
...ECS, Ilion, NY...
...That's nonsense...
...Everyone watching the amazing performance of American military technology must give thanks to the big Pentagon budgets of the Reagan years...
...M ary McGrory made the hysterical claim in the Washington Post that the role of diplomacy is to avoid war...
...First of all, having backed the wrong horse in Saddam, they have been thrown out of the Gulf countries...
...The Brits had the same concerns as the French—they too had seen American policy vacillate —but Mrs...
...But Israel waited...
...It is possible, if not likely, and I hope very much that Bush and Baker will give it a try...
...As I predicted over a year ago, we are still only at the beginning of this story...
...We are going to have enormous international leverage after this war, and we should exert it on behalf of our values—above all, democracy...
...The other great Reagan policy—unfortunately junked by the Bush Administration—was controlling the flow of technology to our enemies...
...It's long past time to recognize the governments of the Baltics, and, for that matter, of the Russian Republic...
...Israel's restraint after the first two days of Scud attacks impressed the other members of "the coalition," all of whom expected a quick and violent act of retaliation...
...In retrospect, we can see that there has been a systematic effort to diminish the world-historical role of the United States...
...For once, Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir may have been the right man for the job...
...Much of the Soviet empire will burn before this year is over, because no regime built on terror can pass quietly into history...
...Meanwhile, for weeks we had heard from half the world that, if Israel lifted a finger, the entire alliance would dissolve instantly, because of .. . (3) The "Arabs...
...The democracies stood byuntil the eleventh hour, and, indeed, had he not done us the enormous favor of invading Kuwait, we would have waited until he developed his nuclear weapons before moving (there's a movie for Michael Ovitz to think about), just as we waited for the Japanese in 1941...
...Try Squarenote 3.0...
...That our enemies would wish to falsify our stature and our might is understandable, but it is noteworthy that so many of our own intellectuals and politicians bought the party line...
...In fact, after the second wave of Scuds, the Washington Post produced no less than six large headlines referring to the likelihood of Israeli retaliation, as if they were hoping it would happen so they could deplore it...
...inally, the Reagan legacy now 1-1 looks ever more sparkling...
...Saddam Hussein was a standard-issue military dictator who went megalo...
...We need to support democracy not only in the old Soviet Empire, but also in the Middle East...
...And we must deliver the same sermon to the Saudis...
...Just mention this ad, and we'll send you a copy of Squarenote 3.0 to try, at our risk, for 30 days...
...The lesson is that, in very important and complex 12 E AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 1991 situations, it is very difficult to predict human decision-making...
...One of the dramatic developments in this war has been the change in the behavior of the Saudi leadership...
...What Squarenote does for you: ^ Gives you great organization and control of your research notes...
...And certain kinds of diplomatic initiatives can be best advanced against the background of war, or because of the fear of war...
...It is highly amusing that no one had any doubt about Israel's ability to smash Iraq (indeed, the violent denunciations of the Israeli destruction of Saddam Hussein's first effort at nuclear production in 1981 were of the sort that one reserves for a bully picking on the neighborhood weakling), but for months before the war started some of our "experts" were talking about tens of thousands of American casualties, as if we were not up to Israel's standard of military power...
...There seems to be a death wish in the heart of the PLO, for it's hard to explain how any organization can be so consistently wrong as this one...
...Easy To Learn, Use...
...It is already obvious that the Gulf war is shattering many of the foolish myths of our time, most importantly that the United States is simply a country like any other...
...In stupidly backing the cause of Iraqi imperialism, the Palestinian leadership have shown themselves to be not moderate nationalists but extremists, and have undermined their claim to legitimacy...
...A basic, essential tool for anyone doing research...
...With the hangman at the door, the Royal Family has suddenly shown some gumption, and much of the old rhetoric has gone...
...She got out in front of President Bush, and then dragged him all the way...
...Allows you to print out all your notes, or just a selected group of them, to carry with you or send to colleagues...
...T here is hope that the Saudis and 1 the Egyptians and the Kuwaitis (and the Omanis, who never get mentioned, because the Sultan is clever enough to wish to be ignored in the news coverage) will realize that there are advantages to being on the side of Israel and the United States...
...PC Magazine's Editor's Choice Award UnionSquareware 27 St...
...Sometimes that requires war...
Vol. 24 • March 1991 • No. 3
