Capitol Ideas: Liberals Go to War
Bethell, Tom
CAPITOL IDEAS by Tom Bethell Liberals Go to War The quintessential liberal Eleanor Clift complained the other day about "all this whining about civilians being hurt." You thought there was...
...Notice that Rooney's cynicism about earlier wars ("warbucks" were their unstated cause) was exceeded only by his self-righteousness about our starting a new one...
...He regularly adopts positions that please Democrats in general and the Washington press corps in particular...
...That is a measure of the upheaval that this action has wrought...
...Jack Germond: "This defiance, of nationalism, the only way you can break it down is to be awfully harsh...
...Absurd...
...Of course, nothing We deliver a moral bombing from on high...
...Why does this fail to reassure...
...Perhaps all three — Kristol, Kagan, and Brooks—could put their heads together and take another stab at explaining what they have in mind for us, for America, and for the world...
...He thinks we should have intervened in Rwanda, and I guess he believes that we can bend the whole world to our will...
...One's patriotism might be called into question...
...War has no reverse gear, apparently...
...But for the pure moral improvement of mankind...
...If we will pay for hardware, they won't...
...Milosevic had been demonized by the media worldwide...
...far above the tawdry pennants of his vote-grubbing rivals...
...Clinton wrote in his New York Times article that the "cleansing of people from their land" was a threat to diversity...
...We deliver unto those who deserve it a purely disinterested bombing, a moral bombing from on high...
...Not just as an emergency response to allegations of rape...
...Kristol seems to see government as a "vast reservoir of power," to use Michael Oakeshott's phrase...
...I trust President Clinton in this matter...
...I am a candidate...
...Among them she included "democracy, stability and basic human decency...
...He followed up with a page-one puff piece on McCain...
...When Patrick J. Buchanan was featured as a soundbite on ABC's "This Week," saying "this is not our war, and American troops ought not to be involved in it," Cokie Roberts quickly let us know what we were supposed to think about that...
...More than elections, condoms, and diversity, I'm sure, but what, exactly...
...It is damaged, perhaps unusable...
...That is an almost perfect statement of the liberal rationale for war...
...It is hard to disagree with the former Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, who said: "Even the smallest of independent states will seek nuclear weapons and delivery vehicles to defend themselves, after they see NATO's military machine in action...
...Some disguised their underlying support for warmaking by stressing tactical differences with the president...
...That was admittedly the U.N...
...There's nothing in it for us—except that it makes us feel good...
...Rooney only failed to add that the groundwork—the real groundwork, having nothing to Tom BETHELL is TAS's Washington correspondent...
...borders is not so much a concern about "theft" or "spying" as it is the well-founded fear that once we lose our monopoly of might, others might adopt our philosophy of right...
...Sometimes I think that our desperate attempts to confine high-tech information within U.S...
...With an establishment eager to marginalize common sense, we may expect insanity to prevail...
...Martin's Press...
...Many said that the bombing was an error, but most agreed that there was no going back...
...But as Owen Harries of the National Interest more sensibly said, "some strategic assets are better possessed than used...
...Bureaucratic will to survive and domestic politics trumped everything else...
...Society should be end-governed, not rule-governed...
...By the end of May, our claim to moral superiority remained a key justification for bombing...
...The war-hungry Albright had complained bitterly to the Joint Chiefs that military hardware is pointless if we don't use it...
...Kristol (and David Brooks) have called for "American greatness" conservatism, and one can only wonder what that might look like...
...Homogeneous" nations are self-evidently wicked, apparently...
...He thereby gained the very publicity he pretended to eschew, and his moral colors flew even higher...
...Despite dozens of editorials and commentaries, mostly written with his sidekick Robert Kagan, he has not been able to explain, at least to my satisfaction, why he thinks America should try to nm the world...
...Are you running...
...His role models would seem to be Truman, Dean Acheson, Paul Nitze, Scoop Jackson —Democrats all...
...I just didn't think it was appropriate to have brass bands while American men and women are in harm's way...
...One of the first to defend the U.S...
...We have the weapons, we have the money, we have the moral authority," he said on "6o Minutes" on March 28...
...What does Western civilizationnow have to offer the world...
...I think we should be told...
...You've got to wreck Belgrade, basically...
...Countervailing American voices were dismissed as "isolationist...
...Liberals who had been pushing earnestly for the non-proliferation of weapons might want to consider the consequences of their applied demonization skills...
...Population Fund's doing, but it wouldn't have happened without our tacit approval...
...One would hardly have known that, until the war began, Buchanan's position was also Henry Kissinger's...
...One "value" that Albright & Co...
...Madeleine Albright, our deracinated secretary of state, said NATO will be in the business of imposing "values...
...The B-2 is in combat at last—and Eleanor Clift and Hillary Clinton are in the cockpit...
...No big oil companies going to make money, no bankers...
...So we had our Hitler, and now good was bombing evil...
...John McCain, senator from Arizona, has been by far the most opportunistic member of the war party...
...18 July 1999 • The American Spectator undermined NATO's credibility so much as its overnight transformation from a defensive to an aggressive force...
...He strikes me as being a sly demagogue...
...Insisting that the Europeans stay on American welfare, NATO supporters have ensured that European budgets remain dedicated to dentures and insurance...
...do take seriously is "Might makes right...
...Churchillian," wrote Broder in the Post...
...We have not begun to see the consequences of this reversal—the worst foreign policy blunder since I came to the U.S...
...In his speech, he sensibly avoided the whole subject...
...Sen...
...Our lives are presumably so aimless that we should be furnished with some external purpose (which Kristol will help to define...
...Mostly, I think, they don't want to be thought beyond the pale of respectability...
...0 ur only sensible course, to stay out of the Balkans altogether, had already been disparaged as isolationism long before the war began...
...Think of it this way...
...Another who has sided with (and egged on) the liberal warmakers is Bill Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard...
...Tim Russert: "You have not announced your candidacy...
...Nothing makes the media happier than a candidate who both adopts their positions and allows them to seem bipartisan...
...Had they experienced nothing but that, their nations would be homogeneous today, not endlessly diverse...
...We will not be able to sustain our predominant might for long...
...Public figures identified as conservative jumped on board once the bombing started...
...McCain: "I am running...
...The "prevailing argument," Arianna Huffington said, is that "the best way to get out of a strategic error is to compound it...
...do with ground troops —had already been laid...
...but went along with the liberals on the bombing of Belgrade...
...By remaining inactive, NATO had succeeded better than any alliance in history, acquiring "an aura of irresistible power without firing a shot...
...And forget about stability...
...There's nothing in it for us...
...Polling booths, condoms, and, oh yes, something else—diversity...
...As for basic human decency, Steven Mosher of the Population Research Institute reported that by May, "morning-after" birth-control pills were being distributed to Kosovar women in Albanian refugee camps as "a routine form of family planning...
...Why should China not use force to win back Taiwan...
...The trouble with flying in the face of the Charter," Jonathan Power wrote, "is that when the West bends it out of shape, it does not simply spring back to where it was, ready for use the next time...
...All we'll get out of it is the good feeling of knowing we're helping a lot of poor bastards who don't have the power to help themselves...
...Have we really come to that...
...It will no longer be possible to thwart the proliferation of missiles and nuclear arms...
...His latest book, The Noblest Triumph, was recently published by St...
...When American bombs are falling, who dares to be the naysayer...
...We even have some help from other countries this time...
...He admitted that few of the conservatives present agreed with him...
...Bombing for democracy...
...Instead it was expanded...
...Then the alliance "called its own bluff and insisted on putting itself to the test against a minor state and on a peripheral issue...
...Buchanan's position "is at the extreme," she said, "basically the isolationist position...
...Softball Media followed...
...I'm proud...
...Not for oil...
...Buy a bad stock, and you must invest your whole portfolio in it...
...Polish, Czech, and Hungarian ethnics in this country lobbied Capitol Hill effectively: "Defend us from the Russians," they said...
...Not for America's national interest, mind...
...He led the war on tobacco, and in favor of the campaign finance reform bill that tops the news media agenda...
...My sense is that Kristol lies well outside the conservative mainstream on foreign policy...
...Since, in bombing Belgrade, we ignored the U.N: Charter provision that requires Security Council approval for attacks on sovereign nations, we may now expect others to follow our example...
...George Will paraded his opposition to Clinton as commander-in-chief...
...We already had that, and may have now lost it...
...There were those of us who argued after the Cold War that NATO should be disbanded...
...Against us...
...Like adolescents everywhere, they won't act responsibly until the credit card is removed...
...in 1962...
...You thought there was something about this war you didn't like...
...I trust my country...
...It is the alliance that obviously has the high moral values, has the democracy and the open, questioning system," a senior administration official told a Washington Post reporter...
...That would undermine our "credibility...
...Those who have most sought increases in Western military budgets have done their best to prevent them...
...He derides the philosophy of "America First," but doesn't have any other country in mind...
...Nina Totenberg: "We're going to have to use...a lot more violence, and that means B-52s and ground troops...
...war on Serbia was the television commentator Andy Rooney...
...The American Spectator • July 1999 19...
...Perhaps someone will call them isolationist...
...In a recent editonal, nonetheless, National Review viewed "European efforts to create new security institutions free of American influence" as a threat rather than a promise...
...All indications are that McCain has quietly joined the party of David Broder (he of the Washington Post...
...It is disquieting to contemplate the enemies that the United States is making around the world as we bomb for democracy and diversity...
...He will impose no abortion "litmus test" on judicial candidates, should he ever be in a position to nominate them...
...Unlike Andy Rooney, they don't believe "there is nothing in it for us," but they have been hard put to say what is...
...McCain was widely saluted for running for president, but not "announcing" his candidacy...
...When I met him at a conservative function recently he said his only regret about the war was that John McCain wasn't running it...
...Russia's earlier concern, that NATO might turn from a defensive to an aggressive force, which a few months ago had seemed paranoid, now seems farsighted...
...Air Force: "Too many people out there...
...Our basic message to the world seems to have been propounded by the Rockefeller Foundation, and now delegated to the U.S...
...Shut off the electricity...
Vol. 32 • July 1999 • No. 7
