Victory in Spite of All Terror
EDITORIAL Victory in Spite of All Terror "You ask, What is our policy? I will say; It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us. . . ....
...to deter or remove regimes that cooperate with terrorists...
...The bloodiness of the attacks suggests it is reasonable to call this a war...
...After all, we shun and condemn acts of terror...
...Since he began running for the White House six years ago, he has declared endlessly his intention to select judges who interpret the law rather than create it—in a word, conservatives...
...And rather than restrain judicial overreach, they take the court deeper into political and social realms that should properly be left to the elected branches of government...
...The Senate majority of 55 Republicans limits Democrats to three possible means of blocking a conservative nominee...
...I can answer with one word: Victory—victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be...
...The purpose of terrorism is just that—to terrorize people, and we will not be terrorized...
...That's what I campaigned on and that's what I want to do...
...and to insist on practical change in nations whose dictatorial regimes provide a breeding ground for terror...
...William Kristol Judgment Day President Bush needs to keep two facts in mind as he looks to replace retiring Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O'Connor (and, should he step down, Chief Justice William Rehnquist...
...The president should dismiss outright Democratic arguments against naming a serious judicial conservative...
...3) By spooking the president with disingenuous calls for an O'Connor clone, or by claiming every potential conservative nominee is outside the mainstream...
...But it was not the only attack that day...
...military are more right than their critics...
...On the same day, "the insurgent group al Qaeda in Iraq," as the Washington Post put it, announced it had killed Egypt's top diplomat in Baghdad, Ihab Sherif...
...The term "global war on terror" has come in for considerable ridicule from sophisticates on the left, and for some disparagement from Bush supporters on the right...
...And the fact that the attackers' strategy depends entirely on creating terror among civilized peo-ple—and the fact that terror in the West is necessary for the jihadists to accomplish their more concrete political aims in the Middle East—suggest it is by no means unreasonable to speak of a war against "terror...
...And so they declined to answer dozens of questions on race, religion, abortion, the death penalty, gun rights, gay rights, and school vouchers...
...Pre-nomination scrutiny by administration officials isn't foolproof, but the tougher and more probing it is, the less chance of trouble later...
...That is our policy...
...The possibility of this happening is—well, it's all but impossible...
...Victory in this respect may never be final or complete...
...Nor are Democrats likely to treat any Bush nominee—even an O'Connor lookalike—in the manner in which Senate Republicans dealt with President Clinton's two nominees, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer...
...Not only because there are so many terrorists in Iraq, but because, as Abu Zarqawi has acknowledged, creating a successful democracy in Iraq will be the beginning of the end for jihadist terrorists worldwide...
...Now to Bush's promise...
...At the same time, a senior Bush adviser was urging journalists to read Federalist No...
...He said it was Antonin Scalia, a full-blown conservative...
...for without victory there is no survival...
...Certainly we must do our best to help make it so...
...The insurgents in Iraq are terrorists...
...Meanwhile some on the right are made nervous by the "Wilsonianism" of "global," the militarism of "war," and the rhetorical imprecision of "terror...
...There's a name for such people—conservatives...
...In essence, Democrats want a nominee who, like O'Connor, lacks an underlying judicial philosophy and instead approaches legal issues on a case-by-case basis...
...The second is that he has a promise to keep...
...Fred Barnes, for the Editors...
...that "terror" is far too broad a term to use to categorize the deeds of the very different opponents we face...
...The number 55 (or 56 if you count Vice President Cheney's vote in the event of a tie) looms large...
...As for the document ploy, it is a tool of obstruction, not a form of legitimate inquiry, and everyone knows it...
...Should an ethical flaw crop up during confirmation hearings, the Bush White House would probably have itself or its nominee to blame...
...It certainly should...
...Hamilton's view didn't prevail when Bush made Gonzales attorney general, but we suspect it will on the court vacancy...
...We don't expect the president to break his promise— quite the contrary...
...However, there's only one way an unsatisfied demand for documents can ultimately deny confirmation of a Supreme Court nominee: through a filibuster...
...Yet how is this "insurgent" group different from the "terrorist" group "the Secret Organization of al Qaeda in Europe...
...1) Through a procedural maneuver like a filibuster, or by demanding documents they know the White House will never release...
...But President Bush and the U.S...
...True, Bush exacerbated the controversy over the possible nomination of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, a close Bush friend...
...that in any case the effort shouldn't be thought of as a "war...
...And we know a filibuster won't fly...
...Winston Churchill, first speech as prime minister to the House of Commons, May 13, 1940 The armed forces designate the struggle in which we are currently engaged as the GWOT—the Global War on Terror...
...It isn't...
...Our enemies embrace and glorify such acts...
...But victory remains nonetheless the indispensable aim for the civilized world, if it is to remain civilized...
...None of these is likely to work...
...And the president has used the same formulation for years in describing the men and women he wants to nominate for the federal judiciary, a formulation he repeated as recently as last week in Denmark...
...The term encompasses everything from the military battles in Afghanistan and Iraq, to covert operations, intelligence gathering, and diplomatic efforts all around the world...
...They are killing innocent civilians just as surely and just as ruthlessly as their allies in London...
...Could the war on terror have been successfully prosecuted without removing Saddam...
...We've seen what happens with such justices...
...No Bush nominee will be granted such courtesy...
...Now Democrats are using the ploy again to drag out the confirmation fight over John Bolton, nominated for ambassador to the United Nations...
...We at THE WEEKLY STANDARD do not believe so...
...76, in which Alexander Hamilton advised presidents against naming cronies to high positions...
...Yet, however one comes down on that judgment, it cannot be denied that the current war in Iraq is part of the global war on terror...
...You ask, What is our aim...
...For a filibuster to succeed, Democrats would need the cooperation of three of their seven colleagues who joined the Gang of 14 in limiting the filibuster in cases of judicial nominations...
...To pick someone for the Supreme Court who doesn't fit this description would amount to betrayal by the president of his most reliable supporters, the very people who have believed in him the most...
...And only two defectors from the Gang of 14 are needed to pass the nuclear option...
...Of this last point in particular, some conservatives have made intellectual sport, pointing out that "terror" is a tactic or a method, that you can't fight a war against a tactic, and that we should more bluntly acknowledge that what we are at war against is radical Islam...
...He told the same thing to Tim Russert on Meet the Press...
...I'd pick people who, one, can do the job, people who are honest, people who are bright, and people who will strictly interpret the Constitution and not use the bench to legislate from," he said...
...Democrats used it in 1986 in hopes of preventing Rehn-quist's elevation to chief justice...
...London reminds us that there really is, in this case, no substitute for victory...
...It's up to the president and his aides to make sure a nominee doesn't withhold information that, once disclosed, threatens confirmation...
...This is the necessary, and admirable, first response...
...From the early days of his presidential campaign, he's vowed to name judicial conservatives, and he's lived up to that promise in picking judges for the federal courts of appeals...
...Bush has promised to pick judges, including to the Supreme Court, who understand the role of judicial power and the limits that must be placed on it...
...Those nominees were encouraged by Republicans not to answer questions they deemed inappropriate...
...It could well be that the deplorable decision of the Zapatero government in Spain to accede to the terrorists' demand to withdraw from Iraq inspired al Qaeda to see whether they could achieve a comparable success in Britain...
...2) By discovering an ethical lapse in a nominee's past...
...Indeed, it is that war's central front...
...In that instance, the Reagan White House compromised, mostly on its own terms...
...The first is that he can win confirmation of almost any conceivable nominee for the High Court, screams of protest by Democrats and hostile media coverage notwithstanding...
...They drift to the left...
...In 1999, The Weekly Standard asked Bush to identify the Supreme Court justice who was his model for what a justice should be...
...Last Thursday's attack on London is the latest in the global war on terror...
...Given the terrorist ties between al Qaeda and Saddam, given what a victorious Saddam, freed of sanctions and inspectors, would have meant to the cause of extremism and anti-Americanism and, yes, terrorism in the Middle East—we cannot imagine leaving Saddam in power...
...And they would need at least six of the seven Republican gang members to agree that "extraordinary circumstances" have occurred and that a filibuster is permissible...
...Their party identification offered only false hope to conservatives about how they would vote as justices...
...We know this because Democrats have said so...
...We will show through our spirit and dignity that our values will long outlast theirs," Tony Blair said Thursday...
...There's little ambiguity in this...
...That a nominee happens to be a Republican matters little...
...He jumped on conservatives who, without attacking Gonzales harshly, recommended that he not be the president's first Supreme Court pick...
...Over the last decade, the attacks have ranged from Nairobi to New York, from Bali to Madrid, and from Casablanca to London...
...The second is to do everything it takes to crush the terrorists in Iraq, Afghanistan, Europe, and elsewhere...
...O'Connor and Justices John Paul Stevens and David Souter were Republicans when they joined the Supreme Court...
...This suggests that it is reasonable to consider the struggle a global one...
...FBI full-field investigations only go so far...
...Much of the left believes that the various struggles against different forms of terrorism are better understood as local challenges, and are not part of one "global" struggle...
...But in that respect, the resoluteness of the Blair government and the British people could well mean that July 7—despite the terrible cost in innocent lives—will turn out to be a setback for al Qaeda...
...On this, he has never equivocated...
...Three of the Republicans have already indicated they'd vote to invoke the "nuclear option" to thwart a judicial filibuster...
...The terrorists who attacked London demanded that Britain pull out of Iraq, as well as out of Afghanistan...
Vol. 10 • June 2005 • No. 41
