Bush Puts War with Al Qaeda in Historical Context, invokes Vietnam

Speaking to the Veteran’s of Foreign Wars National Convention, George Bush ushered up some powerful examples from history to explain why America should not lose sight of victory in Iraq and Afghanistan. In a break with past avoidance of any comparison to Vietnam, President Bush takes it square on:

Three decades later, there is a legitimate debate about how we got into the Vietnam War and how we left. There’s no debate in my mind that the veterans from Vietnam deserve the high praise of the United States of America. (Applause.) Whatever your position is on that debate, one unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America’s withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like “boat people,” “re-education camps,” and “killing fields.”

There was another price to our withdrawal from Vietnam, and we can hear it in the words of the enemy we face in today’s struggle — those who came to our soil and killed thousands of citizens on September the 11th, 2001. In an interview with a Pakistani newspaper after the 9/11 attacks, Osama bin Laden declared that “the American people had risen against their government’s war in Vietnam. And they must do the same today.”

His number two man, Zawahiri, has also invoked Vietnam. In a letter to al Qaeda’s chief of operations in Iraq, Zawahiri pointed to “the aftermath of the collapse of the American power in Vietnam and how they ran and left their agents.”

Zawahiri later returned to this theme, declaring that the Americans “know better than others that there is no hope in victory. The Vietnam specter is closing every outlet.” Here at home, some can argue our withdrawal from Vietnam carried no price to American credibility — but the terrorists see it differently.

We must remember the words of the enemy. We must listen to what they say. Bin Laden has declared that “the war [in Iraq] is for you or us to win. If we win it, it means your disgrace and defeat forever.” Iraq is one of several fronts in the war on terror — but it’s the central front — it’s the central front for the enemy that attacked us and wants to attack us again. And it’s the central front for the United States and to withdraw without getting the job done would be devastating. (Applause.)

If we were to abandon the Iraqi people, the terrorists would be emboldened, and use their victory to gain new recruits. As we saw on September the 11th, a terrorist safe haven on the other side of the world can bring death and destruction to the streets of our own cities. Unlike in Vietnam, if we withdraw before the job is done, this enemy will follow us home. And that is why, for the security of the United States of America, we must defeat them overseas so we do not face them in the United States of America. (Applause.)

Recently, two men who were on the opposite sides of the debate over the Vietnam War came together to write an article. One was a member of President Nixon’s foreign policy team, and the other was a fierce critic of the Nixon administration’s policies. Together they wrote that the consequences of an American defeat in Iraq would be disastrous.

Here’s what they said: “Defeat would produce an explosion of euphoria among all the forces of Islamist extremism, throwing the entire Middle East into even greater upheaval. The likely human and strategic costs are appalling to contemplate. Perhaps that is why so much of the current debate seeks to ignore these consequences.” I believe these men are right.

In Iraq, our moral obligations and our strategic interests are one. So we pursue the extremists wherever we find them and we stand with the Iraqis at this difficult hour — because the shadow of terror will never be lifted from our world and the American people will never be safe until the people of the Middle East know the freedom that our Creator meant for all. (Applause.)

I recognize that history cannot predict the future with absolute certainty. I understand that. But history does remind us that there are lessons applicable to our time. And we can learn something from history. In Asia, we saw freedom triumph over violent ideologies after the sacrifice of tens of thousands of American lives — and that freedom has yielded peace for generations.

Peter Rodman explains why Bush’s history lesson correctly Assesses the consequences of defeat in Iraq for American global posturing.

So the president has his history right. The outcome in Indochina was not foreordained. Congress had the last word, however, between 1973 and 1975.

The strategic consequences of defeat in Indochina were also serious. Leonid Brezhnev crowed that the global “correlation of forces” had shifted in favor of “socialism,” and the Soviets went on a geopolitical offensive in the third world for a decade. Demoralized allied leaders in Europe as well as Asia feared the new Soviet aggressiveness and lamented the paralysis of American will. When Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990, he and his colleagues invoked Vietnam as evidence that U.S. warnings did not need to be taken seriously. That’s what it means to lose credibility. Once lost, it has to be re-earned the hard way.

No analogies are ever complete, but — given our global leadership and the number of allies and friends that rely on us for their security — the consequences of an American defeat can be counted on to be terrible. How can anyone seriously think otherwise?

Stupid Hippies

* Faced with police resistance, the Council of Canadians and others pulled back from the front line about 300 metres, for fear of escalation. Most front-line protesters opted for an impromptu sit-in. Others began dousing their bandannas with vinegar in anticipation of tear gas attacks, forcefully pushing against the wall of police shields and yelling “Peaceful Protest” and other slogans.

Apparently a sense of irony is a bourgeois luxury.

Getting down to Business in Montebello: The Harper Difference

The Montebello summit in Quebec, where, among other matters, Artic sovereignty is to be discussed, demonstrates to Canadians the Harper difference in foreign affairs: the world takes us seriously again!

The Financial Times has a good piece on Harper’s last eighteen months in office, “Canada’s conservative man of action.”

Comedian Robin Williams once described Canada as being “like a loft apartment over a really great party” but it’s doubtful Mr Harper was laughing. Much of his time as prime minister has been spent trying to build Canada-US relations and making sure his country is taken seriously the world over.

During a speech in October, Mr Harper made clear he does not want Canada to sit back and watch the rest of the world act and react, saying the “objective is to make Canada a leader on the international stage…If there is any one thing that has struck me for the short time I have been in this job, it is how critically important foreign affairs has become in everything that we do”.

Thank God we have a leader who finally understands that keeping the Liberal Party in power—or any party—is not the sole reason we have general elections in Canada. Harper’s term in office, being a Canadian leader the world takes seriously because he takes the world seriously, will go down as a great restorative force for Canadian sovereignty, on the heels of Liberal frittering away of our national inheritance.

If Paul Cellucci’s recent comments are any indication, the Americans pay attention to Canada when Canada takes responsibility for it’s own sovereignty and security; they like a Canada that actually acts like the friend it always claims to be.

And in another good turn, in contrast to the constant buttering up of the Liberals to Red China, Harper has never wavered from criticizing China’s human rights record, compensating any trade defecit by looking within the Anglosphere to India:

Harper in his statement to congratulate India on the 60 aniversary of its Independence said, “India’s independence in 1947 has been an inspiration to the world. Using its great diversity to its own advantage, India has evolved into a vibrant democracy.”

“India is rising to global prominence and Canada stands ready to deepen our partnership with India to advance our common interests and to promote new opportunities for economic development and international trade for the benefit of both our peoples,” he said.

UPDATE:  Ten years ago, when asked about the protesters outside the APEC summit in Vancouver, Jean Chretien deflected commenting on their very presence, and the harsh police response to them, by saying he put pepper on his plate.  In contrast, Harper is too sincere to reflect such poor leadership, not feigning to ignore the protesters and their insincere antics.  As far as Harper is concerned, the protesters at Montebello are a sad spectacle. :-)

R.I.P. Lord Deedes

On Friday last, the U.K.’s Telegraph lost one of its finest: W.F. Deedes. He died, age 94, halfway through his final column, putting his laptop to the side of his bed only when he was simply too weak to continue. Check out the Telegraph’s tribute page.

Lord Deedes had been a British peer for over twenty years, being knighted just under ten years ago for services to humanity. Not only did he sit as a Conservative member of Commons, a minister in Harold MacMillan’s government in the 1960s, he is the only person to have served in Cabinet and been the editor of a national newspaper. Bill Deedes was a journalist for 76 years.

I read his columns semi-regularly, always enjoying what he wrote and how he wrote it. If ever there was the “gentleman journalist,” he was it, and he died “in harness,” remaining an active contributor to the paper he loved.

From commentaries on him ….

… on his instinctive compassionate conservatism:

He was not flashy. But if you wanted something done, Bill Deedes was your man.

The virtues that Lord Deedes exhibited are underrated today, when it frequently seems that surface glitter is more appreciated than substance.

Lord Deedes devoted much of his life to trying to help the disadvantaged, without ever drawing attention to that fact.

He was, perhaps, the best exemplar of a compassionate Conservative: someone who sees that the best way to diminish life’s inevitable unfairnesses and injuries is not to set up a government committee or to wait for someone else to do something, but to get on with trying to combat the troubles he encounters.

As the Conservative Party ponders the path to take and which values to project, it should remember Bill Deedes. The life he lived could stand as a model for both.

… on his other-worldly good nature:

In 2000, when I became comment editor of The Daily Telegraph, I was lucky enough to work with him. He would come to the afternoon leader conferences at which it was decided what the leading articles should be and what line they should take. He was only 87 then, but my impressions from meeting him in the corridor or over a pint in the Henry Addington (or later the Cat and Canary) had been that he was rather distant from the world, a bit deaf and isolated. The impression was reinforced by his habit of singing little tunes, a bit like Winnie the Pooh.

But I soon discovered my mistake. I was utterly wrong. He would show immediate insight into topics under discussion in leader conferences, and amusingly bring to bear his memories of parallel political circumstances from the days of Stanley Baldwin, say.

From his own hand …

… on new lefties vrs. old lefties:

And she a Socialist! But Mrs Castle makes no bones about her liking for the good things of life, a good dinner, high company, a little pomp and circumstance - all right, she says, as long as you don’t inhale!

On her own front, through most of these Diaries, she is in pitched battles with consultants, with junior doctors and defenders of paybeds.

Of course one should argue that she misdirected prodigious energy on wrong and damaging objectives. Yet, after reading it all and taking a political holiday, I would argue something different.

These Diaries are, as perhaps she intended, more a portrait of Mrs Castle than of anyone else. They are, overall, the portrait of a parliamentary democrat.

With the advent of the new and nasty Left, one reads Mrs Castle’s Diaries with something like nostalgia. Again, one can argue, and some will, that it was precisely the likes of her that paved the way to the new and nasty Left; that from just such political wombs the monster sprang.

But one thing that distinguishes the old Left from the new Left is the capacity occasionally to laugh at yourself.

… on not blaming all of Africa’s problems on the West:

… not all African woes can be attributed to neglect by the West. That claim raises the temperature, sets people marching to attack greedy nations that misruled Africans in the past and now turn a cold shoulder to their needs. It also falsifies history. I have always conceded that we granted independence to Africa on the tail of Harold Macmillan’s “wind of change” too precipitately. No administrative framework was in place. The countries hastily granted independence were up for grabs.

By contrast, Southern Rhodesia was put on the road to freedom by Margaret Thatcher and with an orderly election. And who won? Mugabe, of whose misrule we still read most days of the week. There is no sensible way forward for Africa until we recognise the extent to which African rulers rather than the West are so heavily responsible for its plight.

… on Darfur, his last column, two weeks ago:

It is time the world was shaken awake to the infamy of what is going on in Darfur. In terms of man’s inhumanity to man, what has been going on there for four years is now comparable to the death camps for which Germany’s Nazis were found guilty. That statement may provoke cries of outrage from some: surely the Holocaust stands alone?

Not to me it doesn’t, and as a soldier I had to enter one of those camps and went to the trial of its commandant. I have also been to Darfur.

I can make comparisons. I can never get out of my mind the picture of families in Darfur striving to live under the shelter of thorn bushes, the children’s fingers clutching wretched little cooking pots to keep the rain out.

Women and children were hunted like wild animals, raped, robbed and left for dead. What has been happening in Darfur is unspeakable; and much of the world has simply shrugged its shoulders. They are an unknown people in a far-off land. What business is it of ours? It is very much our business, because behind this ghastly inhumanity lies the iron will of Islam in Khartoum.

I have learnt something about that will from countless visits to Sudan in recent years. It is that will which determines there shall be no effective peacekeeping force in Darfur. This newspaper is right to cry out against the idea that the United Nations could do the job and to reproach Gordon Brown for supporting the idea.

It could not do so because within the UN the influences of Islam are so strong. I don’t wish to seem offensive to Islam, but not to be aware of its power in the world today is to be half-awake.

A remarkable man!

History of Warfare: Peter Snow and Dan Snow on Twentieth Century Battlefields

The BBC and the Military Channel have collaborated on a new documentary mini-series of eight of the most significant wars of the Twentieth Century. Those of you familiar with the CBC’s Ann Macmillan might be surprised to learn that the “presenters,” as the Brits say, Peter and Dan Snow, are her husband and son respectively. This series, complete with computer animated layout of the battlefields and empirical assessment of the experience of warfare on the ground, follows on the tales of the very successful 2004 series Battlefield Britain.

Very cool show! Rather hawkish coming from the BBC, but very signficant if it can make military history more accessible to the general public, making people aware of the high stakes and strategem of war—not just the blood and gore. War is a reality of the world in which we live, despite the rantings of materialistic self-righteous peacenics.

Here’s an interview with Peter and Dan Snow on their father and son collaborative efforts. Check out the BBC and Military Channel links for podcasts and previews.

Pat Buchanan: Feel Good Politics

Buchanan on Barack Obama’s “a lollipop in every hand” politics:

Barack Obama wins standing ovations from liberal Democrats by pledging to double foreign aid. Thus, under President Obama, the U.S. government will borrow from China and Japan $50 billion each year to subsidize regimes in Africa, putting our kids in hock forever, so we can feel good about ourselves.

Meanwhile, soft-headed Canadians are urging the Canadian government to pass out more blank cheques with which African dictators will purchase additional assault rifles and to sign a silly international treaty that will obligate the government to add billions more to the Indian Enrichment Project kitty.

Not that the government is much better. Hundred of millions spent on…what? Equipment purchased for the purpose of continuing to pretend to solve tribal disputes in desert wastelands half-way across the world? And then a couple million more to fund the compassionate enterprises of mid-eastern terrorists.

That’s okay. I feel fantastic about myself.

Afghanistan: Rethinking the Mission

The left has a problem: Is it possible to oppose the Afghanistan mission while simultaneously “supporting the troops”? This is not a question of principle (this is after all the left we’re talking about) but rather a conundrum of political communication. And a conundrum it is. If Canadian troops are doing good work in Afghanistan, then why would we pull them out? Surely any decision to do so reflects at least partially on the quality of the work the soldiers themselves are doing there. Not a good position to be in.

I sympathize somewhat with the leftist impulse to have a theoretical debate on Afghanistan without these sorts of niggly political implications. But that is also somewhat disingenuous. My support of the war has always relied on the information and the views provided by the troops themselves. If the left wishes to dismiss the views of the troops (and if they are honest, they will admit that they do), then I am driven (probably excessively) in my support of the mission by the troops’ own support.

Now, things appear to be changing. The father of a fallen soldier from a couple of weeks ago:

He acknowledged, however, that his son at times expressed feelings of anger and frustration about the mission. For instance, he felt betrayed by some of the very people he was trying to help, describing some local Afghans as “farmers by day and Taliban or killers by night.”

“That is what is particularly frustrating about this mission — it’s a guerrilla war. You really don’t know who your enemy is,” Dawe Sr. said.

The humanitarian aspects of the mission have always been greatly over-rated. Afghanistan under the Taliban was an important base for Al Qaeda operations. Accordingly, it was a threat to our national security and the threat was taken out. Canada’s current role in Afghanistan is to sustain that victory by keeping the Taliban at bay and, if you are to believe some of the sunnier proponents of the mission, to build the institutions necessary for the development of the sort of democratic regime that would be less likely than was the Taliban to roll out the welcome mat for Al Qaeda.

We are succeeding in the first capacity and failing in the second. That failure has little to do with our military. It has to do with a populace that accepts Canadian aid from troops during the day and ambushes those same troops during the night. All the talk about stonings and burkas and oppression becomes darkly amusing when it is the people that we profess to save from such things that turn out to be the strongest proponents of going backwards. All but the most optimistic neo-conservative advocates of Arab democracy are in hiding at the current sight of Iraq. Which is why Dawe Sr.’s statement might compel conservatives to begin a new dialogue on why it is we support the shedding of Canadian blood in an alien desert (this is not, after all, Kosovo) when Iraq teaches us that what we are working toward is hopeless.

If Afghanistan should become a security threat to us again in twenty years or so (which is the scenario that someone like the prime minister might cite in response to what I’ve written above), then that is a problem that American bombs are manufactured to address.

Dion’s Stealth Replacement Strategy

I’ve been watching with a bit of interest how Stephane Dion has been handling the by-election preparation in the Montreal riding of Outremont which was vacated in the winter by Paul Martin’s Quebec lieutenant Jean Lapierre (who incidentally praised Stephen Harper’s government on his new show after he had left his Ottawa bench). Dion quickly quelled rumours that Justin Trudeau would carry the party’s seat in the traditionally Liberal riding, and instead reserved his right as party leader to appoint a candidate in the riding.

So who did Dion chose? A woman who would help Dion meet his much-talked about but little praised quota for the number of female Liberal candidates he wants to run in the next election? How about someone who would actually be able to appeal to the ethnic minorities in the riding, given that the NDP is making a power play for the seat with a popular former Quebec Liberal minister? No, he chose one of his own: a university accademic from Montreal named Jocelyn Coulon.

Coulon isn’t shy about his expectations either, reportedly saying that Dion is seeking his expertise on foreign affairs, defence issues, and Africa, which makes Dion’s current caucus specialists in these areas what? Chopped liver? Considering that Dion already has people like Michael Ignatieff, himself an academic expert on foreign affairs, and current critics in these areas like Ujjal Dosanjh and Denis Coderre already handling these areas, what does this say about Dion’s trust in his own caucus or the Liberal leader’s evaluation of that talented “dream team” the Liberals keep on bringing up when referring to their high-ranking members. Still yet, why doesn’t Dion let Justin Trudeau run in the riding that the young Trudeau currently resides in? These are all very good questions for Canadians and particularly Quebecois to consider as this by-election begins to come into the spotlight. The answers point to a leader so insecure with his own ability and with the more capable rivals around him that he feels compelled to use extreme powers to appoint a bunch of loyal yes-men (and note:not yes-women!) so as to reinforce his position as leader. Not much of a management style, now is it?

The Cynic Who Barked Too Loud

Being a Canadian Cynic is a tough gig these days.  There has been quite a backlash against the anonymous lefty-blogger who recently ranted about a grieving mother who lost her son, a Canadian Solider in Afghanistan.

Wanda Watkins, who spoke to the press recently asking for the nation to hold the course and respect the sacrifices of our troops, was written about on the Canadian Cynic’s blog.

In his past writings he is known not to sugar coat anything, with the exception of his ego, but what he wrote went past any sense of rational, irrational or human behaviour. In his blog post on the subject he writes:

“With all due respect, Wanda, f**k you and your grief.”

But even if a blog is somewhere that you go to empty your mind, in whatever self-stroking fashion, something interesting is happening here.

The cynic has made cynics out of a good portion of his audience, as they question his own motives now based on his over the top comments on the subject. Digging further through the collection of comments on the posting (and related postings), you get the feeling that people (left, right and otherwise) are abandoning him and getting some distance between themselves.

And now the Cynic is telling the audience that everyone has had their say. That there will be no more comments on the subject of his f-sharp delivery. He has deemed it ‘discussed’ and closed.

His long time barking may have finally caused his audience to wake up, however he isn’t enjoying the new found cynics that find his barking intolerable.

Doing Foreign Policy Right: Knowing Canada’s National Interest

CTV reports that the Prime Minister has been advised to tone down the rhetoric with respect to the war in Afghanistan. Best not to focus on the reality of war, nor Canada’s national security interest in fighting terrorism abroad, rather tell it like another one of those dandy peace keeping missions.

We’re there for the women and children everyone!

So lets face it, Harper should be talking as much as he can about the good Canadian soldiers are doing in Afghanistan; not only providing law and order, but bolstering aid and development. However, he should not, for one minute, play to the traditional pat-ourselves-on-the-back Canadian national pathology toward peace keeping. It’s in our national interest for that self-congratulatory and desultory nonsense to die! Even peace keeping missions need to serve our national interest; Canadians told this straight up.

When it comes to Afghanistan, Canadians need to be told what’s in it for us, how it serves our national interest to be in Afghanistan, and how the soldiers serving in Afghanistan know this full well. Those boys—and a few girls—are fighting and dying for Canada, not some hell-bent over-eager idealism!

The idea that Canadians are just do-good internationalists keeping the peace between warring parties—out of our own benevolence, with little expectation of casualties—is not only vain, it’s a well-worn foreign policy hat that Canadians should never wear again. It not only blinds Canadians to the very real threats, and root causes of those threats, to our national security and sovereignty, it reinforces a moralizing self-righteousness that far too readily excuses bad governance at home.

Thankfully, Canada’s new Conservative government has done an admirable job of ushering this country back into the real world, a world where national sovereignty and punching above one’s weight comes at a real cost, one that requires serious strategic thinking.

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