Frivolity

Frivolity - Jeff Fecke left this comment in my "Wages of Appeasement" post yesterday. I'm highlighting it because it spotlights so many of the fallacies that inflate the left today:

The terrorists did not win in Spain. Democracy did.

Right. It also won in 1933 in Germany.

Democracy "won", if "won" means "got manipulated by clever, evil people into doing something that sane people will deeply regret someday". It's a standard liberal conceit - that everything is OK, as long as a majority approves (or a majority of judges say that the majority is irrelevant, but that's a tangent).

No. The Spanish election may have been "Democracy in action", but it was also just plain wrong.

Had Aznar told the truth about the attacks, rather than playing pin-the-blame-on-ETA, his party may well have won the election. Instead, his party lost. THAT WAS NOT THE TERRORISTS' DOING.

But "Democracy", given all the information that a free society can provide, chose to elect an appeasenik government. That was the Terrorists' goal and wish.

One more time, slowly: OPPOSING THE IRAQ WAR IS NOT EQUAL TO OPPOSING THE WAR ON TERROR.

One more time, with ominous Churchillian resolve: Yes It Is. In fact, opposing the war in Iraq equals gutting the war on terror.

Opposing the liberation of Iraq is a vote to continue the war - on the enemy's terms. Letting the enemy choose the battlefield (here, not there) and the time and place the war will be conducted. Forever. And when you let the enemy control the place and time of a war, you cede the initiative.

And you lose. Inevitably.

Trying to separate the Iraq and Terror is one of those bedtime stories the left tells itself to convince itself that it's responsible and mature about foreign policy and defense, yet still hasn't sold out its antiwar, pro-appeasement-at-all-costs base. There are many of them; "Al Quaeda is the real enemy". "We need to bring the terrorists to justice". "There is no link between Iraq and Al Quaeda", as if international terrorists are bound by no-compete contracts, and they respect each others' turf and never overlap. "No WMDs!", as if the disappearance of the Iraqi WMD program invalidated the war.

For all the left's carping about "nuance", this is the line of thought that proves them completely incapable of grasping it. In the left's imagination, the "war on terror" involves bounding through the hills of Afghanistan hunting Al Quaeda, and chasing through the suqs of the Third World with arrest warrants until we bring Osama Bin Laden to The Hague...

...and then we're done.

Dumb. Too dumb for words. Saying the "war on terror" begins and ends with Bin Laden and Al Quada is like treating the flu by putting a cork in your throat so you can't throw up; it treats an obvious symptom without addressing ANY of the causes.

So here's your nuance - it was the liberation of Iraq that caused Libya to cough up their nuke and chemical programs (Hey! We found WMDs! And neither Blix nor Scott Ritter had any idea they were there!), and is ripping holes in the fabric of tyranny in Iran and Syria, and is forcing fissures in Saudi society that will eventually dry up the terrorists' funding, either by reform or overthrow. The Liberation started a process that will take patience (something no Democrat has when he is out of power), but whose results are already obvious to anyone who's not so blinded by ideology that they think...

...well, that John Kerry is a responsible choice for chief executive.

Choosing to pull out of Iraq--as the Spaniards apparently will--is a rational choice for any country not named America. (For us, as the leaders and principals in the occupation, a pullout may or may not be desirable, but it is morally inconceivable.) It is not a capitulation to al-Qaeda, any more than our pulling our bases out of Saudi Arabia was.

It's a capitulation, though - to irrationality, and to the false security that you get from appeasing tyrants and madmen.

It'll work for a while - just like "staying neutral" worked for Belgium, Holland and Norway in 1939. It was perfectly rational - until 1940.

It's a fool's security.

And Kerry is the fool's candidate. A vote for John Kerry is a vote for letting the terrorists control the place, time, and agenda of the war on terror.

Like last weekend's vote in Spain - it's a vote for surrender.

Posted by Mitch at March 16, 2004 07:21 AM