Thought Theater

George Will: The View Of A Real Conservative genre: Just Jihad & Polispeak & Six Degrees of Speculation

Sometimes the degree to which an individual or a group of individuals become consumed with their chosen ideology can be so all encompassing that it defies reality. George Will offers that very commentary on the Bush administration and his neocon coalition. There is a Horace Mann quotation that seems appropriate to Will's conclusions and the current state of affairs with regard to the Middle East and the exportation of democracy..."We go by the majority vote, and if the majority are insane, the sane must go to the hospital." Read the full George Will article here.

Hezbollah has willingly suffered (temporary) military diminution in exchange for enormous political enlargement. Hitherto Hezbollah in Lebanon was a "state within a state." Henceforth, the Lebanese state may be an appendage of Hezbollah, as the collapsing Palestinian Authority is an appendage of the terrorist organization Hamas. Hezbollah is an army that, having frustrated the regional superpower, suddenly embodies, as no Arab state ever has, Arab valor vindicated in combat with Israel.

The London plot against civil aviation confirmed a theme of an illuminating new book, Lawrence Wright's "The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11." The theme is that better law enforcement, which probably could have prevented Sept. 11, is central to combating terrorism. F-16s are not useful tools against terrorism that issues from places such as Hamburg (where Mohamed Atta lived before dying in the North Tower of the World Trade Center) and High Wycombe, England.

Clearly, Will is acknowledging that ideology is not the method with which to oppose terrorism...it simply forces people to choose an ideology...a shift that could be minimized if the efforts to eliminate terror focused on the lawless acts of criminals. Converting the pursuit of Osama bin Laden into a war against Islamofascism simply serves to compel the bulk of those who are followers of Islam into choosing sides. Add to the equation the horrible miscalculation with regards to Iraq and the subsequent characterization of that effort as the exportation of democracy...framed as the only means to defeat terrorists...and you have established an expansive cultural clash far beyond the confines of al-Qaeda.

In a candidates' debate in South Carolina (Jan. 29, 2004), Kerry said that although the war on terror will be "occasionally military," it is "primarily an intelligence and law enforcement operation that requires cooperation around the world."

Immediately after the London plot was disrupted, a "senior administration official," insisting on anonymity for his or her splenetic words, denied the obvious, that Kerry had a point. The official told The Weekly Standard:

"The idea that the jihadists would all be peaceful, warm, lovable, God-fearing people if it weren't for U.S. policies strikes me as not a valid idea. [Democrats] do not have the understanding or the commitment to take on these forces. It's like John Kerry. The law enforcement approach doesn't work."

This farrago of caricature and non sequitur makes the administration seem eager to repel all but the delusional. But perhaps such rhetoric reflects the intellectual contortions required to sustain the illusion that the war in Iraq is central to the war on terrorism, and that the war, unlike "the law enforcement approach," does "work."

It is more dismaying that someone at the center of government considers it clever to talk like that. It is the language of foreign policy -- and domestic politics -- unrealism.

Foreign policy "realists" considered Middle East stability the goal. The realists' critics, who regard realism as reprehensibly unambitious, considered stability the problem. That problem has been solved.

What becomes more and more evident with regards to the Bush administration is that the line between policy and politics has been virtually erased. The fact that a sitting U.S. president would forego necessary recalculations in order to preserve partisan advantage will, in my opinion, largely define the historical legacy of this President. Should this administration be allowed to shape the tone and dialogue of this effort to defeat terrorism, what may have been a complex intelligence and law enforcement conundrum may well be expanded into an all out war between longstanding and even further entrenched civilizations.