Not content to let their big brother cast all the stones, the New York Daily News throws a few.
A little late to the proceedings, Michael Goodwin finally realizes that we are at war. While acknowledging we are at war, Goodwin is a little fuzzy on details.
Last week's headlines prove the point: North Korea fires missiles, Iran talks of nukes again, Iraq carnage continues, Israel invades Gaza, England observes one-year anniversary of subway bombing. And, oh, yes, the feds stop a plot to blow up tunnels under the Hudson River.
World War III has begun.
That should be, after Israel abandoned Gaza, the Palestinians continued their terror campaign against Israel by firing up to 40 rockets a day into Israel.
And in a classic Bush can't win no matter what he does, Goodwin has this to say:
I sound pessimistic because I am. Even worse than the problems is the fact that our political system is failing us. Democratic Party leaders want to pretend we can declare peace and everything will be fine, while President Bush is out of ideas. Witness Bush now counseling patience and diplomacy on North Korea. This from a man who scorned both for five years.
Really Mr. Goodwin? There's a reason you're working at the Daily and not the Times and this is one of them.
A PROGRAMME of covert action against nuclear and missile traffic to North Korea and Iran is to be intensified after last week’s missile tests by the North Korean regime.[...]
Intelligence agencies, navies and air forces from at least 13 nations are quietly co-operating in a “secret war” against Pyongyang and Tehran.
It has so far involved interceptions of North Korean ships at sea, US agents prowling the waterfronts in Taiwan, multinational naval and air surveillance missions out of Singapore, investigators poring over the books of dubious banks in the former Portuguese colony of Macau and a fleet of planes and ships eavesdropping on the “hermit kingdom” in the waters north of Japan.
Few details filter out from western officials about the programme, which has operated since 2003, or about the American financial sanctions that accompany it.
But together they have tightened a noose around Kim Jong-il’s bankrupt, hungry nation.
“Diplomacy alone has not worked, military action is not on the table and so you’ll see a persistent increase in this kind of pressure,” said a senior western official.
In a telling example of the programme’s success, two Bush administration officials indicated last year that it had blocked North Korea from obtaining equipment used to make missile propellant.
The Americans also persuaded China to stop the sale of chemicals for North Korea’s nuclear weapons scientists. And a shipload of “precursor chemicals” for weapons was seized in Taiwan before it could reach a North Korean port.
In the past 10 months, since the collapse of six-nation talks in Beijing on North Korea’s nuclear weapons, the US and its allies have also tightened the screws on Kim’s clandestine fundraising, which generated some $500m a year for the regime.
Robert Joseph, the US undersecretary for arms control, has disclosed that 11 North Korean “entities” — trading companies or banks — plus six from Iran and one from Syria were singled out for action under an executive order numbered 13382 and signed by Bush.
That sound like "President Bush is out of ideas" and "Bush [is] now counseling patience and diplomacy on North Korea" to you?
Goodwins not done yet.
But what choice does he have now that the pillars of his post-9/11 foreign policy are crumbling? As Harvard Prof. Joseph Nye argues in Foreign Affairs magazine, Bush's strategy of "reducing Washington's reliance on permanent alliances and international institutions, expanding the traditional right of preemption into a new doctrine of preventive war and advocating coercive democratization as a solution to Middle Eastern terrorism" amounted to a bid for a "legacy of transformation."
The first two ideas have been repealed. The third brought Hamas into power and has so far failed to take root in Iraq or anywhere else.
From reading the London Times report it's clear that neither Mr. Goodwin nor Mr. Nye, have a clue what their talking about.
Some would argue that the democracy that brought about the Hamas government was a good thing for several reasons. Hamas remains committed to the destruction of Israel and since the Palestinian people voted them in, that would indicate the majority of Palestinians are committed to that goal. Thus the elections prove the Palestinians true intentions. With Hamas in power their terrorism and corruption are laid bare for the world to see.
As for democracy taking root in Iraq, that's a matter of opinion. We've seen slow but constant progress in Iraq. And as for "anywhere else", Mr. Goodwin oddly forgets to mention Afghanistan. And let's not forget some democratic progress in some other Middle Eastern countries. For example, Kuwait recently allowed women to vote and hold office.
Goodwin concludes with this:
I believed Iraq was the key, that if we prevailed there, momentum would shift in our favor. Now I'm not sure. We still must prevail there, but Iraq could mean nothing if Iran or Bin Laden get the bomb or North Korea uses one.
Which is why Bush is taking the actions he's taking; unlike the hopeless EU and UN.
Mr. Goodwin is right about two things. We are at war and "Democratic Party leaders want to pretend we can declare peace and everything will be fine..." Which is why the Democrats are unfit to govern.
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