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 Inside the Mind of George W. Bush
For this President, the essence of wisdom lies in knowing when not to change |
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"I've Gained Strength"
The President who reads history books like a user's manual talks about where he fits in himself |
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"Good Will Come Out Of This"
The First Lady talks to TIME about gay-marriage, stem-cell research and dealing with the criticism of her husband |
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Viewpoint: The Case For Bush
In a post-9/11 world, the President shows the political courage that wartime demands |
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Viewpoint: The Case Against Him
His war on terror may well have made things worse. He doesn't deserve another chance |
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TIME Poll
How close—and how unpredictable—is the 2004 presidential contest? |
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Tales of the City, Revisited
Three years after 9/11, Manhattan looks shiny and clean for the G.O.P. convention. But what has become of its icons: its money, its people and, of course, Rudy? An update on a mending metropolis |
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 Indicates premium content |
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E-mail your letter to the editor
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| The Case For Bush |
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In a post-9/11 world, the President shows the political courage that
wartime demands |
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By CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER |
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Posted Sunday, August 29, 2004
The United States has two of the most centrist political parties in
the democratic world. It rarely matters who wins. Things turn out all
right regardless. Not this time. This time there is a war on. And
when there is a war on, particularly a war with so much at stake,
elections matter.
And what matters? Having a President who understands the war and has
the political courage to make the necessary decisions. Everything
else is trivial.
The war broke out on 9/11 and George W. Bush understood its meaning
immediately. He understood that the old cops-and-robbers
approach—bringing perpetrators "to justice"—was not only wrong but
also dangerous. Up till then, it had lulled us into believing we were
doing something about terrorism.
Bush acted. He declared war. Not just on terrorists—the old way—but
on states as well. States that harbor terrorists, states that aid and
abet terrorism, states that hunger for weapons of mass destruction
(WMD). It all looks obvious now. It was not then. It was new:
radical, dangerous and absolutely necessary.
The Michael Moore Democrats are having a jolly time with the
President's reaction during those first seven minutes on 9/11. What
counts is the first 100 days. The first 100 days witnessed the single
most important victory ever in the war on terrorism: the conquest of
Afghanistan, the installation of a pro-American government and the
decimation and scattering of al-Qaeda. It seems easy now. It was not.
It was risky and required great political courage. Afghanistan was
the graveyard of empires. Rugged, mountainous, impenetrable,
recalcitrant and peopled by an enemy hardened and fanatical, it was
considered unconquerable.
Bush led. And succeeded. He did it by mobilizing the American people
within 10 days with one of the great speeches in modern American
history, an address to Congress so compelling that 19,000 hockey fans
in a Philadelphia arena stopped the game so he could be heard and
they could be led. He did it by approving a military plan of audacity
and originality. He did it knowing that the United States was going
to war practically alone.
John Kerry tells us we have to wage a more sensitive war where we
acquiesce more to "allies." O.K., let's talk allies. Which is the
single most crucial ally in the war on terrorism? France? Germany? Russia? No. Pakistan. Pakistan made possible the destruction of the
Taliban, and has been turning over to us the most important al-Qaeda
figures ever captured. How did Bush turn the world's foremost
supporter of the Taliban into our most critical ally against them? Sensitivity? Two days after 9/11, Bush had his Secretary of State
deliver an ultimatum to the Pakistanis: Join us or else. They joined. That is leadership.
Bush was rewarded for this extraordinary first victory with
overwhelming popular support. He could easily have spent the next two
years lavishing attention on domestic affairs, ostentatiously opening
a bioterrorism triage center in every clinic in every hamlet in
America. Punctuate that with regular announcements about the hunt for
al-Qaeda, and he could have coasted to re-election as Father
Protector.
Instead, he took on Iraq. Everyone knew that Iraq would be difficult
and dangerous. But Bush believed that Saddam Hussein and the threat
he represented had to be removed. Our postwar troubles have made us
believe, as if under amnesia, that the choice was between war and
some kind of sustainable equilibrium. It was not. The tense post-Gulf
War settlement was unstable and creating huge and growing liabilities
for America. First, Iraqi suffering and starvation under a cruel and
corrupt sanctions regime was widely blamed on the U.S. Second, the
standoff with Iraq made necessary a large American garrison in Saudi
Arabia, land of the Islamic holiest places—in the eyes of many
Muslims, another U.S. provocation. Indeed, these two offenses were
cited by Osama bin Laden as the chief justification for his 1998
declaration of jihad against America. Most important, the sanctions "containing" Saddam were collapsing.
That would have produced the ultimate nightmare: a re-energized and
relegitimized regime headed by Saddam—and ultimately, even worse,
his sons—increasingly Islamicizing its Baathist ideology, rearming
and renewing WMD programs, and extending its connections with
terrorist groups. The threat was not imminent. But it was ominous and
absolutely inevitable. Bush, correctly, thought it necessary to
remove it. It was obvious to all that this second war would
jeopardize his presidency. He risked his entire political future for
it nonetheless.
He could have played it safe, Kerry-like: nuancing the issue to
death, kicking the problem into the future. He did not. That is
leadership. That is political courage. That is what wartime demands.
And that is why he should be re-elected.
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