 he
Afghan phase of the war on terror has been so successful that some
people seem to be forgetting what President Bush told us at the beginning:
The war is going to be long and hard. If our enemies were massed on
a field, we could fight them in the open and be done. But they are
terrorists, everywhere and nowhere. We have to flush them out and
then pounce. Sometimes we will pounce and miss; sometimes we will
pounce mistakenly. When we are finished — which is to say, when
they are finished — there will be no signing ceremony. We will
have to be patient, alert, and resolute.
These qualities
are not as pervasive among our political elites as one might wish.
Now that we are sending troops to Yemen, the Philippines, and ex-Soviet
Georgia, Democratic senators — Daschle, Byrd, Hollings —
are complaining that we are losing "focus" and ,"
that the war is expanding and becoming "open-ended." Daschle
carps that Osama bin Laden has not yet been captured or killed.
The administration has moved some federal workers to an undisclosed
location so that the government may continue to operate in the event
of nuclear attack, and recent news reports suggest the possibility
that al Qaeda may have the ability to set off at least a "dirty
bomb" with radioactive material. Yet the New York Times's
Maureen Dowd greeted the news of the existence of a shadow government
with a riff about Bush's "twin obsessions with secrecy and
self-perpetuation." She writes, "Now Mr. Cheney is Lord
of the Rings, ruling over his very own Moria, an underground kingdom
of bureaucratic hobbits and orcs." Perhaps the Pulitzer board
should start a new prize for clever writing about nuclear attacks
on America.
While capturing
or killing bin Laden is certainly desirable, President Bush has
correctly insisted throughout this conflict that it is not our goal.
Our goal is that those who would do us harm be killed, disabled,
or deterred. Achieving that goal is an "open-ended" commitment
because this is not a war of our choosing, and our enemies hide.
It might be
helpful were Bush to explain, again, the war we are in. The war
requires political support; that takes persuasion, and persuasion
takes repetition. But it is also possible that the Democrats, moved
by political mischievousness or liberal convictions, will stop supporting
the war anyway — bugging out after a strong start, their pattern
in the Cold War.
It is certainly
appropriate to raise questions about administration policy; we'll
do it ourselves, if it begins to appear that the administration
has not summoned the political will to move against Iraq. But if
the Democrats stake out a position substantively different from
that of the administration, they had better be able to defend it.
If they criticize Bush, they should expect to be criticized in turn
— and Republicans will have every right to ask voters to choose
sides. Republicans need not and should not imply that the Democrats
are disloyal or unpatriotic. Pointing out that their policies are
unwise and dangerous will suffice.
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