September
26, 2002 10:10 a.m. Whose
“foes”? Why NATO? Forever Lee. Etc.
emember when some Republican congressman, fighting with his opponents
in the House, referred to Clinton as “your president,” and the
Democrats and the media went nuts? I knew what the guy meant; but he was
branded a virtual traitor.
Yesterday, I read
Maureen Dowd’s column
in the New York Times, proving that I’m an idiot. As you may
know, Dowd’s principal belief is that everything concerning W. and
his men is psychological, a matter of macho, or “testosterone,”
as she often writes. In this latest column, she says, “W., who was
always the Roman candle and hatchet man in the family, has turned his
father’s good manners upside down — consulting sparingly, leaving
poor Tony Blair to make the case against his foes for him, and treating
policy disagreements as personal slights.”
It’s pointless
to pick at Dowd, but, to begin with, Bush certainly hasn’t left Blair,
who is not “poor,” to make the case against Iraq. Both have
done so, and have done so convincingly. But what I love is his foes
— Bush’s foes. You see, strictly a personal matter, with Saddam,
Osama, and the rest of the boys lined up against the ill-mannered Texan,
if only in his mind. Bush’s foes, Bush’s bogeys — whatever.
Whether she realizes
it or not, terrorists and their state supporters are Dowd’s foes,
too. When it comes to their bombings and other evil acts, they will not
exempt her, on the grounds that she thinks it’s all a joke.
In a piece
about John Ashcroft — the venom against — I tried to correct
the myth that he covered up a large, semi-nude statue in the Great Hall
of the Justice Department because his fundamentalist sensibility was offended.
But I also acknowledged that the story would never die: It’s too
“good,” too beloved by Ashcroft’s foes (speaking of foes,
personal and otherwise!). Maureen Dowd, for one, has loved to write that
the AG put the poor lady — the Spirit of Justice — “in
a burqa.” (You see, this was at the time of the Afghan war, and people
like Dowd had just learned what a burqa was.)
And here’s Al
Gore, or his speechwriter, following her line. It was far from the worst
thing he did, but in that awful speech, he mocked Ashcroft for, yes, “putting
Lady Justice in a burqa.” Big laughs, from the friendly crowd.
No, it’s not
true — Ashcroft’s advance team, unbeknownst to him, ordered
a typical pipe-and-drape backdrop, to produce “better visuals”
for television when the AG gave speeches or held press conferences in
the Great Hall. The idea started when the president came over to do the
same — to dedicate the building to RFK. The White House insisted
on this standard blue backdrop, the kind found all over America.
But the facts are
as nothing: The story will never die, having achieved the status
of myth from the moment it was whispered.
With Donald Rumsfeld meeting his fellow NATO defense ministers, we might
ask the question, What is NATO for, and should we still be in it? Should
it exist at all?
For decades, NATO
was a bulwark against the Soviet Union. Now, what is it a bulwark against?
Throughout the ’90s, we usually answered with one word: “instability.”
NATO is a European check — U.S.-supported — against European
instability, an instability that has brought the world great sorrow through
the generations.
You may be interested
to know that the question came up in a recent meeting with a sharp U.S.
diplomat, stationed in Europe. Should NATO continue to be? The diplomat
made a very strong point: NATO gives the United States a foothold in Europe.
The EU, of course, is barreling ahead, including with its own defense
force, pathetic as the notion may appear to some. If the U.S. wants a
continuing foothold on the continent, it needs NATO, and a sturdier NATO
at that.
And do we want that
continuing foothold? Yes — but that’s another discussion.
You gotta love Orrin Hatch, or at least I do. Some of my colleagues are
less than crazy about him, for his occasional squishiness on Democratic
judges over the years, and other concessions. He is a fairly pragmatic
pol, not the flame-thrower and ogre of frequent depiction. And then there’s
his friendship with Ted Kennedy, which burns many conservatives. Not so
much the friendship as the fact that Hatch likes to boast about it a little,
or a lot.
But you could argue
that, on social policy, economic policy, and foreign policy, he has been
the no. 1 senator of the last quarter-century. He is too seldom given
credit for his achievements — as he may be quick to tell you. (If
I am not for myself . . .) (A brief aside on Hatch: Most people think
of him as a stuffy Utah Mormon, but do you know he’s a gritty little
Pittsburgher, who grew up dirt-poor and used to box and work as a janitor?
Etc. I once did a piece on this, entitled “Salt Lake Steeler.”)
But I wanted to say?
Oh, yeah. Hatch was positively stirring the other day, when he
defended Miguel Estrada, the brainy judge whom Bush has nominated to the
D.C. Court of Appeals — and whom left-wing groups are doing their
utmost to defeat. For one thing, the idea of a conservative judge “of
color” scares the daylights out of them. Hatch took after Hispanic
activist groups, saying, “They ought to be ashamed of themselves.
They have sold out the aspirations of their people just to sit around
schmoozing with the power elite.”
You might wince a
little at that “their people” — but, oh, what a comment,
and may we have torrents more of them!
I was looking at a photo of Saddam Hussein and two of his sons, and I
had a recurring thought: All of these people — Saddam, his family,
his ministers, his henchmen — have the same, thick, dark mustache.
It seems to be a regime requirement. Who do they think they are, the Oakland
A’s? (That’ll date you.)
One of the great clichés is, “Freedom is indivisible,”
and it’s true. Solzhenitsyn, a Russian former schoolteacher, inspired
strugglers all over the world, and he still does. When Armando Valladares
publishes Against All Hope, about Cuba, it lifts dissidents in
some dungeon in China.
So I was moved to
read about Vaclav Havel’s recent meeting with Cuban exiles in Miami.
Here is an excerpt from Carol Rosenberg’s report in the Miami
Herald:
“Among the Cuban
dissidents who greeted Havel at the Freedom Tower was Ramon Colas —
just eight months in Miami. A founder of the independent library of Las
Tunas, he said he discovered the Czech thinker in 1998, when a copy of
‘The Power of the Powerless’ arrived among donated books.
“‘It was
extremely emotional to meet him,’ said Colas, 40. . . . The former
child psychologist said he lost his job at a Cuban hospital because he
worked with opposition groups inspired by Havel’s books. ‘Havel
showed me the power of living in the world of truth. He told me that,
even in the middle of the Castro dictatorship, I was a free man.’”
Yeah, that’s
nice talk, but don’t forget: These Cubans are nothing but dirty right-wingers
who are just dying to torture blacks and impose a Reign of Sugar over
the literate, healthy masses.
Come to think of
it, Castro does a pretty good job of torturing blacks himself (see Oscar
Biscet).
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emember when some Republican congressman, fighting with his opponents
in the House, referred to Clinton as “your president,” and the
Democrats and the media went nuts? I knew what the guy meant; but he was
branded a virtual traitor.
In a 
