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This brings up all sorts of problems. First, there’s the suggestion of racism in the Rangel position. Second, there’s the rank separatism (are these not Americans?). Third, would he bar black and Hispanic citizens from serving in the military? Fourth, does the presence of “people of color” in the military act as a veto on any American military action (except for occasional invasions of Haiti, at the insistence of a fasting Randall Robinson)? Fifth, if that is the case, why maintain a military at all? Sixth . . .
And yet, it’s so absurd, there’s no need to keep going. Do you remember when we were proud of the military’s integration? It was the shining example, to all of us. Now . . . a source of division. Figures.
I loved this line within the article: “The mass of the population, freely or not, announced its loyalty.” Freely or not — that’s a fine clause! And how ’bout the word “loyalty”? “Sheer fear,” and instinct for self-preservation, would be more like it. Saddam Hussein was not content with 98.9 percent, or 99.7: He had to go for the whole enchilada — 100 percent. This scores . . . well, a perfect ten, so to speak, on the Tirana Index. Connoisseurs of Charles Krauthammer will remember the Tirana Index. The columnist invented this sometime in the mid-1980s, I believe. Enver Hoxha, the Communist dictator of Albania (whose capital is Tirana), used to “win” by 99.6 percent — numbers like that. You always wondered about the .4 percent — democratic window-dressing, in all likelihood. Krauthammer decided that you could gauge the democratic legitimacy of a country by measuring it on a “Tirana index”: The higher the percentage, the less free the election. We’ll be applying it forever, somewhere.
But the “quagmire” people will be back, big-time, in Iraq. They’re used to “hundred-hour wars.” If they don’t get one — if this war isn’t wrapped up in one neat news cycle — will they go all “quagmire” on us? A concern.
It is not merely a psychological, emotional desire to hit back when you yourself are hit. Some analysts believe that the PLO and other enemies of Israel were emboldened when Israel “holstered” itself in the 1991 Gulf War. Did this suggest to others that Israel was something of a paper tiger, a softie? Israel was struck by 39 Iraqi missiles, and it sat there, nice and quiet, for GHWB and Jim Baker. Did some Israelis, later, pay for this restraint — this season of non-responsiveness, or superhuman “self-control” — with their lives? That, sports fans, is a worry. And speaking of responsiveness versus non-. The following line appeared in a USA Today article: “Beyond reassurances on Iraq, Bush [was] expected [in his meeting with Ariel Sharon] to urge Israel to show restraint in trying to prevent, or retaliate for, Palestinian acts of terrorism.” That is asking an awful lot of a country: to “show restraint” in merely trying to prevent, much less retaliate for, the murder of one’s citizens. In fact, that is too much.
Nothing of the sort. Remember: Kirkpatrick was a Democrat, serving in the Reagan administration, as ambassador to the U.N. She had fought long and hard to save the Democratic party from the New Left, particularly in foreign and defense policy. She was speaking at a Republican convention, in the summer of 1984. That must have been rather a hard thing for a lifelong, committed Democrat to do. She didn’t want to knock “the Democrats,” tout court, because she was one, and she loved that party (or what was left of it, from her point of view). The Democrats had had their convention — in San Francisco. This convention, which nominated Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro, was dominated by exactly the kind of Democrats she lamented and despised. So, at the Republican convention, she spoke against “the San Francisco Democrats” — those who had nominated Reagan’s opposition, weeks earlier. It had nothing to do with gays. It’s not her fault that the Democrats held their convention in San Francisco. If they’d had it in Dubuque, they would have been “the Dubuque Democrats” — and you’d’ve gotten a nice alliteration out of it. Linda Chavez had this same problem when she ran against Barbara Mikulski two years later (for the Senate in Maryland). Chavez, too, was a Democrat, or had been, until a few seconds before this run. She campaigned as a “true Democrat,” if you will, which is to say an old-school Democrat — a betrayed and abandoned Democrat — not a radical one. Maryland was (as it is now) a staunchly Democratic state, and it would have made no sense to run against “the Democrats.” So she denominated her opponent a “San Francisco Democrat,” which she was — and is (as is the senator’s whole party now, to be fair). Chavez details all this in her fantastic new book, An Unlikely Conservative. Again, it’s not their fault — not Jeane’s and Linda’s — that the Democrats held their 1984 convention in San Francisco. And yet, the Matthewsesque charge will always be held over their heads.
When he was at his lowest, we published him in NR. The piece — “The Master (Nation) Builder” — might have been his last. I don’t know. Anyway, I’m glad we did it. By the way, in his last years, Ambrose was viewed as something of a conservative, because he was a patriot, but he had been a radical Democrat. I remember his boasting to a college seminar that he had heckled Richard Nixon over Cambodia. He said — about his biographical subject, Nixon — “I’m a Nixon-hater from way back.” Of course, a lot of conservatives are “Nixon-haters” too, and I’m not sure that . . . whoa: That’s a whole ’nother subject. Later.
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harlie Rangel, among others, says that he opposes military action because
too many “black and brown” people serve in the military.
The
Wall Street Journal had what I would consider an unfortunate headline:
“With Iraqi Vote, Hussein’s Party Shows Its Cohesion.”
Cohesion? It showed its effectiveness in terror. Those people “voted”
at the point of bayonet.
