The Crucial Alliance
Michael J. Totten, Tech Central Station, 10/27/2003

On September 11, 2001, I forced myself to stop hating the president.

My complaints against George W. Bush were the usual ones. He lost the popular vote, he mangles the English language, he's incurious about the world, and he's just too conservative. Yet he's a bleeding heart liberal next to Saddam Hussein and the Taliban. He also stood between Osama bin Laden and the rest of us. We were suddenly at war, and Republicans weren't the enemy.

Most of us felt the same way. For a short little while, America was united. The country felt like a family.

Two years later Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle gets no more hugs from the president. A sense of normalcy is back, and we feel less terrorized. Though the 1990s are over and it's folly to try to return, that doesn't get in the way of our partisans.

"The Enemy Here Is George Bush"

Last month at a Democratic Party debate Howard Dean said "we need to remember that the enemy here is George Bush." This was during an argument with Dick Gephardt about Medicare. At the same time, the mullahs in Iran and the Stalinist tyrant in North Korea were firing up nuclear weapons programs. Al Qaeda threatens to use whatever nukes they can find to turn the United States into a "sea of deadly radiation." At a time like this, calling George Bush the enemy is more than a little ridiculous.

Though politics used to stop at the water's edge, foreign affairs is where the real fight is these days. In the heated days of the war in Iraq, the streets of urban America thronged with tens of thousands of activists, some opposed to regime-change and others supporting our troops.

Except for near the end of the Vietnam War, it wasn't always this way.

Throughout most of the 20th Century, the mainstream left and the mainstream right were in basic agreement about fascism and communism. Both were the enemy, and both were to be fought. So obvious were these evils that we allied ourselves with some sinister regimes along the way.

Liberals sided with communists against fascists. And conservatives sided with fascists against communists. This we did without apology. The Roosevelt administration reintroduced Joseph Stalin as heroic "Uncle Joe" in the Allied fight against Hitler. Ronald Reagan dubbed the genocidal but anti-communist Guatemalan dictator Efrain Rios Montt "a man of great personal integrity" who got "a bum rap on human rights."

The alliances were tactical, the propaganda calculated. It's instructive nevertheless. If liberals could team up with Stalin, of all people, working with George W. Bush against Middle Eastern tyrants should not be a problem. And putting aside partisanship should cut both ways: If Nixon and Reagan could prop up Latin American military regimes, surely the GOP can do business with Hillary Clinton.

The Crucial Alliance

It's a Democratic party cliche now that America needs allies in the Terror War. Of course this is true. We really do need the help of our friends, especially our allies in NATO. But the most crucial alliance of all is the one here at home. If Bush needs the support of Germany and France, he needs the support of the Democrats even more. We can hardly expect other nations to stand with us if we can't even stand with ourselves.

This isn't to say that the party out of power ought to be rubber-stampers. Excessive bipartisanship is the functional equivalent of a one-party state. What we need is an implicit understanding that despite our disagreements we are on the same side. Because we are on the same side. Murderous fanatics are trying to kill us. Save the talk of "enemies" and "evil" for them.

Dissent is the responsibility of the opposition. But this responsibility must be wielded responsibly. Those who argued that regime-change in Iraq would make us more vulnerable to terrorism were misguided, in my view, but were sincerely trying to help. The same goes for those who say we need to send in more troops. Some responsible critics supported the war, while others did not. What unites them is the hope that we'll win. That's the sort of opposition we need.

The Aussie Example

But the increasing polarization of late lays the groundwork for something dangerous. If you demonize your opponent, if you truly believe him venal and wicked and treacherous, the trust as the basis for civil society cracks. Terrorists can then pry open those cracks into chasms.

It happened last year in Australia. After the terror attack at a nightclub in Bali, disturbing letters appeared in the Melbourne Age.

"Prime Minister, I blame you. -- Judith Maher"

"We are paying in blood for John Howard's arse-licking, ignorance and xenophobic bigotry. -- Bob Ellis"

"I explicitly place the responsibility at the feet of Howard and Downer. They may as well have pushed the button themselves. -- Fraser Nock"

Four years ago during the war in Yugoslavia House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas) said "The bombing was a mistake." He demanded president Clinton negotiate a "diplomatic agreement in order to end this failed policy." The policy wasn't a failure. It just wasn't finished yet. Tom DeLay is not a pacifist. But he would have halted an unfinished war in its tracks and made it a failure on purpose, just to destroy a hated president.

Now that we have a new man in the White House, some Democrats have decided to behave the same way. Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) proposes an immediate US retreat from Iraq. Stabilizing and democratizing Iraq is far more important than the intervention in the Balkans. Fighting back in the Terror War is not optional, and most honest brokers will admit that Iraq is one lynchpin within that war. But that doesn't stop Dennis Kucinich. He'll let Iraq fall apart and grant a victory to terrorists as long as it helps take down president Bush.

More than 2,000 years ago in The Art of War Sun Tzu told how to defeat an enemy's leadership. "When he is united, divide him." The lesson here is reversible. We cannot let ourselves become divided. We cannot let the crucial alliance be shattered.

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Michael J. Totten writes from Portland, Oregon. Visit his Web log at http://michaeltotten.com.

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US illegally invades a country against the UN in an aggressive illegal war, confuses people about links between Sadaam and 911, goes against all the UN weapons inspectors advice, including the advice of the CIA and intelligence analysts, and then you state that by withdrawing it lets the terrorists win? you must be so ideologically twisted up inside to come to that conclusion.

The only terrorists that are winning are the US govt and its mercenary force of boy soldiers; winning in the sense of acheiving their strategic goals of emperial occupation and dominance of the region as outlined in the Project for the New American Century. Only because of the illegal invasion did Iraq serve as a magnet for possible Al Queda recruits.

The only thing to legitimately do now is withdraw and hand over the country to Iraqi's and UN security.

You've let your emotions get the better of you. The invasion of Iraq was not "illegal". Please refer to the particluar law which has been broken if you make an allegation like that.

The "terrorists" in Iraq are the Baathist remnants aided by syrian and other Muslim fanatics. We cannot leave Iraq in their hands. Any reasonable person would see that.

Taking down Bush?
The US hightailing it out of Iraq?
Both of these are great ideas. I can't wait to see them implemented. The sooner the better.

>Taking down Bush?

Not gonna happen.

>The US hightailing it out of Iraq?

Not happening anytime soon, at least until they're stable.

>Both of these are great ideas.

If you're a lunatic.

>I can't wait to see them implemented. The sooner the better.

Bush will be out January 2009. Out of Iraq? Depends on how quickly these militants want to disrupt the establishment of a representative government in Iraq.

Just wondering, if it were the mid 1860's, would these same people be calling for US troops to be removed immediately from the former Confederacy? Would they have approved of the US attacking a soverign nation who posed no threat them them in 1861?

Just wondering, if it were the mid 1960's, would these same people be calling for US troops to be removed immediately from Vietnam? Would they have approved of the US attacking a soverign nation who posed no threat them them in 1965?

The US in 1865 should not have gone to war with the Confederate States just as we should not have gone to war in Vietnam just as we should not have gone to war in Iraq. The Confederate States should still be slave states to this day if that was their desire. We had no business forcing them to free the slaves.

Because, slavery was not a bad thing at all-I mean, it did build this country, right ?

The US in 1965 should not have gone to war with the Nation of Vietnam just as we should not have gone to war in Afghanistan just as we should not have gone to war in Iraq.

No war in Confederacy.
No war in Vietnam.
No war in Iraq.
None of them posed a threat to the USA.

At least you're being consistent.

None of those foreign nations posed any kind of threat to the people of the US. But the Confederacy was a deadly threat; not only were the slaveholders attempting to destroy one of the few large republics in the world but they were bent on spreading their deadly slave system into the American west, including California, and also on conquering as much of Latin America as possible and spreading it there. This plan had to be smashed, and it is good that it was smashed.

"None of those foreign nations posed any kind of threat to the people of the US. .....they were bent on spreading their deadly slave system..."

Sorta like the communist were bent on speading their deadly system to southeast Asia? Sorta like the Taliban were bent on dominating the will of the people in Afghanistan? Sorta like the way Saddam was bent on becoming the leader of the Middle East?

At least "yodel" was being consistent. You're not. You're just another marxist/socialist patsy.

Typical product of the US school system. What I said was that none of these foreign nations posed any threat to the people of the United States.

>but they were bent on spreading their deadly slave system into the American west, including California, and also on conquering as much of Latin America as possible and spreading it there.

Meyer needs to run for president as the 10th dwarf of the Democratic party. They make up shit as they go along, too. The slave states were interested in making sure they were equally represented in Congress, and they had no desire to move into Latin America, what a dunce. But they ended their relationship with the US, therefore by your own definition of US foreign policy, they should have left them alone, for they did not pose a threat to US soverignty. Where or even IF they intended to expand was not the concern of the US, as long as it didn't impose upon the soverignty of the US. Once again, you pick and choose what you consider to be a threat. Typical left-winger.

Besides, I have no faith in a socialist who posts anything on the internet. As a socialist, you should be out activly working in your community, not on line typing at all. The world has no use for arm-chair socialists. The next time you feel like typing something here, go out and do something in your community instead. That'll show us all you're serious. When I see you here, I know you don't really mean what you say, and it just shows what a joke you are.

Uh, Sorry but you're wrong, The community IS online. So an armchair Socialist would be someone who sits and watches, not someone who communicates.
It's the same reasoning behind Indymedia.

An armchair socialist would be someone who is online rather than actively working in the community. But I agree with you, socialist like Meyer, and also anarchists like the Indymedia collective, are armchair activists by virtue of them being on-line.

The Civil War, our bloodiest waste of potential for reasons beyond simple slavery.
that was a few years ago with a different make up of education
culture and economy.
Get over it. Lincon did. He had help.
What hasn't changed is the priorities of power and the methods of enforcing it. Lies, murder and fear fed by whoever benefits by pulling the strings. In the light of day, these strings become visible.