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Monday, October 4, 2004
In his terrible debate performance last week, John Kerry insisted that the United Stated must adhere to some "global test" before it can take such defensive actions as striking back against terrorists, or assassinating enemy leaders, or overthrowing disarmed regimes in a screwball attempt to remake the Middle East. The notion of a "global test" - which John Kerry describes as "where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you're doing what you're doing, and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons," and which the Medium Lobster can only conclude means the full and complete consensus of every petty bureaucrat in France - flies in the face of everything the United States stands for, and everything America needs to defend itself.
Fortunately, George W. Bush recognizes this, and has embraced an altogether different test - not a global test, not a local test, not even a personal or a singular test. When George W. Bush goes to war, he will not be dissuaded by the protestations of the United Nations, or by some antiwar protesters, or by the State Department, or by the CIA, or by the military, or by the overwhelming conclusions of the intelligence community, or by the American people. Indeed, he will not be dissuaded by his own campaign promises, or his own thoughts and feelings from the week before, or even the minute before. Will we smoke out bin Laden, dead or alive, or is bin Laden not something worth thinking about much anymore? Will Moqtada al Sadr be arrested or killed, or left to join the Iraqi political process? Who's to say? Not George Bush - not if he can help it, at least. To do otherwise - to require some sort of justification before beginning an international conflict - why, that would be tantamount to giving a foreign power - or antiwar protesters, or the State Department, or the CIA, or the military, or the intelligence community, or the American people, or the president - veto power over America's national security. George Bush has a different view. It's not the President's job to take an international poll, or a national poll, or even ask for a show of hands in a cabinet meeting. But our national security will be made somewhere on the fractured whimsy of George Bush's brain - not in the Oval Office. And that's a test America won't need any Frenchman for - or any coherent President, for that matter.
posted by the Medium Lobster at 5:32 PM
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