THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume VII, Issue # 219, October 3, 2005
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
ANTIWAR PROTESTS: LISTENING TO LOSERS
By Alan Caruba
THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY & UNITED STATES FOREIGN POLICY IN THE MIDDLE EAST: THE ANTIWAR MESSAGE & FOREIGN
POLICY ADVICE OF LIBERAL LEFTIST DEMOCRATIC PARTY POLITICIANS -- URGING THE U.S.A. TO WITHDRAW FROM THE NEW
CHALLENGE PRESENTED BY THE MIDDLE EAST & THE ISLAMIST INTERNATIONAL TERRORIST MOVEMENT, ABANDON AMERICA'S
MORAL & MILITARY OBLIGATIONS TO THE AFGHAN & IRAQI PEOPLES, BELIEVE THAT FRANCE, GERMANY, & RUSSIA ARE
AMERICA'S TRUE ALLIES, BELIEVE THAT THE UNITED NATIONS IS OF GREAT VALUE, & WITHDRAW TO THE UTTERLY FALSE
NOTION OF A FORTRESS AMERICA -- ADVOCATING THE DEFEAT OF EVERYTHING AMERICA HAS STOOD FOR IN THE PAST &
STANDS FOR NOW
FULL STORY:
In mid-Summer, 2005, the Washington Post published an opinion editorial by former Colorado Senator and presidential
candidate Gary Hart. It embodied all the usual arguments against having invaded Iraq and against staying on until the Iraqis can
begin to fashion a free nation with a constitution agreed to by its people.
I recall thinking to myself, why would anyone pay any attention to the advice of such a loser? You may think me harsh, but let’s
very briefly look at his record. In 1972, Hart was the campaign manager for U.S. Senator George McGovern, the antiwar, Leftist
Democratic candidate for President. McGovern suffered an historic defeat, carrying only Massachusetts and the District of
Columbia. In 1984 and 1988, Hart made a bid to be the Democratic Party’s candidate for President.
In the latter effort, rumors circulated that he was having an extramarital affair. He publicly dismissed them, but a stakeout on his
Washington, D.C., townhouse revealed the departure of an attractive young woman one evening in May, 1987. This was during
the time Hart was actively campaigning. That same month, word got out that Hart had spent a night in Bimini on a sailboat named
Monkey Business with someone other than his wife, Lee. A photo of then 29-year-old model, Donna Rice, sitting on the lap of
Hart sunk his presidential aspirations.
Hart subsequently returned to the practice of law, remaining on the periphery of politics ever since. In 1998, then President Clinton
asked him to co-chair a bipartisan commission to study homeland security. Clearly, the commission’s findings were ignored, despite
several calling for broad changes in security policies.
He was wrong on McGovern, who ran and lost on a platform opposing the United States involvement in Vietnam, and his very poor
judgment regarding his personal life, i.e., marital infidelity, and conduct in the run-up to his second effort to receive his party’s
nomination, suggests that any advice offered by Gary Hart should be approached with care.
Hart is still mired in the mindset of those who opposed the Vietnam War. I am not here to argue that any of the judgments from
Eisenhower to Kennedy to Johnson to Nixon were correct. In the hindsight of history, the famed “domino theory” of the time,
U.S. presidents feared the loss of any nation to a Communist takeover in the midst of the Cold War. Ultimately, the decisions taken
by successive presidents only yielded the body bags of dead heroes. The fact that Johnson literally lied the nation into a wider
conflict has left a bitter legacy for presidents who followed.
It is telling that Hart began his antiwar diatribe quoting from a song from the Vietnam era, “Waist-deep in the Big Muddy and the
big fool said to push on.” The loss of the Vietnam War, in Hart’s judgment, signaled “the decline of the Democratic Party, a
gateway through which a new Conservative era entered.” On the other hand, it could be argued that battling Communism, a process
that was deeply ingrained in American history and which took on greater importance after World War Two, is quintessentially
Conservative. It was a battle that was waged, no matter which party held the Presidency.
The Democrats lost to Nixon, to Reagan, and to Bush41 and Bush43 because voters perceived them to be weak on the protection of
American interests at home and around the world.
So, when Hart tells us that, “History will deal with George Bush and the Neo-Conservatives who misled a mighty nation into a
flawed war that is draining the finest military in the world, diverting National Guard and reserve forces that should be on the front
line of homeland defense, shredding international alliances that prevailed in two world wars and the Cold war, accumulating
staggering deficits, misdirecting revenue from education to rebuilding Iraqi buildings we’ve blown up and weakening American’s
national security,” we need to approach such bombast with the understanding that he’s probably as wrong in 2005 as he was in
1972.
“The real defeatists today,” wrote Hart, “are not those protesting the war.” Wrong again. Indeed, if there were any real support for
this point of view, antiwar protests would not still be organized by groups who think Communism produces anything other than
gulags and mass murder.
The recent poster child for antiwar protests is Cindy Sheehan, initially portrayed as a grieving mother of a fallen hero. It has since
been revealed that she abandoned the raising of her son to her first husband and that her second husband is in the process of
divorcing her. No one in her immediate family has a good word for her. The only support she could muster in Crawford, Texas, was
from Joan Baez, Martin Sheen, and the mainstream news media.
Why would the Washington Post and, subsequently, other newspapers publish Hart’s opinion, given such an abysmal
record of personal and public failures? Why would anyone pay any attention to someone still arguing the merits of the Vietnam
War and trying to use it as the template for our efforts in the Middle East against a totally different enemy?
I hope the Democratic Party heeds Hart’s advice regarding the war and finds yet another antiwar candidate, thereby making
plainly evident what has happened to the party. The Democratic Party has, through the antiwar message and personal misconduct
of its leaders, managed to reduce itself to being a party of obstruction and appeasement, devoted entirely to Bill Clinton’s politics
of personal destruction. Only it is the destruction of the Democratic Party that will occur as its spokesmen denounce U.S. policy
in the Iraq and Afghanistan, and as Americans warily eye the Middle East, the continued acts of terrorism around the world, and,
in particular, the prospect of an Iran armed with nuclear weapons.
Choosing to withdraw from the new challenge presented by the Middle East and the Islamist international terrorist movement,
choosing to abandon our moral and military obligations to the Afghan and Iraqi peoples, choosing to believe that France, Germany,
and Russia are our real allies, choosing to believe the United Nations is of any value, and choosing to withdraw to the utterly false
notion of a Fortress America -- in short, choosing to follow the foreign policy advice of Liberal Leftist Democrats -- would be the
defeat of everything America has stood for in the past and stands for now.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
American Politics & Political Competition
The American Political System:
Politics & Government in the U.S.A.
Communism: Longterm Enemy
Russia & Other Former Soviet Republics
Europe, Europeans, & American Foreign Policy
The Middle East & the Problem of Iraq
Page Two
Page One
The Problem of Rogue States:
Iraq as a Case History
The Middle East & the Arabs
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
War & Peace in the Real World
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
U.S. National Security Strategy
Alan Caruba is a veteran business and science writer, a Public Relations Counselor, and Founder of the National Anxiety Center, a
clearinghouse for information about media-driven scare campaigns. Caruba writes a weekly commentary, "Warning Signs," posted
on the Internet website of the National Anxiety Center, which is located at
www.anxietycenter.com.
© Alan Caruba 2005
Published with Permission of Alan Caruba
ACaruba@AOL.Com
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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