Re: Unfunny: What's the difference between Vietnam and Iraq?

Subject: British Historian: "Bush is the President America Needs at this
Difficult Time"

Some may be familiar with the eminent British historian, Paul Johnson.
He wrote a piece about our upcoming election. It is a view from an
"outsider" -- and was not written by a columnist from the Weekly
Standard, The Nation, or by any conservative or liberal "talking
head," It is from a longtime student of history. Some may disagree,
but I seriously doubt they can effectively argue the points that Johnson
makes.
PETE

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Quite simply, Kerry must be stopped; and Bush must win
By Paul Johnson
http://www.hacer.org/current/US128.php

The great issue in the 2004 election -- it seems to me as an Englishman
-- is: "How seriously does the United States take its role as a world
leader, and how far will it make sacrifices, and risk unpopularity, to
discharge this duty with success and honor?" In short, this is an
election of the greatest significance, for Americans and all the rest of
us. It will redefine what kind of a country the United States is, and
how far the rest of the world can rely upon her to preserve the general
safety and protect our civilization.

When George W. Bush was first elected, he stirred none of these
feelings, at home or abroad. He seems to have sought the presidency
more for dynastic than for any other reasons. September 11 changed all
that dramatically. It gave his presidency a purpose and a theme, and
imposed on him a mission. Now, we can all criticize the way he has
pursued that mission. He has certainly made mistakes in detail, notably
in underestimating the problems that have inevitably followed the
overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq, and overestimating the
ability of U.S. forces to tackle them. On the other hand, he has been
absolutely right in estimating the seriousness of the threat
international terrorism poses to the entire world and on the need for
the United States to meet this threat with all the means at its disposal
and for as long as may be necessary. Equally, he has placed these
considerations right at the center of his policies and continued to do
so with total consistency, adamantine determination, and remarkable
courage, despite sneers and jeers, ridicule and venomous opposition, and
much unpopularity.

There is something grimly admirable about his stoicism in the face of
reverses, which reminds me of other moments in history: the dark winter
Washington faced in 1777-78, a time to "try men's souls," as Thomas
Paine put it, and the long succession of military failures Lincoln had
to bear and explain before he found a commander who could take the cause
to victory. There is nothing glamorous about the Bush presidency and
nothing exhilarating. It is all hard pounding, as Wellington said of
Waterloo, adding: "Let us see who can pound the hardest." Mastering
terrorism fired by a religious fanaticism straight from the Dark Ages
requires hard pounding of the dullest, most repetitious kind, in which
spectacular victories are not to be looked for, and all we can expect
are "blood, toil, tears, and sweat." However, something persuades me
that Bush -- with his grimness and doggedness, his lack of sparkle but
his enviable concentration on the central issue -- is the president
America needs at this difficult time.

He has, it seems to me, the moral right to ask American voters to give
him the mandate to finish the job he has started.

This impression is abundantly confirmed, indeed made overwhelming, when
we look at the alternative. Senator Kerry has not made much of an
impression in Europe, or indeed, I gather, in America. Many on the
Continent support him, because they hate Bush, not because of any
positive qualities Kerry possesses. Indeed we know of none, and there
are six good reasons that he should be mistrusted. First, and perhaps
most important, he seems to have no strong convictions about what he
would do if given office and power. The content and emphasis of his
campaign on terrorism, Iraq, and related issues have varied from week
to week. But they seem always to be determined by what his advisers,
analyzing the polls and other evidence, recommend, rather than by his
own judgment and convictions. In other words, he is saying, in effect:
"I do not know what to do but I will do what you, the voters, want."
This may be an acceptable strategy, on some issues and at certain times.
It is one way you can interpret democracy.

But in a time of crisis, and on an issue involving the security of the
world, what is needed is leadership. Kerry is abdicating that duty and
proposing, instead, that the voters should lead and he will follow.
Second, Kerry's personal character has, so far, appeared in a bad light.
He has always presented himself, for the purpose of Massachusetts
vote-getting, as a Boston Catholic of presumably Irish origins. This
side of Kerry is fundamentally dishonest. He does not follow Catholic
teachings, certainly in his views on such issues as abortion --
especially when he feels additional votes are to be won by rejecting
Catholic doctrine. This is bad enough. But since the campaign began it
has emerged that Kerry's origins are not in the Boston-Irish community
but in Germanic Judaism. Kerry knew this all along, and deliberately
concealed it for political purposes. If a man will mislead about such
matters, he will mislead about anything.

There is, thirdly, Kerry's long record of contradictions and
uncertainties as a senator and his apparent inability to pursue a
consistent policy on major issues.

Fourth is his posturing over his military record, highlighted by his
embarrassing pseudo-military salute when accepting the nomination.
Fifth is his disturbing lifestyle, combining liberal -- even radical --
politics with being the husband, in succession, of two heiresses, one
worth $300 million and the other $1 billion. The Kerrys have five
palatial homes and a personal jet, wealth buttressed by the usual team
of lawyers and financial advisers to provide the best methods of
tax-avoidance. Sixth and last is the Kerry team: who seem to combine
considerable skills in electioneering with a variety of opinions on all
key issues. Indeed, it is when one looks at Kerry's closest associates
that one's doubts about his suitability become certainties. Kerry may
dislike his running-mate, and those feelings may be reciprocated -- but
that does not mean a great deal. More important is that the man Kerry
would have as his vice president is an ambulance chasing lawyer of
precisely the kind the American system has spawned in recent decades, to
its great loss and peril, and that is already establishing a foothold in
Britain and other European countries. This aggressive legalism -- what
in England we call "vexatious litigation" -- is surely a characteristic
America does not want at the top of its constitutional system.

Of Kerry's backers, maybe the most prominent is George Soros, a man who
made his billions through the kind of unscrupulous manipulations that
(in Marxist folklore) characterize "finance capitalism." This is the
man who did everything in his power to wreck the currency of Britain,
America's principal ally, during the EU exchange-rate crisis -- not out
of conviction but simply to make vast sums of money. He has also used
his immense resources to interfere in the domestic affairs of half a
dozen other countries, some of them small enough for serious meddling to
be hard to resist. One has to ask: Why is a man like Soros so eager to
see Kerry in the White House? The question is especially pertinent
since he is not alone among the superrich wishing to see Bush beaten.
There are several other huge fortunes backing Kerry.

Among the wide spectrum of prominent Bush-haters there is the normal
clutter of Hollywood performers and showbiz self-advertisers. That is
to be expected. More noticeable, this time, are the large numbers of
novelists, playwrights, and moviemakers who have lined up to discharge
venomous salvos at the incumbent.

I don't recall any occasion, certainly not since the age of FDR, when so
much partisan election material has been produced by intellectuals of
the Left, not only in the United States but in Europe, especially in
Britain, France, and Germany. These intellectuals -- many of them with
long and lugubrious records of supporting lost left-wing causes, from
the Soviet empire to Castro's aggressive adventures in Africa, and who
have in their time backed Mengistu in Ethiopia, Qaddafi in Libya, Pol
Pot in Cambodia, and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua -- seem to have a
personal hatred of Bush that defies rational analysis.

Behind this front line of articulate Bushicides (one left-wing columnist
in Britain actually offered a large sum of money to anyone who would
assassinate the president) there is the usual cast of Continental
suspects, led by Chirac in France and the superbureaucrats of Brussels.
As one who regularly reads Le Monde, I find it hard to convey the
intensity of the desire of official France to replace Bush with Kerry.
Anti-Americanism has seldom been stronger in Continental Europe, and
Bush seems to personify in his simple, uncomplicated self all the things
these people most hate about America -- precisely because he is so
American. Anti-Americanism, like anti-Semitism, is not, of course, a
rational reflex. It is, rather, a mental disease, and the Continentals
are currently suffering from a virulent spasm of the infection, as
always happens when America exerts strong and unbending leadership.

Behind this second line of adversaries there is a far more sinister
third. All the elements of anarchy and unrest in the Middle East and
Muslim Asia and Africa are clamoring and praying for a Kerry victory.
The mullahs and the imams, the gunmen and their arms suppliers and
paymasters, all those who stand to profit -- politically, financially,
and emotionally -- from the total breakdown of order, the eclipse of
democracy, and the defeat of the rule of law, want to see Bush replaced.
His defeat on November 2 will be greeted, in Arab capitals, by shouts
of triumph from fundamentalist mobs of exactly the kind that greeted the
news that the Twin Towers had collapsed and their occupants been
exterminated.

I cannot recall any election when the enemies of America all over the
world have been so unanimous in hoping for the victory of one
candidate. That is the overwhelming reason that John Kerry must be
defeated, heavily and comprehensively.