Re: The Dems on the port authority contract
Topics: foreign policy
01 Mar 2006
From: Clive Woodward
I agree that the Democratic reaction to the port deal has been demagogic
and typically opportunistic. I think we agree on the merits of the issue
at hand.
Bush's problem here isn't the Democrats for all their faults so much as
his own conservative base for all their merits. If he had their support
on this issue he could tell the Democrats to pound sand for all the
left's opinions would matter -- he could explain port security better,
trot out the usual free trade bromides, perhaps steal a page from the
left with talk about the ongoing need for coalition building in the now
permanent war on terror (which would really make the Democrats go
crazy), and carry on. He can't do that effectively with a otherwise
united Republican front of red state grass roots, various national talk
radio hosts, and congressional leaders opposing him. In short, his own
political base is very likely to kill the deal. If that happens our
standing with the UAE and Arab world in general will take a much bigger
hit than it would have if the Bush administration had quietly
disapproved the deal in the first place on purely domestic political
grounds. A competent administration would have done precisely that and a
wise administration would have regretted it.
The parallel to the troop level issue you mention is this
administration's dangerous combination of arrogance and ineptitude.
The difference is that with the ports issue they still have an argument
on the merits of the case. Their arrogance is displayed by the fact that
they didn't feel the need to make that case in advance because they knew
best, full stop. Instead they mostly said, in effect, "don't worry,
we've checked it all out" after the deal blew up in their faces. How
reassuring are those words on any topic at all from this administration?
The ineptitude is that the ill informed reactions were 100% predictable
all around and yet clearly caught the administration by surprise. In the
latter regard the parallel to the troop level issue is really quite good.
Ervan Darnell wrote:
>Fareed Zakaria had an amusing observation on this morning's "This Week": The Democrats have been opposed to racial profiling in the search for terrorists, but now they are all for it in the case of deciding who gets contracts.
>
>I want to add this one to it: The Dems, who have been arguing for an early troop withdrawal are now complaining the U.S. couldn't protect mosques.
>
>Bush's policy has all sorts of problems, but I at least more or less know what it is. The Democrats have reduced themselves to demagoging on easy targets with no real policy of their own or willingness to be responsible for their own suggestions.
>
>In the interest of equal time bashing, my biggest hit on Bush at this juncture is that Rumsfeld refused to listen to the Pentagon when it said that 300K troops would be needed to maintain order after the invasion. He cut that number by more than half and said "go, do it". Much of the trouble since is because the U.S. has not been able to keep order. While this seems to be largely the fault of religious fanaticism mixed with un-extinguished Sunni dictatorial zeal, Bush is in some indirect way suffering the rebuke he deserves for having invaded on a prayer instead of paying attention. At this point, it is obviously politically impossible to increase troop strength. Yes, he probably never could have had 300K troops to start with, but that only means the objective was too expensive (whether you agree with it or not). I fault him for not accepting that conclusion.
>====================================================
>Ervan Darnell
>ervan@kelvinist.com http://www.kelvinist.com
>
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