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| Home Front: Politix |
| The Only Issue This Election Day |
| 2006-11-02 |
| by Orson Scott Card There is only one issue in this election that will matter five or ten years from now, and that's the War on Terror. And the success of the War on Terror now teeters on the fulcrum of this election. If control of the House passes into Democratic hands, there are enough withdraw-on-a-timetable Democrats in positions of prominence that it will not only seem to be a victory for our enemies, it will be one. Unfortunately, the opposite is not the case -- if the Republican Party remains in control of both houses of Congress there is no guarantee that the outcome of the present war will be favorable for us or anyone else. But at least there will be a chance. I say this as a Democrat, for whom the Republican domination of government threatens many values that I hold to be important to America's role as a light among nations. But there are no values that matter to me that will not be gravely endangered if we lose this war. And since the Democratic Party seems hellbent on losing it -- and in the most damaging possible way -- I have no choice but to advocate that my party be kept from getting its hands on the reins of national power, until it proves itself once again to be capable of recognizing our core national interests instead of its own temporary partisan advantages. To all intents and purposes, when the Democratic Party jettisoned Joseph Lieberman over the issue of his support of this war, they kicked me out as well. The party of Harry Truman and Daniel Patrick Moynihan -- the party I joined back in the 1970s -- is dead. Of suicide. . . . Go read all of it. It's long, but it's worth every minute. He makes a lot of important points, including this one: When there is no hope of deliverance, the people have no choice but to bow under the tyrant's lash, pretending to be true believers while yearning for relief. In Russia it came ... after more than seventy years. China and Cuba are still waiting -- but then, they started later. So it would be in the Muslim world -- if Islamicism were ever able to come to seem inevitable and irresistible. You know: If America withdrew from Iraq and Afghanistan and exposed everyone who had cooperated with us to reprisals. As happened in South Vietnam. The negotiated peace was more or less holding after American withdrawal. But then a Democratic Congress refused to authorize any further support for the South Vietnamese government. No more armaments. No more budget. In other words, we forcibly disarmed our allies, while their enemies continued to be supplied by the great Communist powers. The message was clear: Those who rely on America are fools. We didn't even have the decency to arrange for the evacuation of the people who had trusted us and risked the most in supporting what they thought was our mutual cause. We did it again, this time in the Muslim world, in 1991, when Bush Senior encouraged a revolt against Saddam. He meant for the senior military officers to get rid of him in a coup; instead, the common people in the Shiite south rose up against Saddam. Bush Senior did nothing as Saddam moved in and slaughtered them. The tragedy is that all it would have taken is a show of force on our part in support of the rebels, and Saddam's officers would have toppled him. Only when it became clear that we would do nothing did it become impossible for any high-ranking officials to take action. For the price of the relatively easy military action that would have made Saddam turn his troops around and leave the Shiite south, we could have gotten rid of him then -- and had grateful friends, perhaps, in the Shiite south. That is part of our track record: Two times we persuaded people to commit themselves to action against oppressive enemies, only to abandon them. Do you think that would-be rebels in Iran and Syria and North Korea don't remember those lessons? . . . |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #7 Good God don't let her! Languages yes, but not linguistics. It's so damn boring. |
| Posted by: Noam 2006-11-02 20:31 |
| #6 Yet another proof, along with an interesting list of Rantburger nyms, that being a registered Democrat is not proof of the inability to think logically based on reality. Orson Scott Card is one of my favourite science fiction writers -- trailing daughter #1 was so devastated to learn that he'd given up teaching creative writing at one of the universities in South Carolina that she is currently thinking of majoring in linguistics instead. ;-) |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2006-11-02 15:04 |
| #5 After reading this, I'd like to give Mr. Card a standing ovation! *APPLAUSE* *APPLAUSE* *APPLAUSE* *APPLAUSE* *APPLAUSE* *APPLAUSE* *APPLAUSE* *APPLAUSE* |
| Posted by: eltoroverde 2006-11-02 14:28 |
| #4 A long, but quite insightful, lesson into the global war we're in the middle of. Written by a moderate Democrat, who has no love for the far right, but explains why Bush is the right man, in the right place, at the right time, with respect to the only issue that matters in this election. He explains all the many competing forces that comprise our enemy - Iranian Shi'ite despots and Iraqi Shi'ite power grabbers, Sunni radicals and Syrian tyrants ... Why Iran is about to fall, but China isn't, and how the US could speed up the Iranian fall, but not with an invasion (I happen to disagee with him on that issue; I don't want an invasion, either.) He also explains why the survival of the US depends on not withdrawing from the middle east until all the competing voices of tyranny are quieted - they don't all have to be defeated, but they have to be shown we will not run away. His conclusion, if you can't manage to get all the way through the logic - For the sake of our children's future -- and for the sake of all good people in the world who don't get to vote in the only election that matters to their future, too -- vote for no Congressional candidate who even hints at withdrawing from Iraq or opposing Bush's leadership in the war. And vote for no candidate who will hand control of the House of Representatives to those who are sworn to undo Bush's restrained but steadfast foreign policy in this time of war. |
| Posted by: Bobby 2006-11-02 14:07 |
| #3 For all the marbles... |
| Posted by: .com 2006-11-02 10:21 |
| #2 Oops. My secret identity has been revealed! |
| Posted by: Bobby 2006-11-02 09:08 |
| #1 Worth the trip. I'll be e-mailing the link, with some encouragements, to all my non-Rantburg converts at lunchtime. |
| Posted by: J. Edgar Hoover 2006-11-02 09:07 |