Gary Mendoza
June 8, 2004

As Al Gore, Ted Kennedy and other loud voices of the liberal elite heap contempt on President Bush and provide aid and comfort to America’s enemies, their willingness to ignore fundamental facts reaches new heights.

The first fact is the most obvious.  America is at war.  This war is not of our choosing, and our economic and personal security is very much at stake.  Our Islamo-fascist enemies desire nothing less than America’s destruction, and they are prepared to use whatever means they have at their disposal.  

We were in middle of this war years before September 11, but we simply chose to ignore this unpleasant reality.  September 11 made it clear that our enemies are as committed to freedom’s end as Hitler and Stalin and as indifferent to human life as history’s most ruthless tyrants.  This attack awakened America to threat that this enemy posed, and, for a brief moment, all Americans, like generations of past Americans facing similar challenges, stood together as one.

Because we have fortunately avoided another serious attack on American soil, however, craven and self-centered politicians have reverted to their long-standing habit of seeing every issue through the prism of political self interest and ignoring facts that get in the way of their opinions.

Shame on all of them.

As they scream “Bush lied”, the legions of Bush-bashers ignore two key facts supporting the Administration’s decision to take the war on terror to Iraq.  Gore now bloviates about President Bush’s “blatantly false assertions that Saddam was in league with al Qaeda”, and Richard Clarke thunders that “there’s absolutely no evidence that Iraq was supporting al Qaeda, ever”.  As ably chronicled by Stephen Hayes in this week’s issue of The Weekly Standard, however, both of these opportunistic carpers (and broad swaths of the American media) had a very different view of the Iraqi/al Qaeda connection during the Clinton-Gore Administration.

In the spring of 1998, the Clinton Administration’s indictment of bin Laden for the two African embassy bombings included the assertion that “Al Qaeda reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al Qaeda . . . would work cooperatively with the Government of Iraq”.  In a January 23, 1999 Washington Post article, Clarke was quoted as saying that intelligence exists “linking bin Laden to [the Sudanese plant that President Clinton bombed in retaliation for the African embassy bombings], the Iraqi nerve gas experts, and the National Islamic Front of Sudan.”  

At about the same time, Newsweek, ABC News, NPR and the Associated Press reported upon the Iraqi/al Qaeda connection as widely-accepted fact.  A 1999 Congressional Research Service report also noted “If Iraq’s Saddam Hussein decide[s] to use terrorists to attack the continental United States [he] would likely turn to bin Laden’s al Qaeda”.

These facts didn’t change when there was a change in the occupant of the White House.  Those politicians whose views did change should be condemned not cheered.

The Bush-bashers are also trying to convince the American public that the President’s assertion that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction was also a “lie”.  Of course, the fact that the same view was held by the Clinton Administration, the United Nations, the intelligence services of most Western powers and the Kurds whom Hussein gassed are conveniently ignored.  The discovery of sarin gas used last month in an improvised explosive device in Iraq has also been swept under the rug laid down by a new and misguided conventional wisdom.  

The Bush-bashers also have turned their back on America’s history and its unique place in the world.  This Memorial Day, we are rightfully honoring the sacrifices of America’s Greatest Generation during World War II.  When America was bombed at Pearl Harbor, Republican isolationists who earlier opposed American intervention in the world war raging across Europe didn’t ask “What did President Roosevelt know and when did he know it?”  They asked “What can we do together to defeat this grave threat to our collective freedom?”

The Battle of the Bulge didn’t produce lengthy recriminations about the Allied Power’s failure to foresee Hitler’s dying efforts to hold on to power.  Instead, it rekindled American resolve to see the fight to the only acceptable conclusion—unconditional American victory.

The members of the Greatest Generation understood America was then the foremost defender of freedom in the world, and they didn’t shirk from the grave responsibilities that this status and stature entailed.

America stands in that same position today.  America’s enemies won’t go away if we try to “understand them” or “show more humility”.  Instead, they will only be emboldened.  A withdrawal from Iraq at this point would be widely interpreted as a significant victory of the forces of terror.  America and global freedom would become fundamentally less secure.

The heirs to America’s Greatest Generation cannot allow that to happen.  I have confidence that, despite the carping from the liberal elites, they won’t.

Gary Mendoza is one of the most prominent Latino Republicans in the nation.  In 2002, he was the Republican candidate for California Insurance Commissioner.  Mr. Mendoza previously served as Deputy Mayor of Los Angeles under Mayor Richard Riordan.  He also served as California Commissioner of Corporations under Governor Pete Wilson.
 
 

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