WASHINGTON -- About the time two of the world's most repulsive bullies were being handed over to Allah with the compliments of the 101st Airborne, another of the Democrats' hapless presidential contenders endeavored to demonstrate his foreign policy perspicacity.
Addressing the Bar Association of San Francisco, the Hon. Richard A. Gephardt, derided the Bush administration for its "chest-beating unilateralism." "Foreign policy," he pronounced, "isn't a John Wayne movie, where we catch the bad guys, hoist a few cold ones and then everything fades to black." He droned on about President George W. Bush's "utter disregard for diplomacy." Meanwhile, the news was that Saddam Hussein's sons, Uday and Qusay (known to contemporary wags as Ebay and Amway), had been cornered and dispatched John-Wayne style.
Gephardt's ill-timed outburst has its historical parallel. On Dec. 7, 1941, just as the Japanese were attacking Pearl Harbor, an anti-war senator rose up to address a huge meeting at Pittsburgh's Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall. Speaking to the isolationist America First Committee, Sen. Gerald P. Nye savaged President Franklin D. Roosevelt for creating hostile relations with Japan and siding with the British, whom he called cowards, unwilling to endure casualties. Halfway through his speech, Nye was informed that the Japanese had an hour before announced "a state of war between it and the United States and Great Britain." Unfazed, Nye simply rattled on against Roosevelt. When asked afterward about the Japanese declaration, Nye responded, "It sounds terribly fishy to me."
Increasingly, the actions taken by the Bush administration in the war on terror sound "terribly fishy" to partisan Democrats and to their friends in the media. The critics are particularly suspicious of the White House's use of intelligence.
The media's inflamed stories show once again their lack of proportion and, for that matter, memory. They also show that so pathetic is the condition of many Democrats they will exploit American foreign policy for their own partisan gain. On the face of it, the stories that Washington and London doctored intelligence estimates are preposterous. Who can believe that the Bush administration made false claims about Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction to justify sending in an army that would inevitably find there were no weapons of mass destruction? Who can believe that the administration would confect a scheme that was bound to be exposed?