NATIONAL SECURITY II

It is easy to succumb to distraction, to entertain perhaps the notion that the economy or health care, housing, farm subsidies or entitlements take top priority. It is a leap for most of us, in fact for Western civilization to acknowledge that there is a large and well-organized group of individuals in this world who want only our destruction. These are Muslim medievalists and they are sworn to a document which amounts to an atavistic inheritance of the dark ages. They do not negotiate; no equivalent of a contentious faculty meeting will do. The Koran explicitly commands violence against non-Muslims who may resist conversion as directed by their role model - the warlord Muhammad.

Thus we continue to look to our own security; our activities in the Middle East, past years, have been about exactly that. Amnesia visits over half of voting Americans, youth especially, those who have conveniently forgotten 9/11. Worse, many of the left and at least one Democratic presidential candidate in particular just think it’s all a big misunderstanding, one that can be resolved through talk, appeasement, global anti-poverty programs and a sincere effort to make ourselves inoffensive to those sworn to destroy us.

We must then decide who will reside at the helm of the United States. There are plenty of critics for all the current contenders: Far-right talk show hosts have targeted McCain for crossing party lines. We ourselves have targeted Huckabee in that he is profoundly out his league in foreign affairs. Some of the left, in disgust, have targeted Obama for the vacuous idiocy of this commentary. We disagree. Obama is just an orthodox liberal -- the most liberal person in the Senate in 2007, according to National Journal, which is turn makes the Democratic party machine very nervous indeed. Certainly we can acknowledge that he has a real skill in turning a phrase, but as one observer asked - does his special skill set actually mean anything, or is it instead the political equivalent of a dog walking on its hind legs--unusual and riveting, but not especially significant.

Others have targeted Clinton for her encyclopedia of tawdry scandals but Clinton’s real problem, scandals aside is that although after she left the White House (with a bunch of pilfered furniture) and went hunting for a Senate seat and got her own platform from which to establish her own record she has not had one major piece of legislation in her name, she accomplished very little except to take cheap shots at the US military. Clinton is a mediocre-to-average candidate with little governing experience; she is where she is mostly because of her husband.

McCain’s qualifications as commander-in-chief are well known. From Michael Makovsky of the Weekly Standard, "Fundamental to Churchill's world view was the belief that priorities had to be rigidly ranked and that the supreme interests need to be vigorously and single-mindedly pursued. Chief among those interests was national security. McCain has suggested a similar approach." Makovsky continues that, "McCain and Churchill lived and breathed national security issues, and it is in this policy field that their similarities are most pronounced. They both strongly believed in their countries, considering them the chief champions of civilization, and they have been rarities in usually putting national security interests ahead of their political fortunes."

Iran remains our most pressing problem. As no-friend-of-the-Administration Christopher Hitchens noted (and as we posted earlier), "The absurdly politicized finding of the National Intelligence Estimate -- to the effect that Iran has actually halted rather than merely paused its weapons-acquisition program -- has put the United States in a position where it is difficult even to continue pressing for sanctions, let alone to consider disabling the centrifuge and heavy-water sites at Natanz, Arak and elsewhere." This was a political hit job that according to Senator Bayh, "had unintended consequences that, in my own view, are damaging to the national security interests of our country." From the life-long Democrat Vic Hansen, "Somehow our politically tainted intelligence agencies argued the near laughable: claiming that Iran stopped making the bomb in 2003 but have instead only eroded much of the peaceful avenues to prevent Iran’s acquisition of a nuclear weapon."

We have highlighted what in our view is the only effective and reasonable course of action for US diplomacy towards the mullahs. Gradually this view is gaining converts; McCain is one of them.

We will update this posting in the near term.

Robert Craven