Oliver Willis, a left-wing blogger from the DC area who just loves to latch onto anything he believes can hurt President Bush, posted Man Down! today.
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The cons panic as the Democrats (in spite of themselves) pull ahead of him on national security.
Even worse, as Sen. Clinton, Sen. Schumer and others introduce legislation focused on securing the ports – the White House isn’t budging.
Tough choice for the right: pile on your president, while undermining one of the key narratives of the GOP – or side with the president on an amazingly unpopular issue in an election year?
As Keanu would say: what do you do?
What would I do? I’d write a post on this subject, and use the WordPress feature which allows me to set it to appear in later, like sixty days later. Thus, on April 25th, a posting referencing Mr. Willis’ gleeful attempt to make something out of nothing, will appear on this site, and we’ll see then if anything like what our friends on the left think will happen will have happened.
Naturally, I’m appending this post to Mr. Willis’ site, as a comment, so that he will see it and know what’s coming.
So you’re saying you’ve got nothing better to do with your day?
Mr Willis, I’m a blogger! What else would I have to do?
Actually, it’s already done; the postdated entry is sitting on the server, and will appear automatically. I could die later this afternoon, and it would still appear, on time.
My feeling is the libs will self destruct on this issue as they usually do. Once Bubba realizes his alleged future prez has cut off his main funding source, Hill will change her tune. This conflict is fun to watch. Bubba needs the UAE to fund his vacations and pick up speaking fees in Dubai, and Hill’s bashing Dubai as the den of all islamic evil for our ports.
I never thought I’d say this with Bush still in office, but the President is right, and his opposition is making a big mistake. Not politically, but in terms of foreign policy.
Pretty soon, we’re going to have to take a hard look at the fight against terrorism, and decide whether we want the next few years to be hard, or very hard. If very hard is OK, then by all means let’s pretend that no Middle Eastern nation can be considered an ally. If hard is better than very hard, then we should cultivate our relationships with the governments of the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan.
These countries are the leaders in the region, and their governments all face serious challenges from anti-Western extremists. This gives them an incentive to side with us, but it also binds them to us in the minds of their people. If we humiliate these governments often enough, they will either stop cooperating or be toppled by extremists. I don’t like the idea of supporting the Saudi royals and Musharraf, but at some point the enemies of our enemies must become our friends. I haven’t seen any security concerns conected to DP World that are as serious as the prospect of Wahabbists toppling the governments of Egypt or the UAE.
That said, I don’t think that Bush will be able to laugh this one off. Clearly, the people’s confidence in his instincts have eroded. If this had happened in 2003, I don’t think you’d have very many Republicans pressing him on this. As for the Democrats, I can only see a win in the political arena. Those that wind up siding with Bush will be able to say that they just wanted the deal fully reviewed, and those that don’t won’t be proven wrong before November.
So that’s my take. Bush is right, but the issue has exposed the fact that his conservative support is not as deep as most of us thought. And the Democrats have strengthened their hand by doing the wrong thing.
By the way, one thing I like about Willis is, he actually follows the links to see what people are saying about his ideas. Having conversations is a better use of the net than pontificating.
[...] (via Common Sense Political Thought, Oliver Willis, and The Weekly Standard) [...]
gordo Says:
February 26th, 2006 at 3:02 am
I never thought I’d say this with Bush still in office, but the President is right, and his opposition is making a big mistake. Not politically, but in terms of foreign policy.
Pretty soon, we’re going to have to take a hard look at the fight against terrorism, and decide whether we want the next few years to be hard, or very hard. If very hard is OK, then by all means let’s pretend that no Middle Eastern nation can be considered an ally. If hard is better than very hard, then we should cultivate our relationships with the governments of the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan.
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You have caught the total essence of this. This all started due to a mischaracterization of the deal and snowballed from there. If anyone sits and listens to the plain meaning of the deal, it’s a no brainer. However, conspiracies of all types abound now from this being an Al-Q plot to the stealing of our ports by the fanatics.
On the other hand, rejecting a deal from a country that we wished all Muddled East countries to be, that is modern, open, and tolerant (good grief, they allow Christianity to exist without dhimmitude) is diplomatic suicide.