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| Special Report Roundtable - August 16 |
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August 14, 2006
Lamont's Laissez-Faire National Security Policies
By Dennis ByrneNed Lamont asked cheering supporters after his Connecticut Democratic primary victory over incumbent Sen. Joe Lieberman: Are you safer today than before the Iraqi invasion?
Despite the terribly bad timing of the question, just before the triumphant smashing of a 9-11-sized terrorist plot, it's a fair question and deserves a serious answer. It is:
Yes.
Lamont probably never expected an answer so quickly, nor so damaging to his anti-war campaign, but even if the British hadn't uncovered the battle plans by our fascist enemy, the answer still would have been a resounding yes.
That's because if we had not engaged the worldwide enemy by spying, eavesdropping and taking out of action our enemies wherever we could find them, at least one plane would have been brought down by a shoe bomber. The Canadian Parliament would have been in ruins, and who knows how many hundreds or thousands of Americans would have died from flawlessly executed plots.
No, London and Madrid were not spared attacks, nor can we guarantee that America won't be pummeled again. But the laissez-faire kind of approach to national security advocated by the Lamont wing of the Democratic Party clearly would not have made us safer. If John Kerry and like-minded Democrats had won the 2004 elections, the answer to the "are you safer now" question--even without the Iraq War--would be a resounding "No!"
How ironical that a political philosophy that despises a laissez-faire economy and limited government would be so passionate in support of laissez-faire national security. They, like Lamont, would have restricted, if not banned, the type of espionage that scotched the last terrorist plot. I guess they would have our government remain ignorant of the calls the British terrorists made to the United States, because they would infringe on the rights of our own collection of homegrown traitors.
The laissez-faire approach to national security requires that we be post-active, eschewing the pro-active strategies of the Bush administration in the hopes that happy talk, listening with a sensitive ear, multi-lateral diplomacy and other day dreams of conflict resolution would keep the murderers away.
Instead of conceding a single inch, the laissez-faire Democrats continue to live their otherworldly lives by suspecting that Bush somehow timed, if not concocted, the British bust-up of the terrorists to mute Lamont's victory. No rational person needs to be disabused of such thoughts, but in Lamont's circles, this wackiness will just gain credibility.
Even a dousing of cold water won't help. As someone who voted for George McGovern, I think I understand their passion to relive the emotional surge of the anti-Vietnam War days. It's all so familiar: The argument that what's happening in Iraq (Vietnam) is an internal matter, a regional and ideological civil war (communism vs. freedom; North Vietnam vs. South Vietnam), which we should stay out of. That we can end our "isolation" from the international community by isolating ourself from that Iraqi (Vietnamese) civil war. That we should be tending to our own urgent domestic needs first; that the Middle East (Southeast Asia) can sort it all out by itself.
My recollection of that time closes with images of desperate, freedom-seeking Vietnamese clamoring at the U.S. embassy gates in Saigon, thousands of "boat-people" seeking refuge in the United States and of millions more being plunged into the maw of a vengeful, repressive tyranny. I am not proud of my role in urging such a horrific, but inevitable, outcome.
As for the many soldiers in Lamont's children's campaign who don't remember those times, but are heralding a victorious "new day" in politics, I would simply remind them that during an immensely unpopular war, George McGovern, the anti-war candidate, was crushed.
But that's just the politics of it. More important is this: Whether you agree with the conduct of the Iraq War, or whether we should have gotten into it in the first place, the laissez-faire policies of Lamont will inexorably bring down suffering, brutality and death on millions of Iraqis. And the millions more who will become victims of emboldened fascists.
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