Harridan of Evil

August 21, 2003

With the title, “Magnet of Evil”, Maureen Dowd attempts to, yet again, ambush the White House with a mass of disorganized snippets concerning Iraq. Her column is useful though, as she will undoubtedly select “Magnet of Evil” for the title of her autobiography.

Apparently our president, like every other man in her life, has let her down once again. This is rather astonishing as one would believe that Miss Dowd never had any positive expectations for our president in the first place.

Today, she whines that our government manufactured a connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda: “The Bush team has now created the very monster that it conjured up to alarm Americans into backing a war on Iraq.” She hisses that this is due to Islamofascist fighters slipping into Iraq to attack us. While it is true that foreign nationals have been firing upon our forces there, their presence does not support Dowd’s statement. The existence of Mujhadeen in Iraq is illustrative of the Islamofascist desire to kill Americans wherever they can find them (even if it’s on 57th Street). Our military is a familiar target for them as, even in days of peace, many units are stationed in the Middle East. Dowd has forgotten about the October of 2000 attack by Al Qaeda upon the USS Cole. This was due to the reflexive hate of their fundamentalists and, the lack of American retaliation, was due to the Clinton Administration’s incompetence.

Saddam Hussein views our nation as his main foe, and he would have worked or supported any organization that promised our humiliation. Al Qaeda met his purposes, as did the Irrational Republic of France. Maureen does not understand that the old motto, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” This mot has been the basis of numerous diplomatic relationships and treaties since the beginning of time. Churchill gave Stalin everything he could; even though he regarded him as being the second or third wickedest man on the planet. To believe that Saddam would not accommodate Al Qaeda members is naďve. Look at Abu Abbas and Abu Nidal, those charmers were our sworn enemies and one of them was still lounging around Baghdad after we invaded.

Maureen embarrasses herself when she states: “Since America began its occupation, Iraq has become the mecca for every angry, hate-crazed Arab extremist who wants to liberate the Middle East from the ‘despoiling’ grasp of the infidels.” The two aforementioned terrorists above belie her assertion that Iraq “has become” a Mecca for villains. It always was a Mecca for villains. After they’re expelled from Iraq they’ll try to cross the border into Iran. Hopefully, we’ll exterminate them before they can flee.

Saddam’s petro-Euros fueled the present day crisis in Israel. His money kept the Palestinians killing themselves, and his checks also promoted instability throughout the entire region. The world should be glad he’s gone.

Winners never quit and quitters never win, but Maureen Dowd finds surrender on the topic of Iraq irresistible (she never really had a position in the first place). She mentions, “The administration's optimism was exposed as a fantasy when the two efforts it holds most dear — the reconstruction and democratization of Iraq, and advancing the Palestinian-Israeli peace process — both went up in smoke yesterday, literally.” Neither went up in smoke yesterday. Both democracy and reconstruction will come to Iraq but it won’t be tomorrow.

Stabilizing a fallen totalitarian regime is a monumental effort and it will take far longer to accomplish than the average attention span of a Times writer allows. Maureen childishly does not understand that rebuilding a country’s infrastructure is not an easy feat. Cultivating the rule of law is even harder [she should know- most leftists think the Constitution’s as elastic as the band on the tighty-whiteys I wear]. More than a decade after the fall of communism, Russia is only now exhibiting serious economic growth and freedom for its people. The Russians are a long way from Seattle though, as corruption and irresponsibility are an obvious byproduct of a system once cursed with communism and are rampant at the present time.

Miss Dowd’s entire piece is incinerated by The Weekly Standard and its “Germany Was Not A Piece of Cake”. The post-war reconstruction of Germany was not successful in the short-term. Just as with the Baathists, we had to find and outlaw agents of the former Nazi government and replace them with citizens interested in the long-term health of their country. Germany was a situation similar to Iraq: “The record in Germany suggests not that we knew what to do and did it efficiently, but that we succeeded only after struggling for some time over the right policy and then how to implement it. Success in Iraq will likely require the same process.” It’s going to take hard work and that’s the type of thing for which Maureen has no interest.

Miss Dowd displays grandiosity worthy of Charles Manson when she tells this lie about President Bush: “Before the Iraq war, the Bush team inflated the threats to America; since the war, the Bush team has deflated the threats to America.” Deflated the threats? What? Ashcroft, and later Ridge, have been warning us about terrorism like crazed canaries since 9/11. Maureen must have had her walkman on during the press conferences or reading her horoscope instead of their press releases.

Maureen “I’ve never read a history book in my life nor will I ever in the future” Dowd lives up to her nickname by stating: “…just because we got Uday and Qusay, Iraqi militants are not going to stop blowing up Westerners.” Duh! Who said that their deaths were the end of terror? No one, but that’s the type of straw man arguments for which the left are addicted.

She continues: “Even if we get Saddam, the resistance will no doubt keep at it, hoping the dictator will enjoy the carnage from paradise.” Yeah? Let them all keep at it, we’ll pacify the countryside and eventually decrease their acts of terrorism. That’s a revolutionary strategy only to people like Maureen. That Al Qaeda are serious and enduring killers is obvious to nearly every American. They blew up westerners in New York, and they’ll try to keep doing it in Baghdad. The only way they’ll stop is if we liquidate them. Their imminent threat is why we must fight. Better to have soldiers out there taking fire than toddlers in Pensacola.

She brings in Wolfowitz which makes the reader know its trouble, “The democracy dominoes are not falling as easily as Paul Wolfowitz and other neocons had predicted.” If Iraq and Afghanistan become more safe and democratic places to live it will not register with Miss Dowd. Only by turning Baghdad into Dave and Busters will she become satisfied. No beatings and murder in retaliation for wearing a pair of shorts is a huge improvement in the life of the typical Afghanistani, but, for Maureen, it isn’t good enough. People like her have no empathy whatsoever. There’s no compassion in them. They can’t imagine being under the jackboot of a sinister regime, so, therefore, no such regimes exist. Dowd and her kind are so self-absorbed that they can’t tell the Taliban from George Bush; which is why it’s so insufferable that she publishes her columns.

She flippantly closes with “So where are we? We can't leave, and we can't stay forever. We just have to slug it out.” We’re subduing Islamofacists in Saddam’s old House of Hell. We will soon free 22 million and have already taken a major economic support of chaos from the region. We won’t stay there forever. Just as in Germany and Japan, the refitting of the country will take time and attention. Concentration is not a trait available to most attention-deficit leftists who are wait anxiously to pounce on whatever syllables form from President Bush’s mouth. In due course, these terrorists will be flushed out and eradicated thousands of miles from the American population which is a masterful piece of strategy in itself. It will take some time and they’ll be more casualties, but Iraq will be pacified and our mission will be accomplished.

Maureen and her masters at The New York Times instinctively root against America whenever we take action to promote our security. This isn’t unusual. They refute any attempts to protect our shores. As Joe Lieberman noticed, “Some in my party are sending out a message that they don’t know a just war when they see it, and, more broadly, are not prepared to use our military strength to protect our security and the cause of freedom.” The old gray syphillitc lady (The NYT) should take heed of Lieberman’s admonishment. If we left national security interests to dimwits like Maureen Dowd, we would have become a vassal state of Liechtenstein back in 1800.

Bernard Chapin