The Al Gore Lecture : All The Gory Details  (Part 1)

June 1, 2004

Last Wednesday (May 26), former Vice President Al Gore spoke to a liberal gathering of moveon.org friendlies at New York University.  I consider this a historically important speech, since a worldwide media can now cover almost every word.  I contend those with whom we are at war could also consider this speech marching orders.

Needless to say, the polite formality of former presidents not interjecting themselves into the politics of a sitting one has been dashed to bits by Bill Clinton and Gore years ago, and the video of an almost hysterical Al at NYU proved entertaining to say the least.

However the words, IF written entirely by Gore or not, beg for more in-depth analysis.  To appease those who disagree with my comments and may accuse me of taking Gore out of context, I will attempt to offer my observations of the entire presentation (spelling quirks et al).

It was quite long, so this will take seven of my next columns….

George W. Bush promised us a foreign policy with humility.  Instead, he has brought us humiliation in the eyes of the world.

He promised to "restore honor and integrity to the White House.”  Instead, he has brought deep dishonor to our country and built a durable reputation as the most dishonest President since Richard Nixon.

The Clinton-Gore Administration should be the last to lecture any administration about honor and integrity.  At one point, it took seven months and $70 million to get Bill Clinton to admit to lying under oath.  Sure, it was ultimately about sexual harassment and it would’ve been laughed off within a couple of Letterman and Leno weeks.

But how many people’s reputations were attacked and dragged through the mud by the Clinton hit squad?  How many of the “rules” dictated by feminists that told all of us how to behave toward female victims of sexual abuse, were bludgeoned by Bill, Hillary and their cronies?

And now Al Gore has the nerve to accuse another administration of bringing us humiliation and dishonor.

Honor?  He decided not to honor the Geneva Convention.  Just as he would not honor the United Nations, international treaties, the opinions of our allies, the role of Congress and the courts, or what Jefferson described as "a decent respect for the opinion of mankind.”  He did not honor the advice, experience and judgment of our military leaders in designing his invasion of Iraq.  And now he will not honor our fallen dead by attending any funerals or even by permitting photos of their flag-draped coffins.

I guess Al hasn’t been paying attention.

The Geneva Convention recognizes enemy combatants from nations, not rogue terrorist free-lancers.

The Clinton Administration stated repeatedly that there was proof Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, as did later the Bush Administration.  The United Nations composed resolution after resolution ordering Hussein to submit to inspections and was repeatedly met with lies, delays, and deception (something Gore and Clinton can fully appreciate).  The UN issued an ultimatum (Resolution 1441) and when the requested time was up, the United States and allies backed up the resolutions.  Imagine, doing what you say you’re going to do… what a concept!

My understanding of military protocol is that the Armed Services perform at the pleasure of the Commander-In-Chief; not the other way around.  It would appear the majority of the American people prefer a president who uses his judgment to make a decision on going to war and not one who relies on the judicious reasoning of Peter Jennings and Katie Couric.

How did we get from September 12th, 2001, when a leading French newspaper ran a giant headline with the words "We Are All Americans Now" and when we had the good will and empathy of all the world -- to the horror that we all felt in witnessing the pictures of torture in Abu Ghraib.

Hmm… maybe on September 12th, the French never dreamed we’d find out about the back room oil deals they struck with Saddam, and had to hide through their subsequent obstruction at the UN.

And I guess I’ll have to spend some time on the Iraqi prison stuff since this the scandal du jour for the Democrats.

I’d just hope Al can imagine what Nicholas Berg’s murderers would do to him, yes the great Al Gore, if they could get their hands on him?  In actuality, they’d probably let Gore go as he would continue to try and politically weaken an American president who’s placed a bullseye on the forehead of every terrorist in the world.

To begin with, from its earliest days in power, this administration sought to radically destroy the foreign policy consensus that had guided America since the end of World War II.  The long successful strategy of containment was abandoned in favor of the new strategy of "preemption.”  And what they meant by preemption was not the inherent right of any nation to act preemptively against an imminent threat to its national security, but rather an exotic new approach that asserted a unique and unilateral U.S. right to ignore international law wherever it wished to do so and take military action against any nation, even in circumstances where there was no imminent threat.  All that is required, in the view of Bush's team is the mere assertion of a possible, future threat - and the assertion need be made by only one person, the President.

More disturbing still was their frequent use of the word "dominance" to describe their strategic goal, because an American policy of dominance is as repugnant to the rest of the world as the ugly dominance of the helpless, naked Iraqi prisoners has been to the American people.  Dominance is as dominance does.

Again Gore need be reminded that the last time we’ve been attacked on the continental United States was by the French and Mexicans.  It’s been awhile.  Pardon our knee-jerk response of self-defense….

Gore would be one of the first people screaming bloody murder if some of the WMD’s he and Clinton said were in Iraq, wound up in the hands of terrorists and were detonated in Cincinnati.  That means “preemption” is a necessary means of protecting the American people and our allies.  If that means dominating our potential enemies, so be it.  That’s why our warning sirens don’t go off every other night as they do in places like Israel.

If America’s dominance is regarded as “ugly” to the rest of the world, I wish they’d stop asking for our help every single time they suffer a natural or manmade disaster.  I’m sure the Kuwaitis really despise the “dominance” that liberated them from an Iraqi invasion.

Dominance is not really a strategic policy or political philosophy at all.  It is a seductive illusion that tempts the powerful to satiate their hunger for more power still by striking a Faustian bargain.  And as always happens - sooner or later - to those who shake hands with the devil, they find out too late that what they have given up in the bargain is their soul.

One of the clearest indications of the impending loss of intimacy with one's soul is the failure to recognize the existence of a soul in those over whom power is exercised, especially if the helpless come to be treated as animals, and degraded.  We also know - and not just from De Sade and Freud - the psychological proximity between sexual depravity and other people's pain.  It has been especially shocking and awful to see these paired evils perpetrated so crudely and cruelly in the name of America.

Again, I find it farcical to be issued a morality lesson (especially the mention of “sexual depravity”) by a former administration that made it a daily practice of the media to have to “parse” the words it was issued.

The Clinton Administration, in an attempt to appear strong to the rest of the world, yet concerned to the domestic electorate, lived by what I call his “Drive-by Diplomacy.”  It’s easy to lob cruise missiles at a target instead of potentially angering voters by sending their kids to get the job done.  Funny how little was ultimately accomplished in the countries where the Clinton strategy of choice was implemented.

Those pictures of torture and sexual abuse came to us embedded in a wave of news about escalating casualties and growing chaos enveloping our entire policy in Iraq.  But in order understand the failure of our overall policy, it is important to focus specifically on what happened in the Abu Ghraib prison, and ask whether or not those actions were representative of who we are as Americans?  Obviously the quick answer is no, but unfortunately it's more complicated than that.

There is good and evil in every person.  And what makes the United States special in the history of nations is our commitment to the rule of law and our carefully constructed system of checks and balances.  Our natural distrust of concentrated power and our devotion to openness and democracy are what have lead us as a people to consistently choose good over evil in our collective aspirations more than the people any other nation.

Yes, the prison scandal seems to be all liberals like Gore have to pound on.

Like I wrote in an earlier column, what happened at the Abu Ghraib prison is a national embarrassment.  Yet I understand the frustration of people who went to free another and are being killed for their efforts.  I again contend that the humiliating treatment suffered by the Iraqi prisoners pale in comparison to prisoners who have their heads slowly cut of with a kitchen knife.

Let’s not get caught up in Hollywoodisms.  Nicholas Berg wasn’t killed quickly with a sanitary, merciful guillotine-like chop.  Imaging how long and challenging it would be to cut through a whole Purdue chicken, and then imagine it being a human neck squirming and bleeding all over the place while you were trying to cut through flesh, tendons, and bones.  Can you hear the minute or two of screaming, then gurgling, of the victim?

Remember the American contract workers who were shot to death in their car in Iraq; their bodies stripped naked, set on fire, dragged through the streets, and left hanging on a highway overpass?

Yet enemy terrorists who were captured and made to strike demeaning poses is the joint outrage of the Arab world and American liberals.  Give me a break….

Our founders were insightful students of human nature.  They feared the abuse of power because they understood that every human being has not only "better angels" in his nature, but also an innate vulnerability to temptation - especially the temptation to abuse power over others.

Our founders understood full well that a system of checks and balances is needed in our constitution because every human being lives with an internal system of checks and balances that cannot be relied upon to produce virtue if they are allowed to attain an unhealthy degree of power over their fellow citizens.

Consider the source: Al Gore, vice president of the morality-challenged and impeached Clinton Administration.

Listen then to the balance of internal impulses described by specialist Charles Graner when confronted by one of his colleagues, Specialist Joseph M. Darby, who later became a courageous whistleblower.  When Darby asked him to explain his actions documented in the photos, Graner replied: "The Christian in me says it's wrong, but the Corrections Officer says, 'I love to make a groan man piss on himself."

What happened at the prison, it is now clear, was not the result of random acts by "a few bad apples," it was the natural consequence of the Bush Administration policy that has dismantled those wise constraints and has made war on America's checks and balances.

The abuse of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib flowed directly from the abuse of the truth that characterized the Administration's march to war and the abuse of the trust that had been placed in President Bush by the American people in the aftermath of September 11th.

I think it laughable that Al Gore is actually lecturing us about truth.

Liberals have hated the military from Day One and this scandal is one they scold us on with merriment.  Let’s keep the few bad apples in proper context.

Here’s where I’ll gladly accept the liberal label of “neo-con.”  If making a potential homicide bomber “piss on himself” and give up information that will save the lives of our service people and the American people, that suits me just fine.  Those prisoners were detained because they either took up arms against coalition personnel or had knowledge of those that would and could.

War is an ugly business.  Clinton’s lobbing of missiles in Iraq did almost nothing but kill civilians and embolden Saddam.  Bush took us in to get him and millions of people are, by consequence, free today.

Only liberals like Gore and the moveon.org crowd think that’s a bad thing.

Bob Parks