Quotes From Around Yon Blogosphere

With so much attention being lavished these days on the perceived flaws and foibles of the ’08 presidential candidates, it’s easy to overlook the reigning master of disaster – until such moments when he reminds us why he still wears the crown.

That’s precisely what George W. Bush did . . . when he spoke at a conservative think tank (naturally), and uncorked one of his rhetorical whoppers, the kind that has a landslide majority of Americans counting down the days to his departure.

In remarks to a rapt crowd at the Heritage Foundation, he essentially argued that if the Democratic Senate doesn’t confirm Michael Mukasey for attorney general, it will mean that the Democrats are weak in the war on terror. (Those last eight words worked for Bush in the elections of 2002 and 2004, and apparently he still thinks they pack a punch, despite the fact that he was soundly repudiated in the election of 2006. But I digress.)

In the midst of suggesting yesterday that Democrats are terrorist-coddlers, he came out with this: "Some in Washington should spend more time responding to the warnings of terrorists like Osama bin Laden . . . "

He was basically arguing that the Democrats don’t take Osama bin Laden seriously, whereas he, as our vigilant protector-in-chief, does take Osama bin Laden seriously.

But wait a minute – I seem to recall that Bush, in past disquisitions about the war on terror, told us that things were going so swimmingly that we didn't need to take Osama bin Laden seriously.

-- DICK POLMAN

After 9/11 it was apparent that we had a problem with our public relations in the Muslim world. One of the main jobs of our government was to figure out how widespread the problem was, and to counter it in any way possible. Obviously we wanted to track down radicals that were plotting follow-on attacks. That was vital. But, in the longer term, we needed to do an appraisal of what caused the radicalism in the first place, and see where we could make moves to tamp it down. I think this says it all in terms of how our government performed its task.

Helene Cooper writes in the New York Times:

"A recent global survey by the Pew Research Center concluded that the American image remains abysmal in most Muslim countries in the Middle East and Asia.

"The poll found that in five predominantly Muslim countries, fewer than 33 percent of the population had a favorable image of the United States. Even in Turkey, one of America's closest allies in the Muslim world, only 9 percent of the public had favorable views of the United States, down from 52 percent in 2000."

That, my friends, is an epic failure. And, I have to say, torture is right at the heart of the problem.

-- BOOMAN

In no part of the Constitution is more wisdom to be found than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace to the legislature, and not to the executive department. . . . War is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement. In war, a physical force is to be created; and it is the executive will which is to direct it. In war, the public treasures are to be unlocked; and it is the executive hand which is to dispense them. . . . It is in war, finally, that laurels are to be gathered, and it is the executive brow they are to encircle. The strongest passions and most dangerous weaknesses of the human breast; ambition, avarice, vanity, the honorable or venial love of fame, are all in conspiracy against the desire and duty of peace.

-- JAMES MADISON

Democrats have objected to the Bush administration's pursuit of sanctions against Iran as a precursor to war. They have ignored the Iranian intransigence on nuclearization and treated the White House as the source of the problem. In doing so, they have given signals to Russia and China to continue their obstructionism on sanctions at the UN Security Council.

. . . The world has three choices. We can allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons, with all of the terrorist access that will create, allowing deployment anywhere in the world without the use of rockets or missiles. We can go to war with Iran, striking the facilities we believe house their nuclear research programs, with all of the death, destruction, and radicalization that entails. Lastly, we can use economic and diplomatic sanctions to force Iran back to the table for honest negotiations to end their pursuit of nuclear weapons. There isn't a fourth option.

Which option do the Democrats want to take? Are they seriously considering the first option? If so, then they have no claim to understanding global security. Barack Obama offered the rather silly notion that we should negotiate directly with a nation with whom we have no diplomatic relations, primarily because they issue genocidal threats against our ally and conduct low-level war against us through their terrorist proxies. If they didn't negotiate in good faith with their economic partners in Europe without sanctions being applied then, why would Obama assume they would negotiate in good faith with the nation they call the Great Satan?

The Russians and the Chinese don't have a problem with the first option, because they don't see themselves as the primary target of nuclear terrorism and nuclear extortion. If the Democrats don't like the third option, it leaves only one avenue left, which Hoagland correctly asserts leads us by elimination to military action.

-- ED MORRISSEY

A full-scale regional war, chaos in the oil market, an overstretched American military pushed past the brink — all to take down a little thug like Ahmadinejad (who isn’t even Iran’s primary leader) and a state, however truculent, whose defense budget is less than 1 percent of America’s? Call me a Pollyanna, but I don’t think even the Bush administration can be this crazy.

Yet there is nonetheless a method to all the mad threats of war coming out of the White House. While the saber- rattling is reckless as foreign policy, it’s a proven winner as election-year Republican campaign strategy. The real point may be less to intimidate Iranians than to frighten Americans. Fear, the only remaining card this administration still knows how to play, may once more give a seemingly spent G.O.P. a crack at the White House in 2008.

-- FRANK RICH