The Anti-War Right, In Their Own Words

Just to amuse myself, I've excerpted portions of past articles by right-wing figures who opposed military action against Milosevic in 1999. I changed "Clinton" to "Bush," "Serbian" to "Iraqi," and so forth. No other changes were made. It's amazing how sensible, and how rabidly "leftist," their arguments suddenly sound!

Four years later, all of these people have forgotten these things they once knew. Michael Savage no longer worries about the geopolitics of oil, or the bias of MSNBC, or the red-baiting of protesters. For Debra Saunders, the "law of unintended consequences" is little more than a bad dream. Oliver North no longer agonizes over whether or not the president is taking advice from seasoned military figures. And Phyllis Schlafly's concern about "exit strategies" is now a leftist sophistry to be sneered at by all true Americans.

Links to the original articles appear at the end of each excerpt.

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"'I BELIEVE in the long term, the Iraqis will be better off for us having done this than us not having done this,' Seceretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told the New York Times last week.

May it be so.

Maybe Americans can just swoop down like a superhero....drop a few bombs, suffer few or no casualties, and yet nonetheless save thousands of innocent lives.

Maybe the bombing won't turn the Iraqis against us.

Maybe the bombing of Iraq will stabilize the area, not destabilize it.

Maybe the area just looks more unstable now, but really isn't.

Maybe the law of unintended consequences won't prevail in this engagement.

Maybe George W. Bush hasn't gotten this country into a mire from which there is no clear possible end.

Probably George W. Bush, if he were of draft age again, would like nothing better than to risk his life overseas..."

--Debra Saunders (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1999/03/30/ED84503.DTL)

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"Iraq is about oil and nothing but oil....And you thought it was to save the poor Iraqis....the poor Iraqis just happened to own the wrong real estate at the wrong time....

"Now it begins to make sense, doesn’t it? The reason becomes clear why, of all the ethnic and religious oppression in the world, George W, Bush chose this area...for ground-leveling "humanitarian" aid. And why the One World media places Saddam Hussein, a small-time local tyrant, alongside Hitler and Stalin.

"But the greatest shame must fall upon the tendentious media hacks. ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, Fox, and most columnists of the neo-right all fell in line: "The criminal bombing was just. It was to save the innocent Iraqis from Saddam." Have you now heard one of these hacks apologize or admit they were duped? Used by Big Oil to apologize for, no, to justify, US war crimes?

"Even their "reportage" on the recent demonstrations...was biased. Both by under-reporting the number ("hundreds," blared the San Francisco Examiner) and by ascribing the legitimate protests against Bush's war crimes to "communists" and anti-American sentiment going back to the 1970s!"

--Michael Savage (http://www.newsmax.com/articles/?a=1999/11/30/51335)

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"U.S. SEEN AS OUT-OF-CONTROL AGGRESSOR REGIME

The war also has strained U.S. military capabilities and tarnished the reputation of the U.S. around the world.

"'More than half the population of the world now regards the U.S. as the single greatest threat to their own countries,' said Robert Hayden, director of the Center for Russian & East European Studies at the University of Pittsburgh."

WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND

'We seem to think we can go in and destroy other people's countries and nothing will ever happen to us,' he said."

--From the website of The Conservative Caucus (http://www.conservativeusa.org/yugo.htm). This site also calls then-candidate George W. Bush "CONSTITUTIONALLY IGNORANT OR INDIFFERENT."

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"George W. Bush has no exit strategy for Iraq and no reliable estimates of the war's cost. The Bush Administration pretends to fear that terrorism could spread if we don't act. It is far more likely that, if the conflict spreads, U.S. intervention will be the cause....Sending U.S. troops might actually endanger U.S. security in ways we cannot now foresee."

--Phyllis Schlafly (http://www.eagleforum.org/column/1999/feb99/99-02-10.html)

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"All that Bush seems to be able to do well is send our sons and daughters to far away places -- and leave them there....Worst of all, the Bush-Cheney "national security team" seems to be unwilling to take the advice of seasoned military professionals....The brave men and women who serve in our Armed Forces deserve better from the Commander in Chief.

"Changing the course of America's foreign policy used to be likened to altering the heading of the "ship of state" -- rudder commands, variations in bearing, all took considerable time to take effect. But the analogy no longer fits. In a world where communications are instantaneous, where weapons deliver death in minutes over thousands of miles, our ship is now a high-speed aircraft. With George W. Bush as our pilot and Dick Cheney as co-pilot we should fasten our seat belts, stow our tray tables, put our seat backs in the full upright position -- and pray for a safe landing."

--Oliver North (http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a36ffd87c634e.htm)

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"The President launched an unprovoked war of aggression against a small, distant state. He cynically wrapped his campaign in humanitarianism while ignoring worse slaughters elsewhere. He arrogantly assumed that foreign leaders would genuflect before him. He attacked their nation when they didn't.

"How does George W. Bush justify his war? In a recent speech at National Defense University President Bush likened events in Iraq to those in Nazi Germany....

This is pure cant. The administration has nothing against 'vicious, premeditated, systematic oppression' if committed by allies, like Croatia and Turkey. Or if perpetrated against black Africans."

--Doug Bandow, a scholar at the Cato Institute (http://www.cato.org/dailys/05-18-99.html)

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"Put bluntly, if President Bush orders an assault on Iraq, the United States will be guilty of committing a flagrant, shameful act of aggression. U.S. forces will be attacking a country that has not attacked the United States, a U.S. ally, or even a neighboring state. That is the very definition of an aggressor.

"[This is] a trigger-happy administration that is creating an image of America as the planetary bully. Decent Americans need to make a stand when it has reached the point of a full-scale war of aggression against a country that has done us no harm."

--Ted Galen Carpenter, a scholar at the Cato Institute (http://www.cato.org/dailys/03-23-99.html)