Patrick Buchanan: Misguided maverick
May 02, 2003 ~ 5:15 p.m.
Patrick J. Buchanan has for the better part of twenty years been the voice of unrelenting conservatism. Having been raised in the Washington D.C. area and seeing how obstructionist big government can be first hand, combined with moral values instilled within him as part of a large Catholic family, Buchanan came out firing on all cylinders in defense of conservative politics, starting his work with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper in the mid �60s. He was (and remains) forthright and unapologetic in his opinions.
I was drawn to Mr. Buchanan�s writings during the unforgettable NAFTA debates of 1993. As a prominent conservative who was trumping other prominent conservatives such as Bill Bennett and Jack Kemp on the issue of cheap labor and endangered American jobs, this was the benchmark of Buchanan�s maverick stance within conservative circles that eventually led to him being pretty much demoted to the fringe of the conservative movement. He is a commentator who can argue with the best of them but is seen as too rebellious to remain in the camp.
While remaining consistent in his hostility to big�and world�government, Buchanan has taken another maverick step. He has opposed the war in Iraq. Once the war was underway, Buchanan wrote columns with titles like �It is imperative that we win this war,� and �Dead man plotting.� In the latter column, he writes:
�Eight days into the war, 27 Americans had died in combat, some from friendly fire. Yet, already, journalists were talking about America being caught in a quagmire like Vietnam. We pay a price for not teaching history to our children. In Vietnam, we averaged 150 dead a week for seven years. In World War II, we lost 200 men every day for four years. In the Civil War, 400 Americans a day, Union and Confederate, died from the fall of Ft. Sumter to Appomattox. Every battle death is a tragedy and a loss. But America is winning this war. Only if you predicted a �cakewalk� is this a quagmire.�
But while that may sound like pro-war analysis, the truth regarding Buchanan and the war is far different. Buchanan was so hostile to the war that even the former voice of the Soviet Union (and current voice of the Russian Federation) Pravda was impressed, running many of his columns on the English version of their website. One of these columns was entitled �No more undeclared wars!� In this piece, Buchanan started off aiming the same sort of vitriol at Franklin D. Roosevelt that is aimed at Dubya�that he lied to pursue a course of war: Roosevelt concocted a stew of lies to push us into war with Germany, �no matter the justice and nobility of America�s cause in World War II.� You can automatically see where Buchanan�s opinion is leading here�Saddam may be a modern day Hitler of the Middle East, but so what? He makes the charge that Truman�s politics were tainted by FDR, vis-�-vis his �undeclared� war against Korea. The only thing he manages to get right is his snipet regarding Vietnam, �when senators learned they had been deceived in the Tonkin Gulf incident.� Not only does Buchanan come off as an apologist for the muddle-headed Neville Chamberlin, but this comes as further proof of his notorious isolationist beliefs. Seen within an �America First� context, Buchanan�s stance on NAFTA is no longer surprising. Buchanan is clearly with the liberals in his hostility to war, but not even the most extreme left-winger would dare to suggest that America should have abstained entirely from World War Two.
Pat talks about paying a price for not teaching history to schoolchildren, but I sure wouldn�t want any man who claims that America, not Germany or Japan, was the aggressor in the Second World War teaching the nation�s kids.
Along with the lefties who refused to see Saddam as a threat and Bush as the imperialist, Buchanan steams:
�Was Saddam involved in the massacres of Sept. 11? Was he behind the anthrax attacks? Is he harboring terrorist cells of al-Qaida? Is he preparing nuclear or bio-terror weapons to attack us? If the answer is �Yes,� let Congress lay out the evidence before the nation and empower the president to take us to war.�Indeed, the semi-hysteria of the War Party suggests it does not have the evidence to convict Saddam of Sept. 11, and a war on Iraq is but the next move on the little chessboards of empire they carry about in their book bags � Should the Saudi monarchy fall to a revolution as a result of an attack on Iraq, Bush would have lost the oil storehouse his father went to war to defend in 1991.�
Is Maddas preparing nuclear or bio-chemical weapons? Iraq is the next move on the chessboard of empire for this abstract entity he entitles �the War Party?� Bush Snr. participated in the first Gulf War to protect our oil storehouse? Thank you, Pat, for giving your self-styled conservative validity to liberal fallacies. Could it be true that he�ll stoop so low as to suggest that either war was about oil just to defend his isolationist convictions?
Mr Buchanan loses even more gears on his March 3 column, �After Baghdad, where do we go?�:
�As for war itself, that decision has been made. The United States intends to invade and occupy a nation that has not attacked us, to reshape its society, rebuild its government, and redirect its foreign policy to reflect American ideals and serve American interests. Imperialism, pure and simple. Though President Bush declares our aims to be altruistic�liberation of the people of Iraq from the grip of a brutal dictator�this war is already seen in Arab eyes as a war of American empire.�
The war is all about American imperialism, there is something wrong in trying to ensure a pro-American presence in the troubled Middle East, and Saddam is an Arab martyr, eh, Pat? My God, the Pit Bull of the Right is wearing flowers in his hair.
And what of this:
�Ariel Sharon and the War Party, however, have a less Utopian idea, and it does not rely upon example alone � Where will this President Bush go after Baghdad? If he seeks to pressure Israel into what the Israeli Right and the War Party think are premature and foolish negotiations, he will court a savage backlash in an election year, and fail.�
Clearly, Mr Buchanan does not believe in the right of a militarily strong state to protect itself against ever-present terrorist danger by the strictest means possible. Remember September 11, 2001, Pat? Israel knows only too well the horror we experienced on that day. Or do you suggest America elect doves who don�t care about the security of the nation? I have never admired Buchanan�s tendency to criticize Israel and this is proof that his view of the Middle East is, to use a colloquialism, totally FUBAR.
Buchanan was also quick to prophesize along with the Left that we were destined beyond control to attack Syria. From his April 9 column, �On to Damascus?�:
�Tony Blair has assured his countrymen the United States does not intend to attack Syria or Iran. Colin Powell has assured the Muslim world the United States does not intend to attack Syria or Iran. But did the British prime minister or U.S. secretary of state clear their statements with Richard Perle? For the War Party has blood in its nostrils and is headed for Damascus.�
I can agree with Pat when he says, �This is the neocons� hour of power, and they do not intend to lose this chance to remake the Middle East in their own image.� Unlike Buchanan, I respect Norman Poedhoertz, James Woolsey and Richard Perle, and won�t unnecessarily disgrace the AEI by quoting Edmund Burke, as Pat has, that great empires and small minds go ill together.
To Buchanan�s credit, he writes: �Disgust with the U.N. in the United States is universal. Any plan to give the Security Council, where France has a veto, a decisive role in post-Saddam Iraq is dead on arrival. Rightly so. This war, President Bush said, would be fought for vital U.S. interests. And the U.N., with its reflexive hostility to America, cannot be trusted to protect those interests.� Good for him. He doesn�t seem to be able to put two and two together, however, to see that his distrust of the U.N. and opposition to war in Iraq couldn�t be more disingenuous.
Buchanan can opine that, �Tony Blair and George Bush must take the city [of Baghdad]. There is no substitute for victory. The coalition must drive Saddam out,� and congratulate our troops all he wants. His own hysteria concerning the war and the ridiculous reasons he cites for opposing it�imperialism, oil, U.S. policy being held hostage to the Isrealis, and no proof of Maddas� sinister intentions in the region�discredit him. It is no wonder Pat has been driven to the outer limits of the conservative movement. It is not a case of him blowing too far to the Right. It�s for giving the anti-American Left aid and comfort.
� M.E.M.
|
[Sign My Guestbook]
[View My Guestbook]
|
Copyright � 2001-2007 by M.E. Manning. All material is written by me, unless explicitly stated otherwise by use of footnotes or bylines. Do not copy or redistribute without my permission.
AMERICA FOR TRUE AMERICANS!