President Bush's Problems, Deserved and Undeserved
If the Republicans during World War II had behaved like Democrats during the War on Terror, we'd be speaking German (if our ancestors had not been dispatched in concentration camps before we were born).
Legal scholar and former judge and United States Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork is right: President Bush has many problems, but he has made very good judicial appointments (Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr. being the most important ones).
It's not surprising that the secular extremists who mocked President Bush for naming Jesus Christ as his favorite philosopher during a debate of Republican presidential aspirants in 2000, despise his faith-based initiative and look forward to judicial activists removing "under God" from "The Pledge of Allegiance" and "In God We Trust" from America's currency and coin and creating constitutional rights to "same-sex marriage" and partial-birth abortion" (and perhaps cloning and polygamy) in the same arbitrary way that judicial activists suddenly declared that government must be neutral as between religion and irreligion and may not support religion generally in Everson v. Board of Education in 1947 and abortion on demand is a constitutional right in Roe v. Wade in 1973.
On April 27, 2007, on "The World Over Live With Raymond Arroyo," Judge Bork announced, "If the Democrats win in '08, then the Supreme Court is gone."
By that, he meant that the progress in returned the Supreme Court to constitutional fidelity would be stopped and whatever Democrat became President would appoint persons who would use judicial power to promote the leftist political agenda instead of do what a justice or judge is supposed to do: to interpret the law and the Constitution – not make up the law and deprive we the people of the right to govern ourselves. (Former President Clinton appointed two activist justices, former ACLU counsel Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Kennedyite Stephen Breyer, and there will be a secure faithful Constitutionalist majority unless at least one of the four activists--Justices Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer--is replaced by a person who puts fidelity to the Constitution above personal policy preference.)
Understandably, Judge Bork's warning became the Quote on the Day on the website of Laura Ingraham (http://www.lauraingraham.com/), author, columnist and television commentator as well as host of her own syndicated radio program ("The Laura Ingraham Show").
President Bush is right on judges, but he has big problems, no doubt about it.
Being a war monger who rushed to invade Iraq for the sheer joy of it is NOT one of them, however, no matter how many times that Big Lie is repeated by the real Big Liars.
Rather, President Bush's big problems are (1) bad timing (September 11, 2001 came before eight years of Clinton administration could be overcome); (2) being president when Al-Qaeda attacked the American homeland and the political opposition is more interested in winning elections than winning a war (not one of Democrat FDR's problems) and making sure Social Security and Medicare are not reformed during a Republican administration; (3) trusting and supporting some people whom he should not have trusted and protected, like United States Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff; (4) failing to support people whom he should have supported and watching them being scapegoated, like former FEMA Director Michael D. Brown (whom the Democrats and their media allies blamed when the real culprits were the Democrats who controlled Louisiana and New Orleans, both at the time of Hurricane Katrina, especially the feuding Democrat Hovernor, Kathleen Blanco, and Democrat New Orleans Mayor and "Chocolate City" advocate Ray Nagin, and during the preceding decades, and those above Mr. Brown who rebuffed his efforts to prepare for a catastrophe of the scope of Hurricane Katrina and then hoped he would repeat his stellar performance in Florida in 2004 without appreciating that Louisiana is not Florida and Governor Blanco is no Jeb Bush; and (5) praising his political opponents as well intentioned and able instead of exposing them as the rank political opportunists that they are, like teaming up former President Clinton (a man in need of rehabilitation) with his father on tsunami and Hurricane Katrina relief lauding Senator Edward Kennedy (a man who has called him a liar and worse, publicly and repeatedly) in Mexico City of all places.
President Bush now has a George Tenet problem.
A Democrat appointed by President Clinton to head the Central Intelligence Agency, President Clinton kept him on instead of replacing him immediately and gave him the Medal of Freedom after finally removing him. With the 2008 election nearing, surprise!, Mr. Tenet has written a book whitewashing the Clinton Administration and himself and savaging the Bush Administration. In doing so, he is no more credible than former Clinton National Security Sandy Berger was in explaining that he was not up to no good when he secreted classified documents at the National Archives on his person and left with them.
President Bush's problem is NOT that he made a mistake in liberating Iraq from the tyrannical rule of Saddam Hussein (THAT war was won swiftly). Fighting Al-Qaeda in Iraq beats fighting it in America, and by going on the offense, President Bush put Al-Qaeda on defense and Iraq became the central front in the War on Terror.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice disputed Mr. Tenet's claim that the Bush administration, before the U.S.-led liberation of Iraq in 2003, never had a serious debate about whether Iraq posed an imminent threat or whether to tighten existing sanctions.
Secretary Rice: "The president started a discussion practically on the day that he took power about how to enhance sanctions against Iraq. You may remember that in his first press conference, he said the sanctions had become Swiss cheese."
Secretary Rice, then the Bush's national security adviser, explained that (1) the Bush administration reviewed the sanctions, went to the United Nations to strengthen them and tried to tighten the no-fly zone in northern Iraq to better police Saddam Hussein's forces, and (2) the question about the imminence of the threat was not "if somebody is going to strike tomorrow," but "whether you believe you're in a stronger position today to deal with the threat, or whether you're going to be in a stronger position tomorrow" and "it was the president's assessment that the situation in Iraq was getting worse."
Bishop Rene Henry Gracida, who sometimes writes under the pseudonym Don Juan of Austria (not to be confused with Don Juan the legendary fictional libertine), posted this timely defense on the liberation of Iraq a week ago:
"Congress is about to pass the supplementary military appropriations bill with its call for withdrawal (surrender) in Iraq and the President has announced that he will veto it. This will be only the second veto of President Bush's presidency; many believe, and Don Juan of Austria, is among them, that President Bush should have used his veto on a lot of the other outrageous spending bills Congress has sent to him during the past six years. Yes, even those send to him by the Republican Congress from 2000 to 2004.
"But, the big question which is on every front page of every newspaper and on every edition of the evening news on TV is: was/is the war in Iraq justified. Left-liberals (and an increasing number of conservatives and Republicans) say 'NO.' Don Juan of Austria says: YES!
"That is not to say that Don Juan of Austria believes that the Bush Administration can escape blame for the mishandling of the conduct of the war. Whether the blame for the mismanagement of the war lies with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, as many Democrats say, or whether it was the fault of the generals and admirals, the buck stops at the Oval Office and so President Bush, rightly or wrongly, bears the blame.
"Even some of Don Juan of Austria's conservative Catholic friends ask him from time to time whether Iraq should have been invaded by the United States. The answer is 'yes.' The memory of some people is highly selective. Let's review how the US got into the war.
"Before the invasion all the intelligence agencies of the West believed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and that he was prepared to use them against Israel, and because we are committed to the defense of Israel, ultimately against us. The CIA believed this, the Defense Department believed this, the State Department believed this, the Security Council believed this, England believed this, the Intelligence Committees of Congress believed this. The fact that Saddam Hussein had used WMD on his own people (the Kurds) killing thousands of men, women and children was proof that he had WMD and would not hesitate to use his WMD on anyone.
"To verify this the United Nations Security Council demanded on-site inspection of ALL weapon sites in Iraq. Saddam refused and so the Security Council, urged by the United States, imposed severe economic sanctions on Iraq. Saddam Hussein then said OK, but he would not allow the inspections to take place freely. Finally, after months and months of making no progress, and convinced that Saddam Hussein was about to deploy his WMD, the Bush Administration, with its many allies in the Coalition, and WITH THE APPROVAL OF CONGRESS, invaded Iraq.
"It does not matter as far as the morality of the decision to invade Iraq, that no WMD were found in Iraq by our armed forces. Saddam Hussein had ample time to disperse, hide, destroy, or otherwise get rid of his WMD in the many months while the Security Council and the US and its allies tried economic sanctions and argued about what to do next. Seeing that an invasion was about to take place, Saddam Hussein did the smart thing and somehow got his WMD out of sight. Where the WMD went is immaterial to the decision to invade Iraq.
"But, the Catholic friends of Don Juan of Austria say, the condemnation of the Iraq invasion by Pope John Paul II proves that it was wrong. Don Juan replies that it is not for any Pope to say when it is right for a nation to go to war. The Church's Just War Theory has always stated that in the final analysis it is the right and duty of the leaders of a nation to decide when the defense of a nation requires it to go to war. 'Ah,' some Catholics say, 'but the US was not invaded so this was a preemptive invasion of Iraq.'
"The Just War Theory evolved in the days of swords, spears and arrows. It was easy to determine the morality of a decision whether or not to go to war when it was a matter of the enemy massing on your borders and beginning an actual invasion. The world has moved from the last half of the 20th Century into the 21st Century in which wars are no longer fought with swords, spears and arrows. They are not even fought now primarily with guns. They are fought with WMD.
"In such a world no nation can sit back and wait for it to be invaded before its leaders decide to go to war. Increasingly, from now on. wars will be PREEMPTIVE WARS. Leaders of the free world now have no choice. They cannot wait. Once there is moral certitude that an Iraq, or an Iran, or a North Korea, or whatever nation, is prepared and about to launch an attack using WMD, the nation which is the objective of the attack must make a PREEMPTIVE STRIKE against the aggressor nation. It cannot be otherwise. To act differently is to commit suicide.
"Pope John Paul II made a prudential judgment error. He did not accept the reality of the necessity of PREEMPTIVE WAR. He made his judgment applying the criteria of the old Just War Theory. In making judgments on this subject he is not infallible.
"Don Juan of Austria confesses that he does not see how the Iraq war will end or when it will end. It is a mess. But Don Juan of Austria knows that setting a timetable for withdrawal of our troops from Iraq is an invitation to disaster. It is legitimate for Congress to apply pressure on the Administration to find a solution, but Congress must maintain a Constitutional separation from the Administration in directing the War."
If the Republicans during World War II had behaved like Democrats during the War on Terror, we'd be speaking German (if our ancestors had not been dispatched in concentration camps before we were born).
Michael J. Gaynor has been practicing law in New York since 1973. A former partner at Fulton, Duncombe & Rowe and Gaynor & Bass, he is a solo practitioner admitted to practice in New York state and federal courts and an Association of the Bar of the City of New York member.
Gaynor graduated magna cum laude, with Honors in Social Science, from Hofstra University's New College, and received his J.D. degree from St. John's Law School, where he won the American Jurisprudence Award in Evidence and served as an editor of the Law Review and the St. Thomas More Institute for Legal Research. He wrote on the Pentagon Papers case for the Review and obscenity law for The Catholic Lawyer and edited the Law Review's commentary on significant developments in New York law.
The day after graduating, Gaynor joined the Fulton firm, where he focused on litigation and corporate law. In 1997 Gaynor and Emily Bass formed Gaynor & Bass and then conducted a general legal practice, emphasizing litigation, and represented corporations, individuals and a New York City labor union. Notably, Gaynor & Bass prevailed in the Second Circuit in a seminal copyright infringement case, Tasini v. New York Times, against newspaper and magazine publishers and Lexis-Nexis. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed, 7 to 2, holding that the copyrights of freelance writers had been infringed when their work was put online without permission or compensation.
Gaynor currently contributes regularly to www.MichNews.com, www.RenewAmerica.com, www.WebCommentary.com, www.PostChronicle.com and www.therealitycheck.org and has contributed to many other websites. He has written extensively on political and religious issues, notably the Terry Schiavo case, the Duke "no rape" case, ACORN and canon law, and appeared as a guest on television and radio. He was acknowledged in Until Proven Innocent, by Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson, and Culture of Corruption, by Michelle Malkin. He appeared on "Your World With Cavuto" to promote an eBay boycott that he initiated and "The World Over With Raymond Arroyo" (EWTN) to discuss the legal implications of the Schiavo case. On October 22, 2008, Gaynor was the first to report that The New York Times had killed an Obama/ACORN expose on which a Times reporter had been working with ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief.