Appeasement is in the Air

For the past couple of days, I've been blogging about the Gulag Guantanamo brouhaha. I have gone from initially writing off Amnesty International's breathless charges as just the latest evidence of a left-wing crackup, to wondering whether the Bush administration would cave (by treating the charges with anything but contempt), to realizing that Amnesty International's ability to level such charges and still be taken seriously is merely a symptom of appeasement from the outset by the Bushies. Namely: Handling the terrorists at Gitmo with kid-gloves. Giving them Korans in the first place, let alone handling them reverentially, has told our terrorist and pacifist opponents that we subscribe to their moral code. All they need to do is take the moral high ground and we'll capitulate.

So if the Bush administration is acting inconsistently by imprisoning the terrorists -- but accommodating their desires for Korans -- are they doing so grossly in any other way? If so, what might the consequences be?

Awhile back, Robert Tracinski of TIA Daily made the following excellent point.

New York City policing was revolutionized in the 1990s by the theory of the "broken window effect." Observing that a property owner's failure to fix minor damage, such as a broken window, sent the message that he had abandoned his property and meant that it would soon be looted and vandalized, James Q. Wilson argued that if police failed to punish minor breaches of law and order, criminals would conclude that they could take over the streets (an accurate description of New York City in the late 1970s).

I think a similar process can be observed in foreign policy. Failure to prevent the rise of a minor dictator in a seemingly non-crucial area of the world inspires other would-be dictators--and allows established dictators to recruit new allies.

He goes on to discuss how Hugo Chavez is now working with Iran to get the bomb and China is expanding its "Zombie Empire" by propping up dictatorial regimes.

I can't help but wonder whether Taiwan's flagging resolve in an interesting diplomatic exchange might be a further example of the "broken country effect" as Tracinski calls it: the example of an ally failing to stand up to a tyrant in light of the perception that maybe our ally can't depend on us.

From Riding Sun comes a follow-on report about a gesture that might seem innocuous prima facie: China has offered a gift of live pandas to the Taipei Zoo. Last month, on the heels of China's recent passage of an "anti-secession" law aimed at Taiwan and of Taiwan's version of Neville Chamberlain having paid an obsequious visit to China, Taiwan responded properly. This is as quoted from The Telegraph at Riding Sun:

Taiwanese officials have said the gift of two giant pandas offered by China as part of a diplomatic charm offensive will be refused. Taiwan fears acceptance would be seen as acknowledging Beijing's claim that Taiwan is part of China.

In another post, the basis for the initial refusal and the fear are cited by the Gaijin Biker at Riding Sun:

The officials said that sending the pandas would breach the 1963 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (Cites), which tightly regulates trade in animals between countries.

China considers the gift acceptable because under United Nations rules it would be regarded as an internal transfer within China, which does not come under the terms of Cites.

But today, Taiwan is caving in. As the Gaijin Biker himself puts it so well:

With Taiwan sliding from an outright refusal to a discussion of details and practicalities, China began whipping up popular support. It's giving plenty of media coverage to the selection of the two pandas, and holding a contest to name them.

...

If Taiwan hopes to enjoy undisputed independence someday, it cannot afford to foster a sense of ambiguity about its national sovereignty. Like pandas themselves, it should be a matter of black and white.

Closer to home, Venezuela has been building up its military and its dictator, Hugo El Loco Chavez, has spoken openly of using oil as a weapon against the United States, in addition to having entered into a lucrative oil export agreement with China. He also apparently intends to use oil as a means to threaten states in the Caribbean, including to cause them not to ally with the United States, should it ever wake up to the menace posed by Venezuela.

My sources at the Pentagon ... say unequivocally that there are no U.S. invasion plans in the works. [Why?!?! --ed] However, Hugo Chavez sticks firmly to his claim that there are, most probably to shore up his falling popularity in his political stronghold, the barrios. As corruption gnaws away at Venezuela's oil earnings, there is less and less money to pay for Chavez's state soup-kitchen programs designed to buy barrio loyalty. In the absence of that, fear will have to serve as a substitute.

But it's probably more than that, given the expensiveness of the exercises. The stepped-up military activity is no doubt a message to the rest of the Caribbean that not only can the region's bully cut off their oil, it can also put on a vast military show. And because it's actively practicing, it'll be very skilled. This intimidating message won't be lost on any of the countries trapped in the new Venezuela-Cuba oil net - a group which includes Costa Rica, Barbados, Dominican Republic, Trinidad, Jamaica and other states that must buy Venezuelan oil now from Havana [emphasis added]. Not only can Chavez cut off their oil, he can also threaten them physically if they don't see things his way. They know very well the U.S. has no intention of invading Venezuela, so the moves are there for them to consider.

The military activity also warns them that if the U.S. ever does get a mind to rid itself of this hemispheric plague, they will pay a high cost if they line up behind freedom as U.S. allies.

If this sounds dire, one article holds that there is some hope that the Bush administration is waking up to the problem. Unfortunately, this "waking up" reminds me too much of the ineffective (read: stalled for nearly a year) "six-party talks" by which we are supposedly enlisting the aid of other Asian countries (like China) to encourage North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program.

In preparation for this week's assembly [of the Organization of American States (OAS)] the administration floated a couple of modest but rather useful ideas: not the military invasion of Venezuela that Chavez ludicrously warns of, or the regional boycott [italics added] once employed against Cuba, but the elaboration of an OAS consensus on democratic standards and the creation of a mechanism that would allow nongovernmental groups in each of the organization's 34 countries -- labor unions, human rights organizations and the like -- to deliver reports about departures from those norms. But even these distinctly unimperialist measures have been hard to sell to the region's leading democracies, such as Brazil, Mexico and Argentina.

I somehow doubt that Chavez is going to be deterred, or his enemies emboldened, by any of this.

Meanwhile, I close by coming full circle to Gitmo. What lies at the root of Bush's inconsistency or indeed of the inconsistency of the conservatives generally? An article at the American Thinker titled, "Is the enemy winning?" shows us rather than tells us.

And yet the opponents of this war ... are playing directly into al Qaeda 's hands. Unable to defeat us on the battlefield, unwilling to confront us directly, al Qaeda is using its battlefield defeats - the capture and detention of its soldiers - to turn our successes upside down and put the United States government on the defensive. And the opponents of the war, seizing upon this sidebar issue with a fervor reminiscent of a revivalist reverend preaching hellfire and damnation, are unwittingly following the game plan of our enemies, by excoriating the Bush Administration for its alleged failure to uphold American values.

Notice that the article fails to ask how al Qaeda can "turn our successes upside down." Or why pacifist opponents of the war are seizing on these "sidebar issues." Or whether a political opponent who undermines our nation's ability to defend itself and thus protect the "American values" they claim to uphold "instead" really is on our side. The inability to see these questions is indicative of the fact that the author (and most conservatives generally) shares on some level a moral premise of the enemy and needs to question his premises pronto.

The only reason al Qaeda has been able to make hay out of Gitmo is because we have agreed that their objections to what we do there are valid. The dismissal of Gitmo as a mere "sidebar issue" is a failure to see the fuss for what it is: a tactic to seize the moral high ground in order to shut Gitmo down. Who elevated a "sidebar issue" like the Koran to importance in the first place? The government did, when it decided to issue them to the prisoners. And what kind of serious defender of "American values" mounts his defense of said values by doing things to keep America from defending herself?

Our only consideration in this war should be making our enemy unable to harm us by the quickest, most effective means available. Screw the Koran and any other distraction. Had Bush kept this one objective in the forefront -- both in his own mind and in the minds of the public -- we would neither be pussyfooting around with Iran and North Korea (or Venezuela for that matter) nor would we be distracted by Korans bought at public expense and soiled on government time. And we would not be at the risk of becoming demoralized by any of this nonsense because we'd have our priorities straight.

Instead, here we are, in our unfocused haze, hearing about the marvelous gains for freedom we have won in the Middle East being undercut nearly everywhere else in the world.

-- CAV