A War of Wishes

Once again, there is talk, this time by our wartime president, of closing Gitmo.

Mr Bush said he understood European concerns over the US detention camp in Cuba.

"I'd like to end Guantanamo. I'd like it to be over with," he said.

He said 200 detainees had been sent home, and most of those remaining were from Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Afghanistan.

Well, so would I, Mr. President! I wish I'd never have to hear about terrorism again, and that Moslems would learn to live and let live. I wish these and lots of other things. But wishing doesn't make it so.

One might be surprised to hear these words coming from the same man who, nearly five years ago, warned us that we would have to brace for a long war, and who advocated persistence -- until one considers that Bush continues to ratify the Clintonian policy of negotiating with rogue states.

U.S. ambassador to Japan Thomas Schieffer said on Wednesday that if North Korea launched a long-range ballistic missile it would be a "clear violation" of agreements it has made in the past.

The United States has activated its ground-based interceptor missile-defense system amid concerns over an expected North Korean missile launch, a U.S. defense official said on Tuesday.

Asked if the United States would try to shoot down a North Korean missile, Schieffer said: "I think what we have said is that we have greater technical measures of tracking than in the past and we have options that we have not had in the past, and all these options are on the table."

So after nearly two years of trying to get North Korea to return to talks to negotiate an end to its ambition for nuclear weapons, we're talking about the dicey proposition of shooting down a missile of theirs as if doing so is some kind of a threat? The only option not on the table remains the only one that would work: reducing Pyongyang to rubble.

And what's worse, we're doing exactly the same thing with Iran, who see plainly that the lesson Bush taught North Korea is quite different than the one Truman taught Japan. Call the Iranians fanatical, but don't call them stupid.

Iran's president said Wednesday his country would take until mid-August to respond to incentives to roll back its nuclear program, prompting President Bush to accuse Tehran of dragging its feet. [bold added]

Unless Bush was thinking Ahmadinejad meant something like "mid-August of 2010", he can only look into the mirror for whom to blame for this delay.

This reminds me of all the silly conspiracy theories floated around by the loony left ever since the atrocities of September 11, 2001 to the effect that Bush knew the attacks were coming -- and let them happen in order to "have an excuse" to go to war.

Only now, we're seeing a series of events that, absent U.S. military intervention, put the lie to the professed concerns -- for peace by the left, and for American security by the Bush Administration.

For what would the left have wanted Bush do to prevent the atrocities of 2001 but exactly what he is doing now? He is releasing Islamists from jail so they can take out innocents when they eventually decide to commit suicide anyway, and "negotiating" with our professed enemies (read: sitting on his hands while they prepare to attack). What the left is prescribing as the way to prevent war is designed to fail, and yet Bush is doing just that in the name of America's national security.

Why does Bush seem less worried about the perception that he knows about an impending attack than about what his political opponents will think if he acts properly on that knowledge? His wish to be rid of this inconvenient war, and to be loved by the left will only be answered by the bombs he wishes weren't in the hands of madmen.

-- CAV