1. Andrew C. McCarthy, senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, who led the 1995 terrorism prosecution against Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and eleven others, writing on
The rationale for the Bush presidency, the bedrock basis for reelection, is that the President has been clear-eyed and unflinching on the central issue of the day: the threat posed by militant Islamic terrorism.
Again and again, he has said it: Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. This was the firm foundation of the Bush Doctrine — no quarter for terrorists, no place, no how. And no exceptions for the Palestinian Authority. . .
It was because President Bush insisted, as a premise of his “roadmap” for Middle East peace, that terrorism be halted and terror groups be disarmed, that he was preferable to President Clinton, who labored eight long years trying to groom an incorrigible terrorist, Yassir Arafat, into a statesman — in a “peace process” that bred the Intifada and an ever-rising death count.
2. Andrew C. McCarthy, writing last night at The Corner in an exchange with John Podhoretz:
[W]e’ve lost our way. I repeat, here’s what the President said when he was rallying us to that great cause that that other Podhoretz (in my view, better than anyone on the planet) has championed:
[W]e will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the
as a hostile regime. United States By the President’s description, which I believe in and most Americans believe in,
and Iran were guilty the minute he spoke these words in 2001. Since we invaded Syria , they have COMPOUNDED the situation by spending their time killing our guys. Can it really be that our reaction — all this time later — is to try to figure out how we might persuade them to be helpful. Iraq
I believe in the “you’re with us or you’re with the terrorists” approach. I thought that was what we all believed. . . . Here’s what I’ve recently been treated to: The President’s spokesman calls Hamas members “business professionals” rather than terrorists.
Earlier in the day, McCarthy wrote at The Corner that:
Here is some of what the President said in the speech to Congress right after the 9/11 attacks:
Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists, and every government that supports them.
Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated. . . . And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the
as a hostile regime. . . . United States
Four years later (or, if you want to calculate Hezbollah’s history, a quarter century later), when do you figure we’ll get the idea that [
and Iran are] probably not inclined to be helpful? And what must they think when, after all this time and all they have done, we talk like we think they are anything but committed to defeating and humiliating us? Syria
And what must they think — after all this time and all they have done — as they watch us pressure
We have lost the moral clarity that Natan Sharansky (who resigned from Ariel Sharon’s cabinet three months before Benjamin Netanyahu) brought to this war, reflected in the simple question he asks in an August 10 article in Israel Resource News Agency entitled “Do US Pressures Determine Israeli Policy?”:
Sharansky wonders why it is that the world’s democracies, led by the
, are so keen to witness the creation of a new anti-democratic, anti-Western and anti-American Islamic state in the United States of America Middle East .