Democrats: A Modest Proposal

In the February issue of Commentary, neo-con Norman Podhoretz speculated about Bush's second term. He's more pessimistic than I:

[T]he obstacles he will have to overcome at home are more formidable than those confronting him across the seas and in the field. . . So determined is it to dispose of the Bush Doctrine that it could still defeat even a foe as commensurately determined as George W. Bush.

To reach that answer, Podhoretz assesses the President's opponents, right and left. And we are in perfect accord that the left's lost its idealism; turned reactionary; consumed by illogical anti-Americanism; rooting for the enemy, leading to self-loathing. Here's Podhoretz's take on centrists Dems:

[H]oused in bodies like the Council on Foreign Relations, the Brookings Institution, and the Carnegie Endowment, and surrounded by the populous community of non-governmental organizations (NGO’s)—live the liberal internationalists, with their virtually religious commitment to negotiations as the best, or indeed the only, way to resolve conflicts; their relentless faith in the UN (which they stubbornly persist in seeing as the great instrument of collective security even though its record is marked by "an unwillingness to get serious about preventing deadly violence"; and their corresponding squeamishness about military force. . .

[T]he liberal internationalists have been reduced to a domestic echo chamber for the French and the Germans. All they seem able to do is count the ways in which the "unilateral" invasion of Iraq has done "damage to the country’s international position—its prestige, credibility, security partnerships, and the goodwill of other countries" (Ikenberry). Since they refuse even to consider whether 9/11 demanded a "reorientation"—whether, that is, it demonstrated that "the tools and doctrines of the [old] system had outlived their utility" and had to be replaced with a "new set of rules for managing the emerging threats to international security"5—they can hope for nothing better than a reversion to the status quo ante.

Here's how he sees the radical left:

Chomsky will go on railing against the Bush Doctrine for as long as his lungs hold out. So will Michael Moore and all the other hard leftists holed up in Hollywood, the universities, and in the intellectual community at large. Fixated as they are on the idea that America is the greatest force for evil in the world, they will always apologize for or side with—sometimes openly, sometimes only tacitly—any totalitarian despot, no matter how murderous, provided only that he is ranged against the United States. To these people, as they themselves cannot but recognize, an American success in Iraq will mean the loss of their mass audience and a return to the narrow sectarian ghetto from which they were able to break out after 9/11.

Even Europeans spotted the circling vultures, reflected in this March 21st Corriere della Sera editorial:

It is as if the epic post-Fall of the Berlin Wall turmoil has rapidly given way to a sort of political hyperrealism and an entrenched cultural relativism. Hyperrealism and relativism are, at least in part, understandable among conservatives. They are much less comprehensible among those who should not, even after the downfall of their old gods, abandon internationalist ideals, and should be taking the side of anyone, anywhere, who lays claim to democracy, liberty, and rights. . .

But [Italian center-left party secretary Piero] Fassino has said at least two, potentially shattering, new things. The first is that when Mr Bush spells out that he is fighting “for freedom and democracy in Arab countries,” he is turning on its head - positively, according to Mr Fassino - the traditional policy of Republican administrations that “supported fascist military dictatorships in South America in the name of political realism.” Mr Bush is not Henry Kissinger, and this cannot be ignored. The second point is that the democratic ferment evident almost everywhere in the Arab world has its origins in a general process of secularization that has not left Muslim societies unscathed. This, too, cannot be ignored by those who, like Mr Fassino, side with people laying claim to these values where hitherto they have been denied, and refuse to support the oppressors merely for fear of jeopardizing the status quo.

Simply put, lefties have become callous and lazy isolationists.

But never fear, IMAO's Frank J. has the answer:

Africa has been a troubled region for some time. Unstable politics, genocide, aids outbreaks, mass starvation - we do what we can to help, we send money to Sally Struthers, but do we really think Africa is going to get better and be a fully functional continent again? Sure, we can keep things patched together, but each day Africa exists is just another day of suffering. It's time we face up to reality and give Africa the peace it needs in a natural end.

It's time we starve everyone in Africa to death.

The UN will certainly be on board with this as dealing with Africa has been too much for them as well. We'll have to watch all entry points where people may misguidedly try to bring food to the Africans; as leaders of the world, this is our choice to make and others shouldn't subvert it. Plus, this is what Africa wants as I think I remember some ancient tribal leaders saying they wanted their people starved to death if the continent ended up like it is today.

And yes, before someone brings it up, America does have a 10 trillion dollar life insurance policy on Africa that can be cashed if everyone there dies, but this isn't about America - this is about Africa and what's best for it. And you'd have to be a pretty heartless person to not see how death by starvation is what the people of Africa would really want. Yes, I can't know that I can’t know for sure since they speak languages I don't understand, but can't you see they're tired of barely making it by on foreign aid and showing their children in television ads? They want a natural end.

Yes, I'd rather start with France. But if Frank J.'s reductio ad absurdum resolves Washington's perpetual partisan squabble, the sacrifice might be worth it.