NeoCarterism Marches On

I don't use the term "neoCarterism" gratuitously, either. The hallmark of Jimmy Carter's Cold War foreign policy was to go soft on our enemies and take baseball bats to our friends on the grounds that their lack of moral purity made them liabilities as allies.

Over a quarter of a century later, it's like Mr. Peanut never left:

Senate Democrats are threatening to withhold delivery of jet fighter planes to Pakistan if it does not intensify its campaign against terrorists. The Bush Administration opposed an even tougher move in the House that would condition U.S. military aid to stronger anti-terror efforts. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher told a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee Wednesday the arms package should not be held out as a reward to Pakistan. Boucher said Pakistan is fighting Taliban militia for its own good and that the United States and other nations benefit as a result.

At stake is the long-delayed sale of 18 new jet fighters, an opportunity to buy 18 more and refurbishing 34 used aircraft already in Pakistan's air force arsenal.

By itself, this move would be at best questionable. If you are selective in your assembling of facts, you can make the case that Pakistan (which, if you'll recall, installed the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in the first place and only switched sides after 9/11 when no less a Bushophobe than Colin Powell stooge and Plamegate leaker Richard Armitage told them we'd "bomb them back to the stone age" if they didn't) could be doing more to combat al Qaeda than to release thousands of Taliban prisoners and provide the terrorists with safe havens like their infamous North Waziristan province and then refuse to allow our forces to do it for them.

Taken in isolation, the above appears to justify the Rambo stance feigned by the Donks' latest titanic trio:

Three Democratic senators - John Kerry of Massachusetts, Christopher Dodd of Connecticut and Joe Biden of Delaware - put the threat in the form of a nonbinding resolution.

Its aim is to make clear to Pakistan that U.S. military assistance will be assessed in how hard the South Asian ally cracks down on Taliban forces, which are expected to launch a spring offensive in Afghanistan from havens in Pakistan, and on the al-Qaida terror network.

"We must never forget the importance of going after the terrorists before they strike,'' Kerry said.

Taken out of isolation, one problem with the Lurch/Dud/Hairplugs resolution immediately leaps on you and rips out your throat, sending geysers of blood fountaining in every direction: These three "men" and their party are the exact same people who want to terminate our own anti-terror fight in Iraq. The expressions "Look who's talking" and "Physicians, heal thyselves" come immediately to mind, along with a few, more colorful ones that I'll refrain from sharing here.

Here's another problem I discussed last fall:

If we respect Pakistani territorial integrity, al Qaeda has a secure base of operations once more, and we already know how that tends to turn out. If we begin attacking into that province to try and clean it out once and for all, we either force Musharraf to turn against us to save his own ass or kiss his ass goodbye in an Islamist coup, yielding us the worst case scenario of twin Islamic nuclear theocracies, one Shiite, one Sunni, possessed of annihilation fantasies and competing against each other to see who can trigger Armageddon first.

This is the conundrum with which the Bush Administration has been faced ever since. But even if worse came to worse, going into North Waziristan, gamble that it would be, could conceivably be justified. What Kerry, Dodd, and Biden are doing (or, rather, what they'd like to do, since if such a measure ever got to the President's desk I cannot, even now, believe that he wouldn't veto it, which is why they'll eventually attach it as an amendment to a war funding bill or something else that Bush dare not reject) does it one worse by accomplishing the same end of alienating and further destabilizing the Musharraf regime without striking blow #1 against the protected enemy strongholds in Pakistani territory.

And, right on cue, came the understandably indignant Pakistani retort:

A group of Pakistani lawmakers threatened Friday to halt counterterrorism cooperation with the United States if American military aid is made conditional on their country's commitment to fighting the Taliban and al-Qaida.

Pakistani and U.S. leaders are concerned that the link, contained in a bill that has cleared the U.S. House of Representatives, could sour relations between Washington and a key ally against international terrorism."

Pakistan's contribution to the war on terror is far higher than any other country," the defense committee of Pakistan's lower house of parliament said.

If it becomes law, the condition "calls for a reciprocal action from Pakistan, including complete or partial noncooperation in the war against terror," the committee said, according to an official summary of its Thursday meeting.

You know what else about this just floors me as jaw-droppingly ironic? Wasn't it John Kerry who spent the entire 2004 presidential campaign complaining about the Bush Administration's alleged "unilateralism" in the war on terror? That we needed to "reach out" to other countries and "build alliances" in order to "share the burden" and not "go it alone"? Well, hasn't Pakistan been, if nominally, an ally in this fight? Hasn't Islamabad's backsliding been a direct result of the constant undermining of the Bush Administration's efforts to fight this war carried out by people like John Kerry, Chris Dodd, and Joe Biden? And the latter's response to that is to piss in Musharraf's face? What's wrong with this picture?

So I said six months ago, so I say again:

We....must come to terms with why the enemy’s confidence [and our allies' anxiety] is growing: They no longer fear us. They believe that our decadence guarantees our attention span will always be vanishingly short, and that belief is reinforced daily in and by the Enemy Media. And they think that We, The People, don’t really believe in our hearts that we’re at war, desperately do not want to internalize that reality, and will do anything to escape it.

The inevitable consequence of that line of reasoning is another big bang; here; and soon. The only way to stop it is the resurrection of a "neo-September 11th mentality": If Musharraf crosses us, the mullahgarchy defies our demand that they abandon their pursuit of nuclear weapons, Syria doesn’t stop subverting Iraqi democracy….prepare for our bigger bangs to land first.

Instead, the American voters installed a congressional regime determined to call off the fight against the terrorists and drive away all friends and allies that don't speak French.

Somewhere in Plains, Georgia, the old beast smiles, flashing all 832 of those teeth, knowing that his treasonous time has come 'round again. And this time he's got a majority of Americans lurching along with him toward the Islamist guillotines that they have willingly hidden from their eyes.

If only they weren't dragging the rest of us along with them.

[h/t: Maha Rushie]