Two WSJ opinion pieces

Through a fluke of chance, I ended up with pieces of the Wall Street Journal, Europe yesterday. [My boss obtained it somehow, read an article on Handball (a sport that has not yet sucessfully exported to the US), and gave it to one of my colleagues who is a goalie in his local Handball Team. Then, being finished with the paper, my boss gave it to me. See, it's complicated.]

Annnywayyy....tonight on the S-bahn ride home, I read two opinion pieces in there, one by Charles Hill (Keflavik, Ramstein, Clark, Aviano. . . [official WSJ subscribers only link], [full text on beaconblog]) and another by Claudia Rosett (The Real World: Escape From Kerryland [official WSJ and, so far, free link]. Both very good, both very insightful.

The first opinion piece by Charles Hill outlines why (he thinks, and I agree) the troop re-deployment is a good idea. He also gives a realistic outlook on the impact this discission will have on Germany and S. Korea. Ie., despite the hand wringing of German Unions, not all US bases are going to disappear and we'll still have enough troops on the ground in S. Korea to handle developments there. Give it a read, it's worth it.

Best quotes:

The Kerry campaign charges that just at the moment when we want greater NATO involvement in Iraq, the Bush decision is bound to annoy our allies in Paris and Berlin, further damaging our relationship with Europe.

But Sen. Kerry has the meaning of a security relationship backwards. A warmer European-American relationship would not have produced a NATO decision to join us in the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, or in the hard-slog work of establishing security and democracy in Iraq. It works the other way around.

When we and like-minded partners face and solve a problem together, a strong relationship can be forged. The minimalist support from NATO's "old Europe" members -- and the commentaries of the Continental intelligentsia -- indicate that neither Western Europe nor the U.N. has yet grasped that if the Middle East is not transformed in a positive way, the international community and its system of laws, organizations and cooperative mechanisms will find itself embroiled in a world war.

....

If elected, President Kerry, smothered with European approbation, will declare that he has healed the trans-Atlantic rift. Then, as the Middle East continues to generate pathologies reaching beyond the region, the Europeans will counsel caution, delay and diplomacy, and President Kerry will acquiesce in order to preserve his new "relationship." And the war will draw closer.

Amen.

And for those of us who are getting entirely fed up with the Kerry Vietnam chest thumping and mud-slinging, Claudia Rosett first reminds us the terrorist are not idly sitting back doing nothing.
[gah! just discovered the WSJ link doesn't have the full text of what appears in the paper! Specifically, the paragraph I want to quote here. Sigh. Forgive my typos as I transcribe it. :(]

Somewhere - remember Madrid - the next attack is quite likely in the making. ...
[I]t must surely be clear by now that we face not simply Osama bin Laden, or al Qaueda, but a fascist movement that finds in murder an intoxicating power over the rest of mankind, and in modern technology, a terrible arsenal.

I love that last sentence. Very powerful.

She then offers us suggestions of more constructive ways to pass our news watching time: re-read the Constitution, specifically passages dealing with the [non]-rights of tyrants; re-reading the Gettysburg address; or reading through Shakespeares Henry V (Act IV, Scene 3) for the stirring speech in which the "band of brothers" phrase was originally used. All good suggestions. I have a feeling I'll be reading through these this weekend.

Posted by Jinglelady at August 27, 2004 12:42 AM | Politics | TrackBack