Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Operational surprise

John Podhoretz:

ONCE again, the Bush administration shows that it's at its best when it's at its boldest. The decision not to stand on rigid ceremony when it came to the inauguration of the sovereign Iraqi government was electrifying because it revealed that the hostage-snatching monsters aren't the only people in Iraq capable of operational surprise.

The conflict inside Iraq is now between a transitional regime committed to the building of democratic institutions and a bunch of monsters who like to cut people's heads off. The choice could hardly be more stark.

It is a bitter irony of the present moment that there will be precious little difference between Iraq's so-called "insurgents" and the anti-American Left when — as is inevitable — they both begin attacking the new government for being an American "puppet regime."

For the terrorists, the only authentic Iraqi government will be one where women are beaten for seeking an education and where the most restrictive interpretation of Islamic law holds totalitarian sway. Any Western influence, whether it comes from the philosophy of the Founding Fathers or from United Nations experts helping to set up polling places, will be considered corrupting and deserving of extermination.

The anti-American Left isn't comfortable with all the woman-bashing stuff, to be sure, but by and large it shares a common philosophy with the terrorists when it comes to the corrupting effect of Western influence anywhere and everywhere in the world.

In their eyes, we have rendered the liberation of Iraq hopelessly impure because we are a moral stain upon the world. We do what we do "for oil," for money, for capitalism, for cronies, out of ideological frenzy or to help Israel — not to defend this country and the world from a monster with inhuman ambitions and free a tortured people.

...

Well, here we are in 2004, and even the anti-American Left can't bring itself to embrace Osama bin Laden as the "authentic" face of revolt and liberation. Nor can it find a hero in Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the bin Laden associate now coordinating terror strikes from Fallujah.

There is no hero of the resistance, no revolution, to support. There is only opposition — opposition to the United States.

There is a peculiar relish with which such people declare that the United States has never been more hated around the world, as though they are citing the results of a poll with which they agree. The defeat of the United States in Iraq is devoutly to be wished because we deserve to be punished just as a matter of course.

That our defeat will mean the triumph of a regime so brutal and dangerous it would fill Saddam Hussein's heart with joy and gladness means nothing. America must be punished. Iraq and the world be damned.