Democrats and our enemies relieved to see Bush term end

Mark Davis:

There was a familiar quip Hillary Clinton used on campaign stops this year. It usually involved some snide reference to how America's image supposedly has been damaged during the Bush years, punctuated by a line that always drew hoots of approval from audiences that shared her loathing of the president:

"The whole world is going to breathe a sigh of relief," she would proclaim, "when that moving van pulls up to the White House on its way back to Texas."

She is, of course, largely correct. The sigh of relief will not issue from the whole world exactly, but from large parts of it.

You certainly will hear it from the Middle East, where terrorists and their millions of fans will discharge enough celebratory gunfire to pepper an entire desert with spent shells. The devil George W. Bush will no longer be there to impede their goals.

You will hear it from the portions of Latin America smitten with the thuggery of Venezuela President Hugo Chavez. Mr. Bush will no longer be there to oppose his poisonous socialism and reckless saber rattling.

There should be a particularly loud sigh from North Korea, recently chastened by Bush administration diplomacy, a seeming oxymoron to the finger-wagging critics who have lied for years that this president seeks to wage war first and ask questions later. With the Bush thorn removed from their sides, the North Koreans indeed may be free to rethink their recently improved behavior.

No doubt about it, from Kim Jong Il to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, tyrants the world over will utter the sigh of relief happily anticipated by Bush-haters at home and abroad.

If the Bush years are followed by the McCain years, I hope those sighs are muffled by the anticipation of additional moral clarity from the American president. But wouldn't that mean more hate would be heaped on us from around the world? We should all hope so.

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It is equal parts sad and scary that an entire political party and millions of its adherents in America believe that we should guide foreign policy by how much of the world likes us.

This is as fundamentally stupid as trying to raise a child by being a buddy instead of a parent. That is a sure recipe for a rotten, indulged, unappreciative kid.

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The people who hate us are not people I want to like us. I prefer to have their respect, but if that is not available they should at least fear us. When the Marines were changing things in Anbar province for the better one of their slogans was "No better friend, no worse enemy." Those who choose to be our enemy should take note. As for the Democrats, if they choose to put our enemies' interest ahead of ours, history will not judge them kindly.

One of the reasons so many in the world are so eager to criticize President Bush is that Democrats have been so unrestrained and unstatesmen like in their own criticism. As they ahve been shown to be wrong on the war and tax cuts and energy, they only ratchet up their hateful rhetoric.