Author: Dick Morris
Publication: FrontPageMagazine.com
Date: June 26, 2003
URL: http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=8591
The Vietnam War, waged for the sake
of falling dominos, gave the chain reaction a bad reputation as a reason
for public policy.
When the United States troops departed
by helicopter from the roof of our Saigon embassy, the world held its breath
waiting for Thailand, Burma, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore to
fall to the relentless Red Tide.
Didn't happen.
But now, the reverse domino theory
is coming true. As a result of President Bush's war in Iraq, peace and
even freedom seem to be breaking out in the most unlikely of places.
It is amazing what a show of force
and 100,000 troops in the middle of the Middle East are doing to drive
Islamic terrorism to the wall.
Consider the global landscape in
the wake of Bush's military success:
* Iranian students pour by the hundreds
of thousands into the streets of Tehran to demand reform and freedom, casting
off the illusion that the Khatami government can deliver them from Islamic
control. The students and the whole country seem to realize that the façade
of democratic choice in Iran is about the same as in student government
where the kids vote but the principal runs the school.
* Palestinian operatives negotiate
seriously with Israel to keep the peace plan moving down the Bush road
map, despite obstacles placed in their path by Arafat, Hamas and, sometimes,
Sharon's need to defend his people.
* The Saudis fall all over themselves
to convince us that they are now taking terrorism seriously, hunting down
terrorists in public and, one hopes, curtailing their financing in private.
* Sharon, emboldened by a robust
American military presence in Iraq, actually begins dismantling settlements
in the West Bank, a step once as unlikely as the Irish Republican Army's
throwing away its machine guns.
* The International Atomic Energy
Agency actually stands up to Iran and, this time with Russian assistance
and American troops over the border, demands the opening of nuclear plants
to international scrutiny.
* China cuts the flow of oil to
North Korea for three days, giving it a taste of freezing and starving
in the dark. The catalyst moves Pyongyang to the negotiating table and
opens North Korea to the prospect of multilateral pressure from Russia,
China, Japan, South Korea and the United States.
The Democrats can only stand by
and watch as Bush grinds out the yardage in his pursuit of peace. Their
lament that our intelligence was faulty in Iraq (it wasn't) or that we
will never find weapons of mass destruction there (we will) are but reminders
of their irrelevance as the tide of peace surges forward. While the Democrats
argue about history, Bush is making it.
On the domestic front, the piracy
of Democratic issues by the triangulating president continues apace. By
offering prescription drug benefits under traditional fee-for-service Medicare,
expanding education funding, boosting the Head Start program, broadening
AmeriCorps, banning road construction in wilderness areas, providing tax
credits for lower middle income families, ending racial profiling, replacing
expensive branded medicines with cheaper generic drugs, Bush has cleaned
out the Democratic locker of all its best issues.
Abroad, there's a lot more to be
done and the dominos have only started to fall, but the president's foresight
in using force in Iraq has kindled the momentum for peace in a way a Camp
David summit could never have done. Bush realizes that it's a lot easier
to risk taking a leap of faith with a gun at your back or with one trained
on your enemy.
(Dick Morris is a former adviser
to President Clinton.)
