www.frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=7092
First, it was international arbitration and the goal of disarmament enshrined in the Hague treaties of 1899 and 1907, then international organization (the League of Nations followed by the UN), then actual disarmament and arms control treaties each hailed as bold steps in a utopian project to achieve lasting peace. Unfortunately, the century-old record of this exhaustive campaign is largely one of failure. We must examine the historical record and the philosophic assumptions on which the utopian campaign has always been based, for those assumptions despite having been proved empirically false motivate the Lefts opposition to President Bushs policy today. They have no doubt they can ameliorate the military and political competition between states, and reduce the crude demands of brutal power, with rationalistic, legalistic schemes embodied in arms treaties, "peace processes" and UN resolutions and inspectors, much as they have no doubt they can solve domestic social problems through legislation. Underlying their efforts is the age-old dream of a perfect human nature transforming society through the application of reason. An inspiring hope which is precisely the problem, because it is at odds with experience. Take the 1991 Gulf War, which made clear that Saddam Hussein was close to developing nuclear weapons. The Lefts arguments against war today are very similar to the ones made then when House Democrats voted 179 to 86 against war (the final vote was 250-183 for action), and Senate Democrats voted 45 to 10 against war (the final vote was a mere 52-47 for action). How totally wrong they were, as we won the most stunning, lop-sided, easy victory in history. Despite such amazing bad judgment, and despite the knowledge gained after the victory about Saddams extensive terror weapons program, liberal House Democrats again voted overwhelmingly against authorizing todays President Bush to undertake military action. There is much, much more in the historical record to demonstrate the utter irrationality of the Lefts view of foreign affairs: They fought against every one of President Reagans policies that won the Cold War and achieved the only successful arms control treaties reducing or eliminating entire classes of armaments. Thus, they complained in 1981-82 when he refused to resume strategic arms talks ("START") until his rearmament program got under way. They denounced his late 1981 "zero option" proposal to eliminate all Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces ("INF") as not serious because the Soviet Russians would never accept it. INF forces which resulted in the 1987 treaty abolishing both sides INF forces. They blamed President Reagan when the Russians, in a typical attempt to stir up domestic protests in NATO countries, walked out of the INF and START talks following our initial INF deployments late in 1983. These deployments, in the face of massive left-wing protests in Europe sound familiar? They derided President Reagans strategic defense program as "Star Wars," and dismissed evidence of Soviet cheating on existing arms control agreements (confirmed after the Soviet collapse). Then, at the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919, following the "War to End Wars," the great liberal Woodrow Wilson sought to abolish bad old European "power politics" in favor of the League of Nations. The result left defeated and humiliated Germany still in possession of latent superiority, setting the clock ticking toward an even more cataclysmic world war.
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