THE INTELLECTUAL’S CURSE

None of all the momentous events that occurred in 2003 — the recovery of the US economy, the invasion of Iraq and military overthrow of Saddam’s regime, the capture of Saddam, the capitulation of Libya’s Kaddafi, you name it — was the most important. The single most important event of 2003 is the one that didn’t occur: there was not one single successful terrorist attack in the United States.

This is the single greatest achievement of the year — and note the identifier achievement. This is not a lucky accident — although luck and chance played a role as in most everything else in life. But those who are truly wise know that to a very considerable extent, you make your own luck, and this is what George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, and John Ashcroft have done.

One of the most amusing sights of 2003 was to see so many people turn their brains into jello over John Ashcroft. Anyone who has personally known Ashcroft can testify to his decency and integrity. Yet he and his Patriot Act became the focal point of hate for both the Loony Left and the Loony Right — the Hollywood Left and Dizzy Dean Democrats see eye-to-eye with Jane Fonda Libertarians like Lew Rockwell, Pro-Moslem Conservatives like Grover Norquist, and Hate-Israel Paleocons like Pat Buchanan.

All of them are touting author James Bovard’s Bash-Bush&Ashcroft rant entitled Terror and Tyranny. You might think Jim is talking about how dictatorships sponsor terrorists. No, it’s about how the Patriot Act has established a dictatorship in America (last I heard though, Jim is still not in jail for writing a subversive book), and that government incompetence (like not knowing about 9-11 in advance) or political correctness (like not profiling Moslems in airport security) is somehow the same as tyranny.

The fact that all of these folks can’t abide is that because Bush took the fight out of America and to the terrorists, our country didn’t become the Fortress America it would have and they pretend it is.

Retreating into such a paranoid and suspicious fortress, Americans would have demanded Ashcroft institute vastly greater restrictions on our freedoms. The Patriot Act is a mild response to the terrorist threat — allowing, for example, to wiretap the individual, who can now communicate with a raft of devices such as a cell phone, rather than only a device itself such as a land line.

You would think that any American wanting their freedoms protected would be grateful for George Bush and John Ashcroft for doing so. Instead, the Loony Left and Right are the opposite. One reason is they both suffer from The Intellectual’s Curse.

There are other reasons. Jane Fonda Libertarians hate their government so much they root for America’s enemies. Liberal squishes are so embarrassed to be Americans they suffer from self-castration in their desire to defend their country. The Anti-Semites are against anything that might help Israel, such as defeating Moslem terrorism. Dizzy Dean Dems see any Bush success as a setback to their chances for power.

But The Intellectual’s Curse is an affliction most of them have in common. What causes people to be intellectuals is a disposition to think that abstractions and concepts are more real than actual reality – so they get more afraid of the hypothetical consequences of the abstractions in their brains than by concrete threats in the real world.

Jim Bovard’s book is an epitomization of this fear. Being exclusively concerned with hypothetical threats posed by possible misuse of the Patriot Act requires him to deny real threats from Moslem terrorists, to deny the reality of the street fight we’re in with them.

If you’ve ever had the ugly misfortune of being in a real street fight with someone determined to do you in, you know that fighting fair will get you killed. If America should lose the War on Moslem Terrorism, it will be due to the increasingly hysterical demands of liberals and libertarians that we must fight fair with the terrorists. Somehow for them, protecting the “rights” of terrorists is more important than protecting our lives.

They can’t stand the reality that America is in a street fight, and our survival depends on GW’s ability to brush aside liberal and libertarian complaints that we’re not fighting nice and fair.

The obvious example is Israel. If Israel fought fair with those who wish to destroy her, she would no longer exist. Israel survives because she has the nerve to assassinate her enemies, and efficiently extract information from them when caught.

When a Palestinian terrorist is captured, how many Israeli lives can be saved depends on how quickly and efficiently Mossad agents can get him to talk. They strip him naked and sit him in a chair with his legs forced apart. They bring in a large Doberman pincher whose muzzle is placed inches from his genitals. They explain: “This is Herman. Herman is a very unusual dog. Herman can smell when someone is lying. When someone lies, it gets Herman very mad. And when Herman gets mad, he bites – really hard. So we suggest you tell us the truth.”

That is how you fight a street fight with terrorists. It is far worse than useless to argue that not fighting fair with them could hypothetically lead to tribunals and torture someday for US citizens. It has clearly not done so for Israeli citizens. Such argument is murderously dangerous by inhibiting our capacity to protect ourselves from those who are attempting – for real, not hypothetically – to destroy us.

There is a huge difference between the wars on terrorism being fought by Israel and America. Israel’s war is primarily within its borders, while America’s war is primarily beyond its borders. This is due almost exclusively to the practical intelligence and moral courage of President Bush.

It is thanks to him that we don’t have to resort to the extreme methods Israel must use to survive, that we haven’t retreated into Fortress America, that we haven’t suffered another September 11, that a million people partied in peace in Times Square watching the ball drop last night.

America is winning the War on Moslem Terrorism. Saddam is in jail. Al Qaeda is being dismantled. The “Arab Street” is mute. Kaddafi has preemptively surrendered. 2003 was a year of celebration. 2004 will be as well — as long as that necessary bit of luck holds, that we let George Bush and John Ashcroft do their jobs, and that we don’t fall victim to the Intellectuals Curse.