THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

A MAN WITH A MEMORY LOOKS AT THE GULF WAR | 2001-11-10

No one has more contempt for the cowardice of Republican spokesmen than I have.

But because conservatives are abject cowards when they face actual liberals, I have often been reduced to what I have to do now: defending the Republicans I despise from obvious leftist hypocrisy. As usual I will do this by making a statement of simple facts that no cowardly respectable conservative would dare make.

Today every Democrat attacks Republicans by asking "Why didn't we take out Saddam Hussein when we had the chance?" They mean why didn't Bush's father, President GHW Bush, fail to go on to Baghdad and remove Saddam Hussein after we had won the Gulf War in 1991.

In 1991, American forces had driven the Iraqi army out of Kuwait and could have destroyed Saddam Hussein's remaining armed forces without much effort. So why didn't Bush Senior "take out Saddam Hussein?"

As the only man in America who has a memory I will tell you a big reason Bush Senior didn't "take out Hussein" in 1991. That reason was the Democrats who are doing all the shouting now.

I am the only American who remembers the weeks before the Gulf War began in 1991. Only I remember that back then the national press had one main topic, like the terrorist attacks are the only main topic now. That topic was, "Should America go to war with Iraq, or should it give nonviolent sanctions more time to work?"

At that time, the then-President GHW Bush said he would go into Iraq with or without congressional approval. But the great debate went on in congress anyway.

Republicans put in a bill to support President Bush's taking military action. The Democratic leadership was solidly against it, Republicans and moderate Democrats were solidly for it. The debate was dramatic and all over the media in the weeks before the Gulf War began.

Guess what the main point that the Democratic opposition made against going into battle against Iraq was? Guess what was the one point they hammered on day after day, headline after headline, with the entire nation watching and talking about it?

Their one big argument was that, if they gave him the power, Bush would not just throw the Iraqis out of occupied Kuwait. They said that Bush would use those powers to go to Baghdad and overthrow Saddam Hussein.

Republicans promised, day in and day out, that they would not under any circumstances use the power congressional sanction would give them to "take out" Saddam Hussein. President GHW Bush assured the Democrats that he had no intention of "taking out" Saddam Hussein.

A quarter of a billion Americans heard that debate in the media and everywhere else, and not one of them remembers a word of it except me.

But today when Democrat after Democrat demands to know why Bush's father didn't "take out" Saddam Hussein the fact that they were fanatically opposed to the idea in 1991 has not been mentioned by a single respectable conservative spokesman.

It still hasn't.

NO DECENT PERSON WOULD SAY THIS | 2003-08-09

1) The attack on the World Trade Center would not have occurred if Americans kept tabs on immigrants;

2) The reason we do not keep tabs on immigrants is because those who control our government have a vested interest in not enforcing our immigration laws;

3) The biggest lobby against immigration laws is our Hispanic population. The bottom line is that American Hispanics are loyal to Mexicans and not to other American citizens;

4) The second biggest lobby against strict immigration enforcement is those who say it would hurt our international trade. That lobby's strongest support came from those in the World Trade Center.

I'M TOO BIGOTED TO BE ANTI-SEMITIC | 2003-05-10

No one seems to have noticed it but me, but a person who is paranoid has to have a gigantic ego.

Many pencil-necked leftists have told me through the years that they were being watched by the CIA.

I didn't say it, but what I was thinking was, "What in heaven's name gives you the idea that you are important enough to be watched all the time?"

On the television show "Seinfeld," Jerry Seinfeld had an uncle -- apparently drawn from experience -- who kept saying people were anti-Semitic. If a waiter brought him cold coffee, it was because the waiter was anti-Semitic.

Like everybody who criticizes the Israeli Lobby, I get accused of being anti-Semitic.

When the space shuttle disaster occurred I got an anonymous e-mail saying I was probably happy that happened because a Jew (an Israeli) was killed.

A lot of gentile Americans were killed on that shuttle, but that never occurred to the person.

Did it occur to this guy that even if I were anti-Semitic, the death of my fellow gentiles might bother me?

Of course not. He assumed that I was as totally obsessed with Jews as he was.

When a respectable conservative is accused of anti-Semitism, he always gives that speech about how he is more against anti-Semitism than Sharom is and how he thinks about the evils of anti-Semitism day and night, and so forth.

Ad nauseum.

Making that knee-jerk respectable conservative speech would turn my stomach. I am as interested in Jews as Jews are interested in people who were raised as country Methodists like me.

Anti-Semites don't make me scream like a self-righteous conservative.

Anti-Semites BORE me. For me, listening to an anti-Semite is as dull as listening to a Rabbi's sermon. They are both obsessed with Jews.

Jews, as Jews, interest me not at all.

The Israeli Lobby interests me because it is a real threat to our national interests. The Anti-Defamation League says the white race must go.

They say that anyone who mentions saving the white race is a white racist which means it is anti-Semitism. The Methodist Church says the same thing, which is why I left it.

A Jewish Professor at Harvard, Noel Ignatiev, stated this position honestly and bluntly

"The goal of abolishing the white race is on its face so desirable that some may find it hard to believe that it could incur any opposition other than from committed white supremacists."

There are pro-white Jews and pro-white Methodists, and I appreciate them deeply.

But I consider my enemies to be my enemies, and for once I can honestly say that is regardless of race, color, creed, sexual preference or what kind of pie they like for dessert.

HISTORY'S HOSTAGES | 2003-10-18

President Bush just announced that we are not in Iraq for our own security. He got us into Iraq by saying it was for our own national interests. Now he says the Iraqi War had nothing to do with American interests.

Lyndon Johnson made the same switch about justifying the Vietnam War when that War got out of hand.

Bush's switch from arguing the war in Iraq is in our national interest to saying it for foreigners is routine. It happened with Lyndon Johnson and it happened with Franklin Roosevelt.

You can't criticize Roosevelt for getting us into World War II because so many fine young Americans died in World War II. If you attack Roosevelt, you are insulting those young Americans.

The young Americans who died in World War II are the hostages who justify Roosevelt's getting us into World War II. If you dare to criticize World War II liberals say, "Do you want Hitler back?"

Bush is trying the Hostage Strategy and Johnson tried the Hostage Strategy because Roosevelt succeeded with the Hostage Strategy.

When we first went into World War II, President Roosevelt said it was for America's national interests. Then a lot of Americans got killed. Those Americans who died became President Roosevelt's hostages.

Once all those young Americans had died for Roosevelt's war policy, you were not allowed to argue that Roosevelt was wrong to get us into World War II. Any American today who questions Roosevelt's foreign policy is called a traitor.

Those young Americans who died in World War II have become Franklin Roosevelt's hostages. So Johnson used those hostages to get tens of thousands of young Americans killed in Vietnam.

Lyndon Johnson got us into Vietnam by saying American forces were attacked by North Vietnam in Tonkin Bay. Then the Tonkin Bay Incident was shown to be a fake. But by then Johnson had gotten thousands of young Americans killed in Vietnam.

So after his original justification was discredited, President Johnson said that all those fine young American men had died for the sake of Vietnam and he would keep fighting for their sakes and for the sake of Vietnam.

Bush got us into Iraq by arguing that that war was necessary for America's security against terrorism. Now he says the war was all for the sake of Iraq and Israel and "America's allies." Apparently he thinks enough fine young Americans have now died to let him fall back on the good old hostage strategy.

And Bush's punch line is, "Do you want Saddam back?"