The United State Of America's Allies; Americans may pledge their allegiance, through their pocketbooks, to U.S. allies who, contrary to Democratic claims, still are standing with us on Iraq and terrorism

0 Comments | Insight on the News, April 13, 2004

Byline: John Berlau, INSIGHT

Until the March 11 terrorist attacks in Madrid and its aftermath in the election of a Socialist anti-Iraq-war government in Spain, not much had been written in the establishment press about the countries fighting alongside the United States in the coalition forces. Even though troops from 36 nations were on the ground with U.S. troops as action to liberate Iraq began last March, and more than 80 nations are helping with reconstruction, the Bush administration had been described by Democratic partisans as "going it alone" and fighting the war "unilaterally." Presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) has said he will repair U.S. relations with the "rest of the world," as if opposing countries such as Germany, France, Russia and a few radical Islamic states in the Middle East somehow constitute opposition from the "rest of the world."

Now that al-Qaeda has perpetrated train bombings that killed more than 200 people to break the will of Spain to support the U.S. effort in Iraq, foreign-policy observers of all stripes speculate that al-Qaeda might try to test the resolve of other members of the coalition. And some on the left seem almost gleeful about the prospect of other nations being intimidated. "The White House has been loath to acknowledge that Spain may have been targeted because former prime minister Jose Maria Aznar was a strong supporter of [President George W.] Bush's war policy and had sent 1,300 troops to Iraq," wrote veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas in her column. "So it's hardly a safer world." Former Vermont governor Howard Dean, in announcing a new political-action group, directly blamed Bush for the deaths in Madrid because he "dragged our troops to Iraq, which apparently has been a factor in the death of 200 Spaniards." In sixties-era language, former Los Angeles Times correspondent Robert Scheer cheered Spaniards for voting "to break with American diktat." Spain's "craven leaders," the former New Left radical wrote, "were brow-beaten by Bush to ignore their own constituents and instead join the farcically named 'coalition of the willing.'" Hoping for other defeats of pro-American governments, Scheer opined, "The Spanish people, like most of the world, knew all along that Bush's policy of pre-emptive war against Iraq ... was all wrong."

But a few days after Scheer wrote that column, the people of El Salvador proved not to fit the neo-sixties definition of "most of the world." El Salvador had sent hundreds of troops to Iraq, and the leftist opposition candidate exploited it for all it was worth. The result: Tony Saca, a supporter of the war in Iraq and a leader of what the Washington Post calls a "fervently pro-American party," won 57 percent of the vote in the March 21 election. The leftist received just 36 percent.

"There is a tendency to overestimate the degree to which the rest of the world is opposed to America and American foreign policy, and elections like the Salvadoran election help to correct that misimpression," Ramesh Ponnuru, senior editor of the conservative National Review, tells Insight. "It does seem there has been a double standard, where the impulse is to denigrate our allies and to dismiss their contribution and their reasons for making the contribution."

For instance, in addition to the assertion by Scheer and other radical Democrats that U.S. allies were "brow-beaten," it also is said that these nations are merely acting in their economic interests to obtain trade deals, foreign aid and a piece of the reconstruction pie. Economic motives always play some part in foreign policy, but this is even more true of the foreign policies of opponents of the war such as France and Russia, foreign-policy insiders say. Rather than being brave and independent, as they often were portrayed in the liberal media, "These countries, for their own reasons, were for weakening U.N. sanctions [against Saddam Hussein's Iraq] because they wanted access to a country that has the second-largest proven reserves of oil in the world," says John Hulsman, research fellow in European affairs at the conservative Heritage Foundation. "They can't be more hypocritical, and it's breathtaking that they've gotten away with it."

Meanwhile, the United States is being seen as having more in common with the countries in the coalition forces than economic ties. They seem to have similar histories involving struggle for liberty against tyranny and terrorism, as among the former Soviet republics and satellites. Also, Ponnuru has written that, in the case of Great Britain and Australia, the war in Iraq may portend a future of even stronger ties among the English-speaking peoples of the world, which he calls the "Anglosphere."

But even though the ties are stronger than claimed by the Kerry campaign and reported by the anti-Bush press, there still is much that can be done, both Hulsman and Ponnuru say. In reconstruction contracts, for instance, Hulsman says, the emphasis should not be on exclusion of countries that were against the United States but on rewards for tested friends who joined with America's forces to support shared values and resist the continuing threat of terrorism.