Lessons from the Left

(graphic from Blackfive)

Rosa Brooks is a law professor, la times columnist and consultant to the Open Society Institute founded by wacky lefty George Soros. Today Brooks has some foreign policy lessons for the US government.

Lesson One: Although there's a time and place for military force, technological military superiority is no guarantee of success. In Iraq, military superiority is no match for a determined foe on fire with religious or nationalist zeal. [It seems that Ms Brooks thinks we’ve lost or are losing the war in Iraq.]

Lesson Two: If you can't defeat your enemy militarily, you need to take away his motivation to fight. But you don't have to love your enemy to recognize the benefits of talking to him and taking his concerns seriously. [blah, blah, blah -- Make talk not war.]

Lesson Three: Imperfect solutions are better than none at all. Condoleezza Rice thinks a cease-fire in Lebanon would be premature because it wouldn't resolve the conflict's "root causes." It's sweet that she's so interested in root causes, but sometimes you've got to start small. [Isn’t it charming when feminists like Brooks condescend to superior women who don’t share their lefty views?]

Lesson Four: If we want to build a safer long-term future, we need to start giving those root causes more than lip service. It means revamping U.S. foreign policy to dramatically increase our focus on foreign aid, disaster relief, conflict prevention, humanitarian interventions, peacekeeping, reconstruction, economic development, public health and environmental challenges, …. [mo money!! -- but not for Israel -- give it to the UN.]

Got it?? Rosa’s four point plan to make us safe: (1) Stop the war in Iraq. (2) Talk to al Qaida and Hezbollah. (3) Stop the war in Lebanon too. (4) Give lots of money to terrorists and everybody else in the undeveloped world. Let’s examine the lefty plan point by point.

Brooks advises us to stop the war in Iraq because we can’t win. She overlooks the obvious fact that the US military already won the war against the Iraqi military – it was a cake walk. We also brought the country together for national elections and helped the Iraqis create a constitution and a government.

What’s left is an insurgency that we are helping to put down. It's not easy since terrorists hide among civilians. Some day the terror cells in America may begin wreaking havoc, but the last thing we’d do is give up. Right, Rosa??

Brooks thinks that talking with al Qaida is the key to peace. Talking with Hitler (Stalin, Mao, Ho) worked so well. Appeasement has never worked and it never will. But lefties, like maniacs, keep trying the same old things expecting different outcomes.

Brooks thinks that talking with Hezbollah (and Hamas) is the key to peace in Lebanon (and Palestine). Yasser Arafat was a good talker, for a murderer. Are you seeing a trend here?

Finally, (and this one is my favorite) Rosa figures the key to the benefits program is to give the bad guys, and the poor everywhere, money, lots of money. Apparently the aid we gave for tsunami relief, drugs and money for AIDS prevention, food for the starving, and on and on is not nearly enough.

Surely, if we offer money to Osama bin Laden, a multimillionaire, he will suddenly begin singing Kumbaya and hugging his sworn enemies. (That includes you, Rosa.) Israel’s existence? –- no problem. Sure.

Rosa should go back to school and leave foreign policy to Condi and the grownups.