by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
Private Papers<\/em><\/p>\n A shorter version of this was syndicated by Tribune Media Services.<\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n T<\/span>he symbolism of the recent heated exchange between Senator Boxer and Secretary-of-State Rice was telling. For hours on end, speaking without notes, a proud, poised African-American professional woman from Birmingham, Alabama parried withering cross-examination from a succession of liberal senators angry over the war.<\/p>\n Boxer, the Bay Area\u2019s premier progressive and crankiest of the questioners, has had a history of defining political disagreements in terms of personal partisanship, of us-versus-them rather than of mere opposing ideas. The senator once went after erstwhile rival Bruce Herschensohn, Senator Packwood, and Clarence Thomas for their purported sexual insensitivities\u2014but urged forgiveness for President Clinton\u2019s more egregiously inappropriate conduct, whose preemptive bombing of Milosevic she supported despite the absence of either Senate or UN approval.<\/p>\n The climax of her latest attack on Condoleezza Rice came when Boxer alleged that Rice had misled about weapons of mass destruction, the supposed\u00a0casus belli<\/i>\u00a0of the Iraq war, even though Rice had explained that there was a variety of reasons\u2014\u201cthe total picture\u201d\u2014that led to the decision to depose Saddam.<\/p>\n Boxer protested, \u201cWell you should read what we voted on when we voted to support the war,\u201d noting proudly that she was among the minority of senators who had dissented. Then Boxer proclaimed of the professed reason to go to war: \u201cIt was WMD period<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n Boxer\u2019s statement was simply not true. Read the joint congressional declaration that was approved on October 11, 2002 by Senator Boxer\u2019s colleagues, whose leaders had access to the same intelligence as did the administration. Yes, the threat of WMD was an integral part of the Senate\u2019s worry\u2014a danger dubbed \u201creal\u201d by Democratic Senator Kerry and \u201cgrowing\u201d by Senator Daschle, but perhaps summed up best by Senator Clinton herself when she warned that \u201cIf left unchecked Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare.\u201d<\/p>\n But the declaration to approve the use of force against Saddam was hardly about \u201cWMD period\u201d. Instead, the resolution listed a litany of 23 other grievances : violations of the 1991 armistice accords; brutal repression of the Iraqi people; failure to inform about missing Kuwaitis; the 1993 attempted assassination of former President Bush; firing on American forces in the no-fly zone; harboring of terrorists in Iraq; the presence of al Qaeda in Iraq\u00a0(\u201cWhereas members of al Qaeda, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens, and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq);<\/i>\u00a0and violation of UN inspection protocols.<\/p>\n Reflect for a moment. The first African-American woman to be nominated as Secretary-of -State was called a veritable liar on global television by Senator Boxer, with the sort of withering invective that was never unleashed against Madeline Albright, Warren Christopher, or any recent previous nominee for Secretary-of-State of the past century\u2014or Boxer\u2019s own colleagues who drafted and passed the resolution for war. Yet while Rice was calm for hours and relied on her ample memory, Boxer was abrasive in her few minutes of prepared attack and misled despite her voluminous notes.<\/p>\n This is all haywire. According to the 1950s Democratic mythology that we all grew up with, the stereotypical aggressor in such an unfair exchange should have been a senior Southern reactionary male, replete with drawl and barely contained racist anger, who ambushes the upstart and distorts the record in an act of name-calling\u2014before hitting the airwaves to besmirch her further and, finally, to cut and paste the exchange into crass political ads to raise money for his own entrenched sinecure.<\/p>\n What in the world has happened to us?<\/p>\n Democratic idealism that once alone gave the nation its needed social safety net, civil rights legislation, and environmental protection is becoming ossified and in danger of ensuring a permanent party of strident second-guessing and deductive furor at the loss of almost all political power. A majority of the state legislatures and governorships is lost. The Senate is lost. The House is lost. The Presidency is lost\u2014the Supreme Court almost. Whether Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, or Alberto Gonzales, \u2018minorities\u2019 no longer have any need of liberal gate-keepers\u2014or of a particular patron like Barbara Boxer.<\/p>\n The former idealists and reformers have become backward-looking. Like most reactionaries whose comfortable world is vanishing, they are frustrated, looking for scapegoats\u2014and acting very, very bizarrely. Thus for a sober documentarian Edward R. Murrow, we now get the conspiracist Michael Moore who praised the terrorists who kill voters in Iraq as \u201cMinutemen.\u201d Instead of JFK\u2019s muscular idealism, we see a Ted Kennedy hours before the historic elections in Iraq screaming to withdraw American troops. And in place of a crusading Hubert Humphrey, we now endure Barbara Boxer endlessly on television not to apologize, but to recycle the boorishness of her earlier distortions against Condoleezza Rice.<\/p>\n This is all so sad.<\/p>\n \u00a92005 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson Private Papers A shorter version of this was syndicated by Tribune Media Services. The symbolism of the recent heated exchange between Senator Boxer and Secretary-of-State Rice was telling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[793],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1ay","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4154,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/amoral-euphemism\/","url_meta":{"origin":4498,"position":0},"title":"Amoral Euphemism","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 27, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Is \"outsourcing\" multilateralism? by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Senator John Kerry has recently opined, \u201cWhy hasn't Osama Bin Laden been captured or killed, and how will he be destroyed before he next appears on tape to spread his disgusting message?\u201d Then the senator argued that bin Laden lives\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "January 2006"","block_context":{"text":"January 2006","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2006\/january-2006\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4305,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-strange-metamorphosis-of-senator-clinton\/","url_meta":{"origin":4498,"position":1},"title":"The Strange Metamorphosis of Senator Clinton","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 8, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services \"I am, you know, adamantly against illegal immigrants.\" Who recently blurted that out? Pat Buchanan? Congressman Tom Tancredo? Nope, it was Hillary Clinton. Which Democratic senator has expressed little public remorse in voting for 23 counts to authorize war against Iraq, and has\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "August 2005"","block_context":{"text":"August 2005","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2005\/august-2005\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2545,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-libya-venture-and-double-standards\/","url_meta":{"origin":4498,"position":2},"title":"Obama’s Libya Venture and Double Standards","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 10, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine The champion of shameless chutzpah has always been the guy who murders his parents then throws himself on the mercy of the court because he\u2019s an orphan. But White House spokesman Jay Carney might be the new champ, given his response to the House\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Libya"","block_context":{"text":"Libya","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/libya\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7030,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-outdated-business-model-of-diversity-inc\/","url_meta":{"origin":4498,"position":3},"title":"The Outdated Business Model of Diversity, Inc.","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 20, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"In today's divided society, universities would be wise to stress unity and academic rigor. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online\u00a0 Diversity has become corporatized on American campuses, with scores of bureaucrats and administrators accentuating different pedigrees and ancestries. That\u2019s odd, because diversity \u00a0no longer means \u201cvariety\u201d or \u201cpoints of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Education"","block_context":{"text":"Education","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/education\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/600px-Education_-_Red_Grad_Hat-300x300.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5999,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/flat-earth-democrats\/","url_meta":{"origin":4498,"position":4},"title":"Flat-Earth Democrats","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 28, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine The victims of the tornado that hit Moore Oklahoma had not even been counted when Democrat politicians made fools of themselves by trying to link the disaster to global warming and Republicans. California Senator Barbara Boxer said, \u201cThis is climate change. We were warned\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Global Warming"","block_context":{"text":"Global Warming","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/global-warming-2\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1511,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-new-take-on-partisanship\/","url_meta":{"origin":4498,"position":5},"title":"Obama’s New Take on Partisanship","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 9, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online One of President Obama\u2019s strangest complaints is that there are too many in Congress who act, well, like former senator Obama. In his recent speech on the question of comprehensive immigration reform, President Obama once again blasted Republican political opportunism that opposes his\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "July 2010"","block_context":{"text":"July 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/july-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4498"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4498"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4498\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4499,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4498\/revisions\/4499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}