Buchanan Calls Upon Americans To Support Administration's Approach to War
Pat Buchanan wrote an editorial in USA Today earlier this week which calls upon all Americans to support the Administration's effort to build a coalition to fight terrorism.
The editorial points out an open letter, signed by 41 foreign policy scholars-- a group that Buchanan refers to as "the entire neo-conservative establishment". He says that the letter asks President Bush to "target Hezbollah for destruction and retaliate against Syria and Iran if they refuse to cut all ties to Hezbollah and move militarily to overthrow Iraq's Saddam Hussein. Failure to attack Iraq, the neocons warn Bush, 'will constitute an early and perhaps decisive surrender in the war on international terrorism.'"
Buchanan says that early attacks on Hezbollah, Iraq, Syria, and Iran would cause the war to "metastasize into a two-continent war from Algeria to Afghanistan, with the United States and Israel alone against a half-dozen Arab and Muslim states." He argues that this is precisely the war that bin Laden's forces had been trying to foment with their recent attacks.
It's hard to know whether his conclusions about the result of pursuing a hard-line agenda with respect to the war are the right ones. We also have to keep in mind Buchanan's animosity toward Israel and its interests in the past. But, in the end, Buchanan argues for a moderate approach to the prosecution of the war (at least initially) and support of the Bush Administration. In this we agree.