A wide variety of conservative blogs are all atwitter today about a WSJ op-ed from Ion Mihair Pacepa, described as the “highest-ranking intelligence official ever to have defected from the Soviet bloc.” Pacepa argues that America’s standing in the world is in decline, and enemies of the U.S. are emboldened, not because of Bush’s tragic failures, but because some of us point out Bush’s tragic failures.
As the WSJ editors put it, “Take it from this old KGB hand: The left is abetting America’s enemies with its intemperate attacks on President Bush.”
During last week’s two-day summit, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown thanked President Bush for leading the global war on terror. Mr. Brown acknowledged “the debt the world owes to the U.S. for its leadership in this fight against international terrorism” and vowed to follow Winston Churchill’s lead and make Britain’s ties with America even stronger.
Mr. Brown’s statements elicited anger from many of Mr. Bush’s domestic detractors, who claim the president concocted the war on terror for personal gain. But as someone who escaped from communist Romania — with two death sentences on his head — in order to become a citizen of this great country, I have a hard time understanding why some of our top political leaders can dare in a time of war to call our commander in chief a “liar,” a “deceiver” and a “fraud.”
I spent decades scrutinizing the U.S. from Europe, and I learned that international respect for America is directly proportional to America’s own respect for its president.
I suppose it depends on what you mean by “proportional.” If an American president pursues a reckless and misguided policy agenda, he (or someday she) will naturally lose the respect of the electorate and suffer in the eyes of the international community.
But that, of course, isn’t Pacepa’s argument. He sees a causal connection here — Americans’ disapproval of Bush necessarily triggers foreign contempt and undermines the nation’s interests. It’s a rather silly argument.
Indeed, Pacepa goes so far as to compare Democrats’ work to Cold War communists’ efforts.
Sowing the seeds of anti-Americanism by discrediting the American president was one of the main tasks of the Soviet-bloc intelligence community during the years I worked at its top levels. […]
The European leftists, like any totalitarians, needed a tangible enemy, and we gave them one. In no time they began beating their drums decrying President Truman as the “butcher of Hiroshima.” We went on to spend many years and many billions of dollars disparaging subsequent presidents: Eisenhower as a war-mongering “shark” run by the military-industrial complex, Johnson as a mafia boss who had bumped off his predecessor, Nixon as a petty tyrant, Ford as a dimwitted football player and Jimmy Carter as a bumbling peanut farmer. […]
Unfortunately, partisans today have taken a page from the old Soviet playbook.
It’s disconcerting that so many conservatives find this persuasive. By Pacepa’s logic, if Americans continued to hold Bush in high regard, no matter how often he screwed up, the U.S. would stand stronger on the international stage. Leadership and wisdom matter far less, the argument goes, than our willingness to criticize a leader who fails.
The motivation here isn’t complicated: conservatives who smeared Bill Clinton as a murdering drug-dealing rapist believe Democrats have been far too shrill in pointing out Bush’s mistakes. Worse, because some of us have the audacity to talk about these mistakes, we’re aiding and abetting America’s enemies.
To buy into this is simply (and profoundly) un-American. Its intent is to stifle dissent and glorify a leader without cause.