Salute to Jeane Kirkpatrick
Jeane Kirkpatrick delivered one of the most stinging, on-target speeches I've ever heard, at the 1984 Republican National Convention where Ronald Reagan was nominated for a second term as president.
The tough-as-nails U.S. envoy to the United Nations ripped the "blame America first" attitude of the "San Francisco Democrats."
San Francisco was the site of the convention where Walter Mondale accepted his party's presidential nomination.
The most important challenge of the day was the Cold War confrontation with the Soviet Union. Kirkpatrick, herself a lifelong Democrat, observed that the San Francisco Democrats had abandoned the resolve of earlier leaders, like Truman and Kennedy, to become ardent opponents of Reagan's peace-through-strength approach.
The Soviets aggressively expanded their influence in Asia, Africa and Central America from 1975 until 1981, with little response from the United States, Kirkpatrick noted. Setbacks were always met with a "blame America first" resignation. As the Reagan administration sought to push back, Democrats resisted.
Those San Francisco Democrats were on the wrong side of history. Standing up to the Soviet Union and declaring the importance of freedom in the world, as Truman and Kennedy did, and as Reagan continued, ultimately achieved Cold War victory with the collapse of the "Evil Empire," in Reagan's aptly coined phrase.
Rarely have the contrasting foreign policies of two political parties been spelled out as dramatically, succinctly and correctly as in Kirkpatrick's convention speech. (It wasn't Churchillian, but what could be?)
Jeane Kirkpatrick was a great Cold Warrior, whose fiery contribution to Reagan's landslide re-election will be long remembered.
Comments (6)
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Doug,
1975-1981 expansion of Soviet influence with little response from the U.S. And, also, the Iranian "students" taking over our embassy and holding our diplomats and citizens hostage for 444 days. Now, who was president during those years? Oh, yes. A peanut farmer from Georgia, as I recall. And, he is still running around the world telling everyone to "blame America first". He needs to go back and do what he does best..build homes for people.
By the way, pictures published at that time clearly show that one of the "student" leaders was Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Posted on December 9, 2006 6:01 PM
I recommend Mark Bowden's "Guests of the Ayatollah." It's a well-written, detailed account of those 444 days.
Posted on December 9, 2006 6:25 PM
Doug,
And, Baker and Hamilton think that we should waste out time going to talk to Mahmoud? I'm sure that will be as productive as Carter's attepts to free our 444 hostages. Ehen are Americans going to realize the great dangers that lie in Iran to our national interests.
Posted on December 10, 2006 12:08 AM
Oh, I'm sure a dialogue with Ahmadinejad would be productive:
U.S.: "What can we do to make you happy?"
Ahmadinejad: "Die."
Posted on December 11, 2006 12:43 AM
Actually, US intelligence did announce shortly after Ahmadinejad took power that the picture was not of him. As for Iran, that is one case where blame America first makes a lot of sense. When you overthrow a democratic government and put in and strongly support an absolute monarch whose government was consistently ranked the most repressive in the world by Amnesty International, you're going to make people angry. The response was wrong and horrible, but if any government deserved to be overthrown, it was the shah's. As bad as Iran is now, the people of Iran themselves are better off now than they were before the revolution. Unfortunately the current regime also has an aggressive and dangerous foreign policy.
And during the Reagan years, what did we do? We helped Saddam in his aggressive war against them in which he gassed the Iranians and his own people, at the same time secretly selling weapons to Iran. You think helping Saddam build his military was a good idea? I honestly can't see how Reagan's handling of Iran was better than Carter's.
Reagan's aggressive policies caused a lot of problems we're still dealing with today. He talked about the importance of freedom while supporting dictatorships just because they didn't like communists. It's possible his policies hastened the collapse of the Soviet Union, but probably not by much. Soviet policy doomed itself. As for the "San Francisco liberal" phrase which is still thrown around today, isn't that a bit ridiculous? Is it ok for Republicans to just denounce the population of a whole city as degenerates? What kind of uproar would there have been if John Kerry has rolled his eyes at "Alabama conservatives?"
As far as dialogue with Iran, I don't think they want to talk to Ahmadinejad. He doesn't have that much power there. And also remember, Reagan talked a lot with the Soviet Union. Of course, we may as well not talk to Iran since we have the Iraq situation so well under control and everything.
Posted on December 12, 2006 3:07 AM
The U.S. did support the shah from the '50s until his ouster. It was a Cold War strategy, as his Iran provided a bulwark against possible Soviet expansion to the Persian Gulf. He should have been pressured to curb his excesses, although he was trying to keep a lid on the rise of Islamic extremism in his country. He obviously failed. Carter didn't really oppose the revolution in Iran. The embassy takeover was more a result of an internal power struggle in Iran between secularists and Islamic fundamentalists. The latter group won. Were Iranians better off? Not judging by the number of executions of people who would not conform to morality of the new Islamic regime. The Iranian revolutions turned out to be as bloody as the French revolution and, in total, has been more repressive than the shah's regime. Neither was he developing nuclear weapons and threatening to wipe Israel off the map.
Posted on December 12, 2006 8:41 AM