Arianna has an opinion…"So what?!"
By Frank Salvato
web posted September 18, 2006
Recently, Arianna Huffington, one of the few people in our country to shift from conservatism to liberalism, appeared on FOX News Channel's The O'Reilly Factor. Mr. O'Reilly invited Ms. Huffington on his show because he has been searching for anyone on the left side of the aisle who has a plan for winning the war against radical Islamofascism beyond just criticizing the Bush Administration. But a much larger rhetorical door to the Liberal-Left's soul was opened during the interview, a door that exposed their current approach to just about everything political in nature; "So what?!"
I have pointed out for years that the number one reason given for going to war in Iraq was Saddam Hussein's penchant for committing human rights violations against his own people. Aside from the much ignored genocide of the Iraqi Kurds, Saddam Hussein's regime routinely subjected the Iraqi people to arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, summary execution and torture by beating and burning, electric shock, starvation, mutilation and rape. Wives were raped and abused in front of their husbands and children were injured and killed in the presence of their parents. These are not allegations, they are facts and there is ample film and first-hand testimony to prove it.
These true atrocities – not trumped-up atrocities like putting underwear on a terrorist's head or playing loud rock music while making a terrorist stand up for hours – led to UN Security Council Resolution 688, demanding that Hussein cease the oppression of the Iraqi people. He instantly ignored and continued to ignore the UN demands until the moment he was pulled from his less than presidential spider hole.
There was a time in the not too distant past when Liberals in the United States would have been calling for definitive action against such inhumanity. Groups like Human Rights Watch would have petitioned our government and the United Nations to act against the human rights violations committed against the ethnic minorities under Hussein's regime. N.O.W. would have vigorously denounced the oppression of women under Sharia Law. Gay rights groups would have spotlighted homosexuals throughout the Middle East who were routinely executed for their sexual preferences. Religious leaders of all faiths, sans Islam, would have called for religious tolerance in a land where there was little. Greenpeace would have mobilized in an effort to protest Hussein's torching of oil wells upon his exit from Kuwait, an environmental disaster of gargantuan proportions.
Yes, there was a time when all of this would have been coming out of the Democratic Party, from the Liberal-Left, the Progressive-Left. Today the opposite is true. While many Conservatives struggle against the ever-increasing vitriol of the anti-war movement and one-sided reporting of the mainstream media, the fact remains, it is the Conservative base in the United States that is resolute to making the sacrifices needed to make the world not only a better place for all people, but a safer place for everyone.
Which leads me back to the O'Reilly-Huffington interview.
O'Reilly played a commercial currently being aired on the FOX News Channel produced by the government of Iraqi Kurdistan. In essence, it is a thirty-second thank you card from the people the United States saved from Saddam Hussein's "final solution." After the commercial was played O'Reilly asked Huffington whether or not saving all of these people was worth it. Huffington's response, "So what?!" She went on to say that the job of our government is to protect our nation, our borders and our people, the oppressed people of the world be damned.
Ironically, this wasn't the position of the Liberal-Left, the Progressive-Left, when the US acted militarily in Kosovo or Somalia or Haiti under the Clinton Administration. In fact, it was quite the opposite. While Clinton acted as Commander in Chief the United States was the great protector much like Superman. The current detractors and nags saw those missions, which used real bombs and real bullets and cost the US real lives, as noble because the corrupt UN sanctioned them as humanitarian action against despotic regimes.
Then, while a Democratic president sat in the oval office, the use of military force to combat human rights violations was correct. Today, under an administration from across the aisle, the Progressive-Left says, "So what?!," as they paint a strategy that promotes the spreading of democracy and freedom across a region rife with totalitarian regimes as "blood for oil" while blatantly and opportunistically ignoring the first three reasons for liberating the Iraqi people – the oppression and genocide of the Iraqi people, the failure of Saddam Hussein to relinquish prisoners of war including an American pilot and the demand that Iraq renounce all involvement with terrorism, and permit no terrorist organizations to operate in Iraq – while solely focusing on the fourth: WMD.
It is abundantly clear that the Progressive-Left is interested in one thing and one thing only: the acquisition of power. The two-facedness of their actions and positions from administration to administration proves this beyond a shadow of a doubt, as does their reckless disregard for their destruction of a political party.
Not unlike termites and cockroaches that infest old houses, eating away at the infrastructure while spreading disease and lowering the property value, the Fifth Column has infested the Democratic Party, eating away at its infrastructure, spreading the disease of intolerance and devaluing the party's tenets to the point where they are in danger of losing their "collective soul." In a predominantly two-party political system this is catastrophic.
Our political system stands at the crossroads of crisis. The acquisition of power and the gamesmanship of politics have trumped good government at just about every level. For the American people to sit passively by as this happens is to ignore our constitutional obligation of civic responsibility.
Those of a rational mind within the Democratic Party cannot afford to say, "So what?!" They must act, and act fast, to preserve what is left of a once great political party; a political party that at one time stood for battling the self-righteous tyranny of evil wherever it existed. And the Republicans must help their opposition party in political discourse instead of hoping for their demise. For it is only in a healthy political atmosphere of reasoned and civil debate that our country can divine the correct path for our future. That doesn't include saying, "So what?!" 
Frank Salvato is the managing editor for The New Media Journal. He serves at the Executive Director of the Basics Project, a non-profit, non-partisan, 501(C)(3) research and education initiative. His pieces are regularly featured in over 100 publications both nationally and internationally. He has appeared on The O'Reilly Factor, and is a regular guest on The Right Balance with Greg Allen on the Accent Radio Network, as well as an occasional guest on numerous radio shows coast to coast. He recently partnered in producing the first-ever symposium on the threat of radical Islamist terrorism in Washington, DC. His pieces have been recognized by the House International Relations Committee and the Japan Center for Conflict. He can be contacted at oped@newmediajournal.us. Copyright © 2006 Frank Salvato