THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

AN AWFUL MAN IS CAPTURED, AND AWFUL PEOPLE CARE | 2003-12-27

The capture of Saddam Hussein will allow the Bush Administration to put more men in uniform in Iraq. Our own borders remain wide open. Congress just agreed to give the Iraqis more billions of our dollars.

If Hussein hadn't been captured, liberals would have had another weapon in their struggle to turn over American policy to the United Nations. Leftists used our failure to catch Saddam to prove that France was right. They call it "cooperating with our Allies," but it means France.

Liberals love the France that gave Parisian citizenship to the American cop-killer.

Nothing a decent American could care about is being dealt with in Iraq. Capturing Saddam disappointed the French and their kind. The United Nations was hurt by the capture. Liberals hate any American success. That was the nice thing about Saddam's capture.

Now let's talk about something that matters.

Saddam's capture just demonstrates again that America is very, very powerful. The critical question is not who controls Iraq, but who controls America. The evil people in America fight each other over who controls Iraq.

We must keep our eye on the real goal. We must defeat both the neoconservatives in the White House who want to use America for things like controlling the Middle East AND we must defeat the leftists.

This will not be done by frantic e-mails about the Ten Commandments or Saddam or Bush or whatever other issue is the big fad of the moment.