ANOTHER VOICE
Some reasons for wanting a Democrat victory
AUBERON WAUGH
Whenever the Democrat Convention in New York came up in conversation last week, it would have been hard to exagger- ate the lack of interest it generated. Since the disappearance of the appalling H. Ross Perot, the same is true of the entire presi- dential election. Practically nobody seems to have read Charles Moore's excellently funny report in the Telegraph, describing a speech by the Reverend Jesse Jackson at the Convention:
With trembling hands and husky voice, he reminded us that Jesus was the child of a sin- gle mother, declaring that Vice President Dan Quayle was the Herod of his day. If Mary had 'decided not to have the baby', he went on, the Republicans would have called her immoral. The crowd roared and whistled its approval.
This crowd was not made up of drunken football fans or dope-crazed charismatics. It was a national convention of delegates from the party which controls half the gov- ernment of the most powerful nation on earth and might, after the presidential elec- tion, control all of it. These people were prepared to cheer and whistle a Christian minister who condemned the Republicans for refusing to abort Jesus Christ.
All of which might do no more than con- firm what I have frequently pointed out, that it is impossible to exaggerate the igno- rance, stupidity or wrong-headedness of large, influential and reputedly intelligent sections of the American public. It is that familiar proposition which I would like to relate to the fact that the United States is now the only super-power on earth. There can be little doubt that Governor Clinton, at the head of these prancing buffoons who proclaim the Virgin Mary's right to an abortion as a single mother, would cause as much catastrophe on the home front as President Carter achieved in foreign affairs. The question we must ask ourselves is whether, since the collapse and disman- tling of the evil empire, this might not be rather a good thing. Do we really want a single super-power able to impose its will, even under the mild and benign eye of President Bush? In other words, should we welcome Clinton and his buffoons as the best way of removing the United States from a world scene which has no further need of it?
This may seem an ungrateful response to the country which saved Western civilisa- tion from Marxism, as well as saving Europe from Hitler. It is not one which I would entertain for a moment if I were not seriously alarmed at the spectacle of the present administration throwing its weight around internationally in support of its domestic drug enforcement policy. I do not suppose that Governor Clinton would send flotillas of aircraft carriers to save the whale, or pack Antarctica with dry ice to obstruct global warming. In fact Clinton's arrival would herald America's withdrawal from the world scene, and that is something which most Americans, as well as many Europeans and all civilised Englishmen, would very much like to see.
Since the removal of the Soviet threat, prosperous American society has had only the terror of its own criminal classes blacks, Hispanics and poor white trash to contend with. These fears are not groundless, as US figures for violent rob- bery, rape, riot and murder testify. Since a very large proportion of these violent crimes are drug-related, nothing in US for- eign or domestic policy now has higher pri- ority than the drugs problem.
The government of the United States has decided that the only way to counter the drugs menace is to cut off supply. Such a programme involves surveillance of the whole world to inhibit production, as well as domestic surveillance to inhibit supply. .Obviously such a programme is doomed. As I never tire of pointing out, neither prison walls and barbed wire, nor flood- lights and 24-hour surveillance can keep drugs out of Wormwood Scrubs. What pos- sible chance is there of keeping them out of the United States of America with its 8,500- odd miles of land and sea frontier? All that can possibly be achieved is to reduce sup- ply, increase prices and profits and make it necessary to mug three law-abiding citi- zens, instead of one, for a single fix.
The commonsense response to America's problems of race, history and survival is some variant on freeing the market in these addictive and ultimately lethal drugs — no doubt with appropriate health warnings on every packet. Such a policy may or may not be accompanied by a programme of public education their dangers, but even such a fatuous and money-wasting proposal as that would not begin to absorb the gigantic resources at present deployed in the in- effective suppression of the drug trade.
There are three main reasons why no American government will take this neces- sary step: the first is to be found in the vari- ous lobbies against it; the second in the nat- ural desire of all governments to extend their powers, whereas this measure would mark an abdication of power; the third in the fact that the American public is too unintelligent to see the only long-term solu- tion to its problems.
So instead, America's Drug Enforcement Agency and other agencies wage their pri- vate war against drug producers and traders in other sovereign countries. It involves, we learn, defoliation, satellite supervision, illegal overflights, interdiction of air space and piracy on the high seas. All this is justified by the fact that the Ameri- cans think they are in the right, just as Mrs Thatcher thought she had a right to shoot suspected IRA terrorists in Gibraltar and the Israelis thought they had a right to kid- nap and execute Adolf Eichmann in 1960.
In April 1990 a Mexican doctor, Alvarez Machain, suspected of involvement in the murder of a DEA agent in Mexico, was kid- napped from his office in Mexico City and taken in a private plane to El Paso, Texas, where DEA agents awaited him. Mexico vigorously protested against this kidnap- ping, pointing out that there was an extra- dition treaty between the two countries requiring that a Mexican accused of a crime against another Mexican in Mexico should be tried in Mexico. A month ago, the US Supreme Court threw out this submission: the 'hot pursuit' of suspected criminals overrides international law or treaty obliga- tions.
As soon as the US Supreme Court pub- lished this judgment, the rest of the world should have taken note to treat America as in partibus infidelium, an international hooligan or pariah like Iraq or Libya. It simply will not do to have such a country running the world unchallenged. Some will yearn for the good old days of the evil empire. Rather than bring it back, let them bring back Jimmy Carter or the equivalent. Governor Clinton and his curious circus of abortion freaks are the answer.
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