“The greatest risk now lies in inaction. The history of the last century showed us clearly what the price of paralysis can be. The public debate over Iraq policy must continue. But the readiness to act, once the time is ripe, should not fade away.” – Ehud Barak, in the New York Times today. Now let’s get on with it.
BLAIR’S THATCHER MOMENT: I’m awe-struck by Tony Blair’s impassioned defense of president Bush and the need to tackle Iraq yesterday. When his own party is gripped by anti-American bigotry and the tabloid media have fueled irresponsible hatred of president Bush, Blair showed real guts by coming out swinging in defense of American action. He described some of the criticism of America as “wrong, misguided and dangerous. I also think that some of the criticism of George Bush is just a parody. The person that I know and work with operates on these security issues in a calm and sensible and measured way.” He went on: “Some of the talk about this in the past few weeks I have to say has astonished me. You would think that we’re dealing with some benign little democracy out in Iraq.” Exactly. “Was Sept. 11 a threat to British national security or not?” he said. “My answer to that is yes. It wasn’t just a threat to America – they can perfectly easily have done it in London or Berlin or Paris or anywhere. And therefore it’s right that we respond to it together. If Britain and if Europe want to be taken seriously as people facing up to these issues do, then our place is facing them with America – in partnership, but with America.” With this speech, Blair ranks for the first time with Margaret Thatcher, a leader who, on the most important issue of the day, manages to take a moral, clear and brave stand. I repeat: Now let’s get on with it.
SCOWCROFT AWARD NOMINEE: Readers may remember how last October and November, large numbers of pundits, analysts and experts both opposed the war in Afghanistan and confidently predicted its failure. Undeterred by their failures last time around, some of the same people are now opposing a war against Iraq. It seems to me a public service to remind readers of some of these people’s records. Brent Scowcroft, one recalls, opposed the war in Afghanistan and was a loyal fan of murderous tyrants in Moscow and Bosnia and Beijing throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Yet few major media outlets cited these failures of judgment in anointing Scowcroft as a serious commentator on our current predicament. Readers are therefore invited to send in examples of some commentators’ opposition to the war last year juxtaposed with their current deliberations. Our first nominee is a mild, but telling, one. It’s from New York Times columnist, Frank Rich. Last November 10, he saw the declining popularity of the war in Afghanistan as a sign it might fail:
“Like politicians’ assertions that terrorism at home can be deflected by cheap fixes and oratorical optimism, disingenuous official claims of our allies’ strengths and our enemies’ weaknesses will come back to haunt the administration if all does not go smoothly. Already a Newsweek poll shows that only 56 percent of the country believes ‘the war in Afghanistan is going as well as American officials say.'”
Here’s a passage from his most recent column accusing the president of cynically inventing a new war against Iraq to shore up his domestic political standing:
“‘An all-out attack on Iraq will entail a level of risk and sacrifice that the U.S. has not assumed since Vietnam,’ wrote the author of “Black Hawk Down,” the combat journalist Mark Bowden, this week. As this reality sinks in, support for war with Iraq is falling – from 70 percent last fall to 51 percent now, according to the new Time/CNN poll. A Washington Post/ABC News poll shows that only 40 percent would approve if there are ground troops and significant American casualties.”
If you find any other strange parallels between pundits against the war in Afghanistan and those against the war against Iraq today, please send them in under the “Scowcroft Award” heading. (Special mention will go to Vietnam analogies. And don’t pick on Colin Powell. It’s too easy.)
THE CONTINUING RISK: Don’t miss Mike Crowley’s typically superb overview of our remaining vulnerability to weapons of mass destruction from routes other than Iraq. It’s a damning piece about the Bush administration’s lack of real progress in tracking down porous nuclear plants around the world, plants that are tempting targets for al Qaeda and others. Be afraid.
SOUTHERN HYPER-LIBS: Thanks for the input. How could we have forgotten Bill Moyers? Then there’s Bill Kovach, Tom Wicker, and, of course, Dan Rather and James Carville. To be fair to them, they may be reacting in part to Northern prejudice. As one reader opined,
In any lefty circle, being a white Southerner is perceived as a huge character fault, regardless of that Southerner’s ideologies. Lefties hear a Southern accent and cringe. So to earn points with colleagues in notoriously left-leaning newsrooms, Southerners overcompensate for the flaw of being Southern by abandoning all sense of reason and out-lefting anyone in sight. It’s a phenomenon something along the lines of the fight for gender equality in the workplace – the old saying about women having to do twice the work of men for the same pay.
That captures part of the dynamic, don’t you think?
WHY NOT IRAN? You may have noticed from Maureen Dowd’s recent column that one of the latest flimsy excuses for doing nothing about Iraq is that we should expedite regime change in Saudi Arabia as well. After all, they’re a terrorist-sponsoring, Islamist-funding, barbaric autocracy as well. Amen, MoDo. But first things first. Let’s get Iraq’s and Russia’s oil supplies up and running first, can we? But the really interesting thing about the belated liberal fixation on the evil of Saudi Arabia (with which I concur) is the strange absence in their argument of any mention of Iran. Why isn’t the New York Times on the warpath there? Well, the obvious reason is that it might mean some support for president Bush, which is unthinkable. But the second reason is that it might reveal that the assertion that Iran is already some kind of democracy would collapse. Michael Ledeen has another astute piece on National Review, showing the Times’ blind eye to the evil regime in Tehran. Don’t miss it. (And if you want a real guide to the context of our war on terror, don’t miss his book, “The War Against the Terror-Masters,” which is our book club selection this month. You won’t find a more concise and informative primer on why we are at war, and how we can win.)
IS BUSH READING SUN TZU? Okay, it’s a long shot. But Bush’s long silence, the contradictory messages from his administration, and mysterious arms buildups around the world leads one reader to wonder whether the president has been boning up on the art of war. Two maxims stand out: “When near, make it appear that you are far away, when far away that you are near.” And: “O
ffer the enemy a bait to lure him; feign disorder and strike him.” Wishful thinking no doubt. But then this president is often under-estimated.
THE WORLD IS ENDING: Krugman blames someone other than Bush for the post-bubble economy. He even suggests that the root of the problem lies in the 1990s … Who knows where that line of inquiry could lead?
The Dish 