Impressive evidence that if the president makes the case clearly, if we demand meaningful inspections first (and I mean meaningful), we’ll win the battle of public opinion over the battle with Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. Maybe, as some of you imply, Bush has indeed played this superbly. He has let the debate unfold, without tipping his hand too much. He has let the anti-war left overplay their hand. He has identified who his real domestic allies and opponents are. And he has used the time to orchestrate an arms buildup for the Iraq campaign. Is he Lincoln? I wish I could concur with David Warren. But Bush sure is smarter than many of his opponents believe. And, I hope, braver.
BLOG, MABLOG: Check out my email correspondence with Kurt Andersen now up and running on Slate this week.
BACK FROM VACATION: It appears I was wrong to hope for a long-term improvement in the New York Times’ front-page polemics against the war against terror in Iraq. In his remarks on the Newshour, Howell Raines clearly explained that he sees this as another Vietnam. It’s his gut feeling. So he wants to use the Times’ front-page to campaign. On the web version today, the lead story is a straightforward opinion piece against the notion of pre-emptive action in the war on terror. Here’s the opening graf of the op-ed by “reporter” David Sanger:
President Bush’s declaration today that he would seek the approval of Congress to oust Saddam Hussein amounted to an acknowledgment that he cannot proceed alone and that he needs to move quickly to try to resolve a rift within his administration, with many of his father’s cautious advisers, and with his reluctant allies.
It’s followed by a front-page interview with Chancellor Schroder warning against war. Schroder is playing the war for his own electoral benefit in a very tight race, but he also helps Raines make the case for appeasing Saddam. Why not interview prime minister Blair, a man of the center-left actually taking a political risk in the terror war, the man scheduled to come to Camp David soon? Off-message, I guess. In contrast, the Washington Post leads with the news that Iraq has been trying to develop the means to deliver chemical weapons through the air. You have the difference between a newspaper and a viewspaper right there.
WHAT’S GOOD FOR US: Rick Hertzberg defends Mayor Bloomberg’s attempt to rid New York City bars and restaurants of smokers for good and all. Rick’s bottom-line is that the smokers themselves would like to be rid of their addiction, so, by curtailing their enjoyment and socialization, we’re actually doing them a favor. Would he say the same thing about bath-houses or strip-joints? And why not, by the same argument, ban drinking alcohol in bars as well? Juice only, guys. After all, aren’t many alcoholics desperate to be told they can’t drink any more? I know that smokers are now reduced to the respect level of pharmaceutical executives and Catholic priests, but is there no end to the puritan impulse out there? Even at the allegedly liberal New Yorker?
THOSE LITERATE VICTORIANS: Andrew Wilson writes the following in today’s Daily Telegraph:
Guilt at what [the Victorians] had done made the more foolish among them seek for collectivist solutions, such as the disastrous idea, first mooted in the 1870 Education Act, that the state should control schooling. At that date there was 92 per cent literacy in England. Without compulsory education, you had to learn in order to survive.
Wow. 92 percent literacy wth no public education. And we’re scared of vouchers?
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: “It is a lamentable fact that the democracies in their dealings with the dictators before the war, not less than in their attempts at propaganda and in the discussion of their war aims, have shown an inner insecurity and uncertainty of aim which can be explained only by confusion about their own ideals and the nature of the differences which separated them from the enemy.” – F.A. Hayek, “The Road to Serfdom.”
SCOWCROFT AWARD NOMINEE: “A bombing campaign in Afghanistan brings special perils, beyond what the Pentagon refers to as holding civilian casualties to “an acceptable minimum.” In the first place, there’s not much there to hit, and in the second place, we are up against the dismal fact that the bombing campaign could well cause the starvation of literally millions of Afghans who never did anything to us.
And if mass starvation does occur, we will lose this war against terrorism whether or not we find bin Laden, since such a tragedy would instantly create more terrorists as well as wreck the coalition. And that is why some of us think it is even more important to figure out how to get food into Afghanistan before winter hits than it is to find bin Laden. Our resolve to nail him will outlast the winter – the Afghan people may not.” – Molly Ivins, November 12, 2001.
“Joseph Nye argues in his new book, The Paradox of American Power: Why the World’s Only Superpower Can’t Go It Alone, that anti-Americanism thrives on the perception that we don’t give a rat’s behind how the rest of the world feels about anything. That’s the famous “arrogance” for which we get criticized.
On that count, a war with Iraq could play right into terrorist hands. It’s apparent that our ally Saudi Arabia has a far stronger connection to Sept. 11 than our enemy Saddam Hussein, so attacking Saddam makes us look like hypocrites willing to sell out our foreign policy for oil. That we’d also have to kill a whole of lot of innocent Iraqis (next guy who uses the words “precision bombing” has to eat them) should count for more than it probably does with all those hard-nosed Bush foreign policy advisers who have never seen war … Seems to me that the lesson of Sept. 11 is that we cannot afford to ignore what the rest of the world thinks.” – Molly Ivins, August 25, 2002.
The Dish 