Bob Bartley moves the ball a little in his piece this morning. It’s about the criteria for regime change:
A rough cut at a guiding principle, it seems to me, is that the world has grown too small to tolerate a state that (1) traffics with terrorists, (2) is strenuously seeking weapons of mass destruction, and (3) is ruled by a madman. Laying aside quibbles over proof and definition, can anyone object to this principle?
The Saudis may be a problem, but by these tests are not “enemies.” Syria and Libya help terrorists, but are not big players in the nuclear game. Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe may have gone mad, but is neither nuclear or a world terrorist.
President Bush’s “axis of evil” – Iran, North Korea and Iraq – help terrorists, are strenuously seeking weapons of mass destruction, and are run by elites that are, to say the least, unstable. Saddam Hussein stands out with madman actions such as starting wars, repressing his own people, deploying poison gas on civilians, trying to assassinate a former U.S. president, and breaking agreements with the U.S. and world community.
Sounds eminently reasonable to me. The real problem with the Europeans, I think, is that they didn’t experience 9/11 themselves, have a history of appeasing terror, and so find the new doctrine not just psychologically novel to them but also an implicit indictment of their entire foreign policy record of the last decade. They’ll have to swallow some pride to come aboard. Like Scowcroft and Powell.
CHOMSKY’S THREAT?: It’s an idle one, of course, this time wrapped in pseudo-concern for the United States. But Noam Chomsky couldn’t be clearer: attack Iraq and the Islamist terrorists will come back at you. Just like they did after we liberated Afghanistan. But the underlying message is still a Chomsky classic: you deserve it.
The Dish 