The argument that immediately surfaced in the media following the North Korean revelation about their nukes has been: See? Why shouldn’t we invade North Korea now? The Bushies are sooo inconsistent. They just want to invade Iraq for oil/empire/the hell of it/the mid-term elections, or fill in the latest Dowdian allegation. But the difference between North Korea and Iraq is so simple it’s astonishing some people don’t see it. So let’s put this as clearly as we can: North Korea has a nuke; Iraq, so far, doesn’t. Got that? When a rogue state succeeds in getting weapons of mass destruction, our options are severely limited. The question with Iraq is simple: in trying to stop Saddam getting a nuke, do we follow the same policies as Clinton and Carter in 1994 with North Korea, or do we try something else? Amazingly, large swathes of apparently intelligent people seem to think we should try the Carter/Clinton approach to Iraq. My view is simple: if we do not disarm Saddam now, we never will. And if we don’t, a full-scale nuclear, biological and chemical war is inevitable in the Middle East; and that war, with the help of terror groups like al Qaeda, will soon come to LA and New York and London and Washington. So the choice is a dangerous war now; or a much more destructive war later. I know democracies don’t like to hear these as the two options; democracies rightly, understandably hate to go to war. But these choices, in my view, are the only ones we actually have. So what’s it gonna be? Or do we still want to change the subject?
ONE AT A TIME? Then there’s the latest anti-Iraq war argument. The old line was that we have to go after al Qaeda, not Iraq, because al Qaeda is the bigger threat. We can’t do both. But the obvious response is: why on earth not? The military says it can be done as a practical matter. As a political matter, a victory against Iraq would, in my view, likely help the war on al Qaeda, opening a trove of intelligence, demoralizing anti-American forces in the region, and acting as a model for a post-tyrannical Middle East. So we’re left with the next argument. Defanging Iraq will so inflame the Muslim “street” that other Muslim countries will stop cooperating with us in the war on terror. Tony Judt yesterday cited Indonesia and Pakistan as evidence for this. The trouble with this argument, it seems to me, is that the Indonesian government wasn’t cooperating much at all until the Bali massacre. Are they going to cooperate less now? Or less if another wave of terrorism hits in the wake of Iraq? If anything, the record suggests that they’ll only crack down when faced with a real threat.
AND PAKISTAN? As for Pakistan, it seems to me that Judt’s case is stronger. Musharraf has indeed been walking a tightrope. But if our policy is to fight terror without in any way pissing off the “Arab street,” we might as well pack up and go home. Ideologically, most of Arab public opinion, shielded by the police states most Arabs live in, hates the U.S. regardless of what we do. What we’ve learned is that although this hatred is constant, their respect for us isn’t. Under Clinton, they held us in contempt. Hence the steady rise of al Qaeda and the growing belligerence on the West Bank in the 1990s. Under Bush since 9/11, they’re far more circumspect, as well they should be. The Afghanistan campaign was therefore the best argument against Islamic extremism the Arab world has heard in a long, long time. Besides, Musharraf is a realist. If America takes Tony Judt’s advice and simply lets Saddam continue to develop nukes, poison gas, and smallpox, then Musharraf really would have an incentive to placate the extremists. After all, America’s biggest enemy in the region would now be invulnerable and have any number of weapons of mass destruction to wreak havoc. But a successful war against Iraq would do the opposite. It would give Musharraf the momentum to keep going. That’s why this is not the time to lose our nerve. In fact, it’s time to steel ourselves and press on. Our problem right now is our passivity. We need to take this war to the enemy sooner rather than later. Or they will bring it back to us. In fact, they already are.
PEDOPHILES MAYBE; GAY MEN NEVER: Rome, it seems, is unwilling to back the zero-tolerance policy toward child-abuse endorsed by the American bishops. No surprise, I suppose. This is a bureaucracy that defends its own. The children are now and always have been secondary to this instinct for self-preservation. Besides, the Vatican would argue, zero-tolerance doesn’t do full justice to the variety of incidents involved. But there is an area where the church is moving toward zero-tolerance: not against those who rape and molest children, but against any gay priest, celibate or otherwise. The word is that the Vatican is slowly moving toward a massive purge of gay people, people who for centuries have served the church diligently, faithfully and well. The Vatican cares not whether these priests or would-be priests are chaste, whether they love and serve God, whether they are brilliant preachers, or compassionate pastors. They’re gay and therefore they must go. My heart breaks. To see a church I love enact a policy so devoid of even the slightest humanity and fairness – in order to deflect attention from its own terrible responsibility for permitting the abuse of the young – is just a soul-destroying experience. The people who told me I was a fool to stay in the church, to trust in its better nature, the people who have long viewed the Church as quite simply the enemy of gay people – I’m afraid they may have been right all along. I find myself, in the face of this inhumanity, unable to go to mass any more. I haven’t left the church in my head or my soul. But I can’t go right now. It’s too painful. I just pray the purge won’t actually happen. What else can I do?
AGAINST KRUGMAN’S CLASS WAR: “The importance of incentives to innovate comes up in evaluating Krugman’s comparions between the U.S. and countries like Canada and Sweden. Comparing the bottom decile in America to the bottom decile in Sweden is interesting, but fundamentally it cannot tell us what would happen if public policy in America took a hint from the Scandinavians. That’s because America–more accurately, the existence of an enormous, relatively free marketplace for new products–has been responsible for much of the innovation that has made living standards elsewhere so high. The median Swede might lose some of her wealth and longevity if it weren’t for America’s big-winner system producing new computers, software, pharmeceuticals, and other technology that make an hour of work buy a lot more stuff today than it did, say, in 1970. Even if some of those gains come from the minds of non-Americans, we have to ask how many of them we would have seen if it hadn’t been possible to sell beneficial new products in such a great big market.” – more on Krugman’s desire to punish talent, why I’m no Orwell, why Jeb Bush will win in Florida, and the emergence of “Dildo Republicans.” All on the best Letters Page on the web.
HEADS UP: I’ll be on the road mid-week, speaking on the Catholic crisis at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, on Wednesday at 1 pm. On Thursday night, I’ll be in New York City, on a panel on Orwell at New York University at 7 pm. My fellow panelists are Christopher Hitchens, Michael Walzer and Vivian Gornick. You’re all welcome, natch.
THE CONSEQUENCES OF CLINTON: I agree with every word Max Boot writes here. No, it’s not some kind of anti-Clinton obsession. It’s a vital and important part of understanding our world to understand how we came to be in this awful predicament – in a world war with no apparent end in sight and much horror still to come. It’s my judgment that president Bill Clinton’s policies – not his person or his private life or anything else – but his policies left the world a far more dangerous place than when he took office. History will judge him brutally for what he has done to damage world peace. He may have meant well; but we must live with the consequences.
AND THANKS: Another record: 245,000 unique visits last week. We might break a million this month.
The Dish 