It’s hard not to feel dread when Saddam seems to be moving toward “compliance” with the latest U.N. resolution. I don’t mean, of course, that we should dread actually disarming him; merely that we should dread his trapping the U.S. and the rest of the world in yet another sandpit of confusion and obfuscation. That’s why it seems to me that we should be publicly mobilizing for war right away. There are some signs that this is happening already. I was reassured by Colin Powell’s statement on CNN yesterday that, “I can assure you if he doesn’t comply this time we are going to ask the UN to give authorisation for all necessary means, and if the UN isn’t willing to do that, the United States with like-minded nations will go and disarm him forcefully.” Powell is the right man to m ake such a statement. Yesterday, Tom Friedman called on the secretary of state to keep undermining the hawks in the Bush administration. It seems to me that Friedman has it exactly the wrong way round. The next few weeks are the ones in which Powell has to prove himself. If the U.N. route becomes yet another way to keep Saddam’s tyranny and weapons of mass destruction intact, then Powell has some explaining to do. Equally, if Hans Blix wants to go home a hero for peace after ineffective inspections, then Powell will have effectively made matters far worse for the U.S. and the civilized world. I’m a skeptic about whether inspections can ever truly work. But if they do, it will only because of a massive invasion force poised to attack immediately after the first violation. Hence: mobilize. The display of military might and readiness makes peace and compliance more likely – whether the weaponry is used or not.
WELFARE REFORM AGAIN: What else explains the sudden jump in teen marriages in the 1990s? And for some reason, the arrival of gay marriage as an issue, and the establishment of civil unions in one state, doesn’t seem to have deterred straight teens from getting hitched. Who would have thought it? Bill Bennett, call your office.
CAMPUS ANTI-SEMITISM WATCH: When the Egyptian paper, al Ahram, asked for British poet Tom Paulin’s opinions on the Middle East, they knew what they were looking for. His remarks even shocked a Guardian columnist:
Among other things, he opined that the US-born Jewish settlers should be shot dead. “They are Nazis, racists,” he said, adding – unnecessarily, you might argue – “I feel nothing but hatred for them.” He also pronounced that the state of Israel had no right to exist, that Tony Blair’s government was “Zionist”, and that the suicide bombers were an expression of “deep injustice and tragedy”.
Typical leftist anti-Semitism. So why is Harvard laying out the red carpet for a man who feels “nothing but hatred” for American Jewish settlers in Israel and the West Bank? Didn’t president Summers warn about a new anti-Semitism on campus?
THE OTHER TERRORISTS: Be afraid. Be very afraid.
GLOATIN’ GOIN’ DOWN: “My other POV is that the surge was a metaphor of starting a fire with lots of pine needles. Little tiny incidents of dry leaves kept piling one atop the other: Wellstone, the hate Jeb and George W campaign, the Clintons, Leahy stopping the judges, the trashing of the cars outside the rally in Mass, the appearances every night of Begala and Carville as Dem spokesmen (ugly guys are as bad as ugly women), Belafonte trashing Powell, Barbra blaming Republicans for the Wellstone plane crash, the voter fraud around the country, and hundres of other little things created the fuel for a fire under the Republican base and lots of Independents. GWB came along with his blow torch campaigning and set that fuel off. And the press media didn’t hurt either. So how do all those smart Dems like getting trashed by a moron?” – from the Letters Page, on the election.
“CANCER ON HUMANITY”: Check out this placard from the Florence pro-Saddam march. This is one face of the “anti-war” movement. And it’s ugly in a very old-fashioned way. (Via James Morrow.)
MORE LEFTWING SMEARS: No one should expect Garrison Keillor to like Norm Coleman. Keillor only supports left-liberal Democrats and was brutal toward Jesse Ventura. But his column in Salon went further. Check out this paragraph:
Norm got a free ride from the press. St. Paul is a small town and anybody who hangs around the St. Paul Grill knows about Norm’s habits. Everyone knows that his family situation is, shall we say, very interesting, but nobody bothered to ask about it, least of all the religious people in the Republican Party. They made their peace with hypocrisy long ago. So this false knight made his way as an all-purpose feel-good candidate, standing for vaguely Republican values, supporting the president.
There’s a word for this: it’s a smear. Keillor won’t give evidence; he parlays underhand gossip; he is exploiting someone’s private life to hurt him politically. Every aspect of this paragraph stinks to high heaven. But that in itself is instructive. This kind of bile helped the Dems lose the last election. And yet they keep on hating.
ROSENBAUM FISKS VIDAL: Worth every word.
MAJOR LEAGUE MISTAKE: Adam Clymer wrote yesterday about “the undistinguished terms of Benjamin Harrison and his grandson William Henry Harrison.” As any high-school textbook (or Google) will tell you, Benjamin was William Henry’s grandson. Then there’s this simple statement of fact: “Edward M. Kennedy’s durable liberalism has changed the nation more than his brothers did.” There you have it: decades of adding entitlements to the national budget and pursuing every agenda item of the current liberal conventional wisdom has changed the nation more than JFK and RFK combined. If you want to know why the Times got almost everything about the last election embarrassingly wrong, peer through the blinkers of a man like Clymer.
FULLY COVERED: As someone who grew up in a country with socialized medicine, I’m more than aware of what it really means: the rationing of bad healthcare. Here’s a story from Canada that shows where that can lead
you.
OUR WAR TOO: An independent gay writer and activist fights back against the left on Iraq.
BEGALA AWARD NOMINEE: Bush’s “mandate”
includes using the taxing power to transfer wealth from working people to the rich. It includes giving corporations a free hand to eviscerate the environment and control the regulatory agencies meant to hold them accountable. And it includes secrecy on a scale you cannot imagine. Above all, it means judges with a political agenda appointed for life. If you liked the Supreme Court that put George W. Bush in the White House, you will swoon over what’s coming. And if you like God in government, get ready for the Rapture. These folks don’t even mind you referring to the GOP as the party of God. Why else would the new House Majority Leader say that the Almighty is using him to promote ‘a Biblical worldview’ in American politics? So it is a heady time in Washington – a heady time for piety, profits, and military power, all joined at the hip by ideology and money.
– Bill Moyers, paid for in part by your tax dollars, on PBS.
MODO GROWS UP: A brief interaction with Saudi Arabia’s vice police and Maureen Dowd misses John Ashcroft:
After the men argued for 15 minutes, I fretted that I was in one of those movies where an American makes one mistake in a repressive country and ends up rotting in a dungeon. I missed John Ashcroft desperately.
Can we now send Molly Ivins and Mary McGrory?
The Dish 