“In light of the current crisis with Iraq, I thought it might be interesting to read again Frederick Forsyth’s wonderful novel on the Gulf War, The Fist of God, published in 1994. Take note of this gem I discovered on page 351:
‘He (Saddam Hussein) thinks the United Nations peacemongers could pull the rug. He’s gambling that time is on his side, that if he can keep spinning things out the resolve of the UN will ebb away. He could be right.’
‘The man doesn’t make sense,’ snapped Laing. ‘He has the deadline. January 16, not twenty days away. He’s going to be crushed.’
‘Unless,’ suggested Paxman, ‘one of the Permanent Members of the Security Council comes up with a last-minute peace plan to put the dealine on hold.’
Laing looked gloomy.
‘Paris or Moscow, or both,’ he predicted.
So why are we surprised now?” More insight from some of the web’s smartest readers on the Letters Page.
THE TORY TEMPTATION: Tony Blair’s brave stand in favor of disarming Iraq has managed to bring the Tories to almost even standing in the polls with Labour – for the first time in years. Many of those Tories don’t much like Tony Blair, don’t trust him, and believe he’s too invested in spin. So they’re tempted to march against war. They kind of like the idea of having inspectors spend months and months and months doing nothing in particular in Iraq. It’s called “muddling through,” an ancient English past-time. They don’t want to face what seems like imminent apocalypse. They feel uncomfortable with American brashness. And the Tory leadership, such as it is, cannot resist occasional cheap shots at the government. This is why, alas, the Conservative Party, led by the truly awful Iain Duncan-Smith, whose only selling point is that he’s not his chief rival, the pro-Euro, anti-American, Ken Clarke, is no longer a credible governing party in Britain.
THE GAY LEFT RESPONDS: Here’s the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force’s defense against my recent piece in the Advocate magazine. They don’t rebut the claims of my piece. They don’t deny that they have a far-left agenda; they don’t rebut my question as to how they can claim to be opposed to sexism while selecting women for their last seven executive director positions; they don’t deny that their recent conference wasn’t devoted to gay rights but to combating racism among gay people. But they do manage a few bloopers. They allege I am opposed to “abortion rights” and “civil rights.” Huh? I am reluctantly in favor of legal first trimester abortions; I have written tirelessly about my support for civil rights. In the last couple of months, I have campaigned against Trent Lott and written glowingly of Bayard Rustin. My record in support of marriage rights eclipses NGLTF’s. To say I oppose civil rights is simply a smear. I just don’t support affirmative action, and have had libertarian qualms about employment discrimination law (although I support gay inclusion in such laws, if they exist). They also cite my “privileged economic class,” as a way of saying that my views in favor of welfare reform are somehow illegitimate. I won’t address the ad hominem. Meanwhile, my basic point is ignored: if a gay group wants to win maximum support for its cause, why does it seek to alienate two-thirds of the electorate on an issue utterly unrelated to gay rights?
POOR GORE: His new book on the family is now ranked 606,000 on Amazon.com.
The Dish 