THE WAR AND THE CULTURE WAR

By far the most depressing aspect of the debate over war to disarm Saddam has been how it has swiftly adopted the contours of the culture war. There is a solid and passionate base among many blue-staters that opposes this war at least in part because they oppose George W. Bush. At some point in the last few months, in fact, being anti-war clearly became a defining cultural moniker for an entire sub-population. Almost the whole academic class, the media elites, the college-educated urbanites, the entertainment industry and so on are now reflexively anti-war. Worse in fact: there is very little argument or debate going on in these sub-populations, simply an assumption that war against Saddam is wrong, and that all right-thinking people agree about this. Obviously, the polls suggest that this sub-population is not a majority, but they are a powerful and increasingly angry minority. If the war hits snags, they will redouble their efforts to humiliate the president. I don’t think their anger will be abated if the war goes well either. They will merely find a new reason to hate Bush. But I do think that an opportunity exists for Bush to neutralize and even co-opt some of these people by his conduct in the post-war settlement. He must commit real resources, real troops, real money to reconstructing Iraq and to building the beginnings of democracy there. No friendly new dictator; no cut-and-run; no change of the subject. He has to show the essentially progressive nature of the war against Islamist terror and its state sponsors – not just for the security of the West but for the future of the Arab world. Rescinding some future tax cuts to help pay for this may well be prudent – and even popular. Bush can’t reverse the tide of hatred on the far left. But he can try and reach out to the many liberals in the center who would support a proactive foreign policy, if they believed it was about more than mere national interest. That’s the real opportunity ahead: a fusion of Bush’s instincts and Blair’s hopes. I pray the president grasps it.