It’s been something of a relief – although a somewhat strained one – to have redirected attention for a couple of weeks to domestic issues. The culture wars, journalistic scandals, and gambling moralists are all good, distracting copy. But the broader war continues. It’s clear now that we have seriously under-estimated the difficulties of imposing order on post-totalitarian Iraq. The shake-up in leadership there suggests at least that Washington is aware of the problem. But some of the damage has already been done. It’s hard to read stories about continued looting in Baghdad or dangerous chaos in the hinterlands, without wondering if the administration is as committed to the difficult task of reconstruction as they need to be. The real worry, it seems to me, is that some WMDs may have been transported out of Iraq, may be in the hands of terrorists, or simply on the market. We have thousands of gallons of anthrax still unaccounted for. This doesn’t retroactively invalidate the war. Such dangers would have existed – and would have been even more dangerous – if Saddam were still in power. But it does mean we cannot afford any lapse in vigilance. The papers don’t tell us who was responsible for last night’s bombings in Saudi Arabia, but we can be sure they aren’t friends of the United States. Islamist anti-semitism has not abated; in Britain, it may be capturing a new generation of young immigrants. That’s why it’s still critical to focus on the terror threat, to push reform further in the Middle East, to give the road-map a serious try, and to tighten our own homeland defenses. The list is long. Our attention span needs to be long as well.
THE WOLF GETS IT: Wolfowitz is reassuring today. No lack of focus or of realism there.
The Dish 