Year: 2003

In particular, the Euro-axis is alarmed at the consequences of a successful Iraq war on the broader Middle East. They are dismayed at the prospect of Israel being strengthened strategically, as they pointed out today in their press conference. They are terrified of Arab and Islamist militancy and are instinctually reluctant to confront rather than appease it. And they are equally concerned about the damage a war without U.N. support would do to their diplomatic leverage in the U.N. No new formula will change any of this. If I’m right, then the current neo-lib whining about the Bush team’s alleged incompetence is partisan hooey. Josh Marshall and Fred Kaplan, who both support a war, nevertheless complain about alleged Bush administration “incompetence.” It seems to me that both have to give some real reasons as to what the Bushies did wrong. They pursued a text-book U.N. strategy. The secured a tortuous U.N. Resolution which was passed unanimously. They won the Congressional vote easily. I’m unaware of any obvious military failings. If the impasse is because of the irredentist opposition of Germans to war under any conditions, then it’s not Bush’s fault. If it’s because of a French desire to stymie American power, then it’s hard to see what Bush could have done to stop this. If the French refuse to enforce a resolution they signed, why is that a sign of incompetence on the part of the Bush administration? My own view is that the diplomatic mess we’re in is a function of world reality – and would be the same whatever administration was in charge. The Clinton administration avoided such a crisis because they avoided serious action to solve the problem. Personally, I’d rather have a crisis because we’re doing something than a non-crisis that leads to still greater danger in the future.

Better than the New York Times’.

QUOTE FOR THE DAY: “Chirac can have his mouth full of jam, his lips can be dripping with the stuff, his fingers covered with it, the pot can be standing open in front of him. And when you ask him if he eats jam, he’ll say: ‘Me? Never, Monsieur le president!'” – former French president Valery Giscard D’Estaing.

A REAL PEACE MOVEMENT: Here’s one I’d be happy to join.

Yes, this was the 1953 obit. (Thanks to NRO’s Corner.) Always useful to see how the Times dealt with murderous dictators then. Some things never change.

The Onion gets it about right.

“The situation we’re in right now [with regards to Iraq] looks something like this: Imagine you’ve got a sick child in serious need of medical attention. You could take him to the hospital yourself but it’s hours away over some difficult roads. You decide to bring in the pros. You call an ambulance, hand over your sick child over to them, and tell them to be careful! Now fast-forward a few hours. They’re almost to the hospital. But a few problems have cropped up along the way. Before hitting the road, the ambulance driver went and downed a quick six-pack. He scraped up half a dozen cars getting out of the liquor store parking lot. On the way to the hospital – in a mix of drunkenness and zeal – he’s already hit two cars and four pedestrians. Now they’re being chased by cops from two different counties. And there’s a lynch mob on their trail looking for revenge for the trashed cars and mowed-down relatives.” – Josh Marshall, likening the Bush administration to drunk-drivers, The Hill.

Gregg Easterbrook – how does he do it? – outlines the likely military scenarios in the battle for Baghdad. Like Easterbrook, I’m worried that we’re too complacent about an easy victory.

That extra-cool photo of sunset over Europe does not appear to have been taken by Columbia. It’s apparently a composite shot. Thanks to the zillion people who have let me know. But it’s still cool.

“But what is clear is that [he] is keenly sensitive to anything that touches his pride or self-esteem … he has a high opinion of himself and a great contempt for others. He is quite aware of his superiority to them in certain respects; and he either disbelives in or despises the qualities in which they are superior to him. Whatever disturbs or wounds his sense of superiority irritates him at once; and in that sense he is highly competitive … he has a spite against goodness in men … he has a spite against it, not from any love of evil for evil’s sake, but partly because it annoys his intellect as a stupidity; partly (though he hardly knows this) because it weakens his satisfaction with himself, and disturbs his faith that egoism is the right and proper thing; partly because, the world being such a fool, goodness is popular and prospers. But he, a man ten times as able … does not greatly prosper. Somehow, for all the stupidity of these open and generous people, they get on better than [he does] … Goodness therefore annoys him. He is always ready to scoff at it, and would like to strike at it.” – From A.C. Bradley’s analysis of Shakespeare’s Iago.

I’ve been thinking lately about the alleged vast difference between Bill Clinton’s foreign policy and George Bush’s. To listen to some Europeans, you’d think it were night and day. But on the key issues at stake now, the principles of U.S. foreign policy are pretty much indistinguishable between Clinton and Bush. On Iraq, Clinton’s stated objective, after the failure of sanctions, was regime change. The other day, I quoted the former president who, in his language at least, was no less hawkish than Bush:

“What if [Saddam] fails to comply and we fail to act, or we take some ambiguous third route, which gives him yet more opportunities to develop this program of weapons of mass destruction? … Well, he will conclude that the international community has lost its will. He will then conclude that he can go right on and do more to rebuild an arsenal of devastating destruction. And some day, some way, I guarantee you he’ll use the arsenal.”

MORE MULTILATERALIST: The difference, of course, is 9/11 and the simple fact that Bush has, shall we say, a different relationship with the follow-through than his immediate predecessor. Even in practice, on, say, the unilateral question, there’s the Kosovo precedent, which shows that Clinton was prepared not merely to defy certain powers, i.e. Russia, to do what he wanted; but he was also prepared to bypass the U.N. altogether if necessary. In this narrow sense, Bush is actually more multilateralist than Clinton. He’s heading into an uncertain Security Council vote which he need not have pursued. Even on an issue like the Kyoto accord, the differences are exaggerated. No one seems to point out that ratification of Kyoto was killed not by Bush but by the Senate under Clinton which voted it down 95 – 0. Again, the difference with Bush is that he connected this action with words. Clinton was a master at saying what others wanted to hear. What I’m getting at is that the distinctions are by no means as great as some would have it; that some of our problems today are not a function of Bush but of world events; and that Clinton’s facility with schmooze and inaction didn’t solve the problems of a unipolar world; it merely delayed them a while. That period of glorious avoidance is now over – for good and ill. But very similar policies endure.

A SHIFT IN BRITAIN?: The latest MORI poll shows some small good news for Blair. His eloquent defense of war against Saddam has helped win some people over. A huge 75 percent would back a war if the U.N. approves and some kind of “smoking gun” is found by inspectors. But a hefty majority would still oppose without those conditions. I have to say that’s almost meaningless. The inspectors aren’t there to find any smoking guns. And the U.N., at best, will not veto. But what the poll says to me is that once a war starts, the Brits will back the troops; and when WMDs are discovered, retroactive support will soar. My gut tells me that Blair’s gamble could pay off hugely. As long as we win well and quickly, that applies to Bush as well.

I’ve been sloppy lately. I was too glib in ascribing the Vatican’s love-in with Baghdad as a function of the old Jew-hatred. I feel sick when I see Vatican envoys raising arms with Arafat or clasping Tariq Aziz’s hand warmly. But I don’t think that Rome reflects more general anti-Israeli attitudes than the rest of Europe. And “Jew-hatred” was too much, a cheap shot. A really good treatment of the debate can be found at Instapundit, in an often-up-dated posting that rewards re-reading. On an unrelated point, it was silly for me to blame Fox News Channel for the Fox network’s running of “Married in America.” They’re clearly different entities. My broader point is that it’s a little weird to be focussing on a handful of potential gay marriages as an alleged threat to the institution when the broader heterosexual culture treats marriage with far more <a href = contempt than any homosexuals asking for equal access. Fair enough?

10,000 9/11s : Today is the fiftieth anniversary of Stalin’s death. Here’s a superb column in the Independent no less on the scandalous fact that there are still apologists for this monster. They’re the same people who apologize for Saddam Hussein, of course. But Stalinism still lives and still murders: North Korea and Iraq are both Stalinist operations. So is Cuba. Money quote:

Fidel [Castro] runs his country on precisely the same lines as his hero. Amnesty International’s latest reports detail the plight of the “prisoners of conscience” (otherwise known as democrats) and notes than even now, the number of people harassed “directly by the state”, including “political dissidents, independent journalists and other activists”, is increasing. It is worth remembering the name of just one victim of Fidel, plucked from among many: Bernardo Arevalo Padron has been festering in prison since 1997 because he called Fidel Castro “a liar” for failing (as ever) to stick to agreements on relaxing his authoritarian rule. Yet still Tony Benn brags about the standards of the Cuban health-care system which, preposterously, he says are “better than America’s”. (If you are ever taken ill on a flight across the Atlantic, Tony, I suggest you test this by insisting on being flown to Havana rather than New York.) Still John Pilger describes the Cuban revolution as “a crucial model for challenging power”. (For a man obsessed with hidden agendas, he very rarely discloses this agenda of his own.)

Amen. The fact that this column appeared in a paper that is one of Saddam Hussein’s chief apologists is surely a sign of hope.