Year: 2003

I’ve been trying to understand better the groundswell of anxiety about the coming war. Leaving aside the extremists, it seems to me that the undecideds simply hold an assumption I don’t share. The assumption is that 9/11 was an isolated event that portended nothing more than itself and only legitimized a police operation in self-defense targeted precisely at the group that perpetrated it. If that’s your position, then I can see your point about Iraq. It must be baffling to see the U.S. subsequently (and simultaneously) pursuing a target apparently unrelated to that awful event. I think one of the key points the president must therefore make tomorrow night has to relate to this assumption. He should say: look, there are two ways to approach this problem of international terrorism. The first is roughly the strategy of the 1990s: you tackle groups that specifically attack you. You play defense. You take one group at a time. You don’t go after the governments behind them. You try and soothe feelings of resentment around the world and stay out of trouble. You don’t go around stirring up hornets’ nests of state-sponsored terror. The occasional cruise missile attack or covert operation, combined with a hefty increase in domestic security and tightening of civil liberties, is enough.

THE ALTERNATIVE: The other strategy is to take 9/11 not as an isolated event but as a stark warning. Defense alone won’t work. These groups are guided by a philosophy that is not amenable to suasion or deterrence. And they are aided by a complex network of allies – governments and non-governments – throughout the Middle East that share at least some of the same ideology and a lot of the same methods. Worse, new technology means that these groups could very soon perform their evil with weapons far more powerful than anything we have experienced before. 9/11 is therefore best understood as an early tremor before a real earthquake. So the best defense is offense. We cannot wait for catastrophe to strike again. No one disputes Saddam’s malign intentions or brutality. No one seriously doubts he has weapons of mass destruction, and may at some point get nuclear weapons if we don’t do more than we have done to stop him. The point of remembering 9/11 is not to prove that Saddam did it; but to remind ourselves that some combination of Saddam and others could do far worse in the future. So what should we do? Wait and hope we can keep this thing under control by a series of defensive actions? Or go on the offensive and do what we can to stop, deter and reverse this threat?

TWO BAD OPTIONS: Neither option is without risks. The calm today is deceptive. The risk tomorrow is greater than most of us can imagine. If we do nothing – or worse, we do nothing that looks like something, i.e. fruitless U.N. inspections ad infinitum – then the worst could happen. If we do something, the worst could also happen – the use of such weapons in Iraq, a growing conflict in the Middle East. But by going in, we also stand a chance of seizing our own destiny and changing the equation in the Middle East toward values we actually believe in: the rule of law, the absence of wanton cruelty, the dignity of women, the right to self-determination for Arabs and Jews. We also have a chance to end an evil in its own right: the barbarous regime in Baghdad. We choose Iraq not just because it is uniquely dangerous but because the world has already decided that its weapons must be destroyed. We go in to defend ourselves and our freedoms but also the integrity of the countless U.N. resolutions that mandate Saddam’s disarmament. Our unilateralism, if that is what is eventually needed, will therefore not be a result of our impetuous flouting of global norms. It will be because only the U.S. and the U.K. and a few others are prepared to risk lives and limb to enforce global norms. Far greater damage will be done to the United Nations if we do nothing than if we do what we have an absolute responsibility to do.

BUSH’S TERRIBLE BURDEN: And I’m frankly sick of the cheap vitriol directed at this president at this time. God knows the pressure he must be under. To see the shallow and self-interested jockeying in Paris and Berlin at a moment of grave international crisis is to observe politics at its worst. I’m not saying that opposition to Bush and the war policy is illegitimate. Of course not. Much of it is important and helpful. But the coarseness of some of it is truly awful. In some conversations I’ve had with people who strongly oppose war, I keep hearing this personal demonization of Bush as if he – and not the threat we face as a civilization – were somehow the issue. You hear it echoed in the callow obliviousness of a Maureen Dowd or the brutal lies of Michael Moore or the cheap condescension of the intelligentsia. You see it in the poisonous symbolism of some of the anti-war demonstrators. I keep thinking that this obsession with Bush is a way of avoiding the awful choices in front of us. But the choices are still there. And Bush’s speech tomorrow night represents his terrible duty to lead us to the right one.

Check out Edward Said’s latest piece in the Guardian. Check it out for one simple reason: it has nothing, nothing to say. He loathes the current Arab regimes, yet he defends them. He wants an Arab uprising, but he doesn’t know how. He throws one empty hate-filled fusillade at the United States, while never proposing any solution to Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, or any solution to the terrible state of the Arab world’s civil society. Here’s his defense of Arab culture today:

Why is there now no last testimonial to an era of history, to a civilisation about to be crushed and transformed utterly, to a society that, despite its drawbacks and weaknesses, nevertheless goes on functioning? Arab babies are born every hour, children go to school, men and women marry and work and have children, they play and laugh and eat, they are sad, they suffer illness and death. There is love and companionship, friendship and excitement. Yes, Arabs are repressed and misruled, terribly misruled, but they manage to go on with the business of living despite everything.

That’s it? An acknowedgment of Arab misrule, but then a celebration of pure banality. Why didn’t he add that Arabs also blow their noses and cut their hair? Is there any society in which these everyday things don’t go on? Of course, those families in Iraq who see their loved ones carted off to a torture chamber or their neighbors subjected to nerve gas attacks probably don’t find this subsistence as alluring as Said does. Then there’s this staggering piece of concession:

Iraqis, we are told by the Iraqi dissidents, will welcome their liberation, and perhaps forget entirely about their past sufferings. Perhaps.

Perhaps? That’s it, professor? Yep, that’s the hedge-betting, weasel phrase designed to innoculate Said from the moral opprobrium of loathing America and Israel more than the evil from Tikrit. As I’ve said before, one of the great unintended benefits of this awful time is that it is exposing the American academic left in ways never done before. They are now forced actually to make arguments in defense of the indefensible. All they have is a disdain for the West, an inability to make moral judgements, and the rest is air.

BAGHDAD BROADCASTING COMPANY: More evidence that the BBC is now actively cooperating with Saddam to create anti-war propaganda. A new series on the threat of a war to Iraq’s archeological treasures:

Speaking at Querna, on the southern tip of Iraq, where the Euphrates and Tigris meet and Adam’s tree is said to mark the Garden of Eden, [broadcaster] Mr Cruickshank said: “An act of war visited on these people would not just be a catastrophe for history and wreck an ancient culture but bestir these peaceful people into a terrible fury.”

Heard of smart bombs? Among the possible targets: “the oldest Christian monastery, situated in Mosul and dating from the 4th century BC.” I guess that would be the oldest Christian monastery, pre-dating Christ by a few hundred years.

AFTER THE LEFT: A worthwhile piece in the Washington Post about anti-war sentiment in Britain. Money quote:

For the traditional left, said Emmanuele Ottolinghi, a research fellow at the Middle East Center at St. Antony’s, anti-Americanism has replaced a belief in socialism as the common denominator that holds disparate groups together. It also binds the left to Britain’s growing Muslim population, anti-globalists and anti-Zionists. “Anti-Americanism is glue that holds them together, and hatred of Israel is one aspect,” he said.

Again, this isn’t about legitimate criticism of American foreign policy. It’s about finding some glue for a series of resentments, now that socialism has collapsed as an ideology.

“What the German Chancellor and the French President cannot plausibly argue is that their approach works as a means of keeping the peace, or forcing the hand of dictators such as Saddam. It was not the UN’s deliberations, German pacifism or French diplomacy which forced the Iraqi dictator to re-admit the UN weapons inspectors: it was the threat of US military action. If the European approach to international relations had been observed in the present campaign to destroy Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, Saddam would have done precisely nothing.” – the Daily Telegraph, yesterday.

MORE MISCHIEF AT THE AIDS COUNCIL: Here’s a disturbing article about the divisive agenda of some on the White House AIDS panel:

A number of sources close to the council said the Thacker nomination was pushed by the council’s controversial executive director, Pat Ware, an African American woman allied with the Family Research Council and other conservative Christian groups and a vocal proponent of abstinence as an AIDS prevention method. Ware referred media calls to the White House. A member of the council said Ware has made several comments to gay members of the council suggesting that gay white men are responsible for infecting the African American community with AIDS. Others confirmed that Ware and her allies among conservative Christian groups have promoted that theory.

There is good reason to have a diversity of views on such a panel. But it surely serves nothing constructive to have members pit one beleaguered group dealing with AIDS against another. Working together is the key here – especially trying to merge gay male expertise on AIDS with the terrible crisis among African-Americans. So why divide people? Unless you are motivated not by a desire to help but by a desire to blame?

Here it is:

In my last column, I cited a Time article reporting that the president had “quietly reinstated” a custom of sending a wreath to the Confederate Memorial. Time has since corrected the story, saying he didn’t revive the custom, but simply continued it. I would still ask: Why keep a tradition of honoring the Confederacy while you’re going to court to stop a tradition of helping black students at the University of Michigan?

Did I miss the simple retraction? And what on earth does the Michigan case have to do with anything?

Another picture of depravity. The anti-globalization, anti-war forces have now descended into Hitlerian anti-Semitism. I love the yellow stars, don’t you? If these people were allied with me, I’d be horrified. Notice how the AP doesn’t even mention the anti-Semitism involved.

I just read Bill Keller’s attempt to rethink George W. Bush as the inheritor of Reagan. I think Keller does an impressive and largely persuasive job – all the more inmpressive given the hatred of Bush that seems to permeate his newspaper. It reminds me of a Johnny Apple piece back in 1986 that tried to make sense of Reagan for a liberal elite readership – although it’s far more ahead of the curve than Apple’s. Kudos to Keller and Adam Moss. Keller is particularly good on how Bush’s appeal transcends issues. I haven’t known many presidents and prime ministers in my adult life, but I remember revering Reagan as a person, thrilling to his words, admiring his panache. I feel something different about Bush, some kind of deep trust that he won’t let us down, along with, in my case, a pretty strong belief in the principles of limited government and proud enterprise he is espousing. But Bush shows, I think, that successful politicians, like successful countries, don’t have to court approval for everything they do to command respect for the principles that animate them. Yes, Bush, like most pols, has cut corners with principles along the way. But he has them, he hasn’t lost them, and they remain a lodestar for the trials ahead. This is, indeed, an unexpectedly radical administration. And the stakes keep getting higher. If we wage a successful war in Iraq, the academic and elite left in this country, previously deeply wounded, cannot survive. They will be shown for what they are: defenders of everything real liberals should oppose. That, I suspect, is why so many of them are resisting the war so fiercely. They know that their fate is now bound up with Saddam’s. What an irony. But what an opportunity to despatch both at once.

THE CONTEXT FOR SCHRODER: Why is it that so many major news outlets keep reporting on Gerhard Schroder’s attempt to derail any serious attempt to disarm Saddam without mentioning his domestic travails. The guy’s party now has an astonishingly low approval rating of 25 percent – the lowest ever recorded. Meanwhile, we have banner headlines about Bush’s ratings slipping into the upper 50s. Contrast. Compare.

I was feeling glum this morning. Don’t know why. Then I read this latest missive from the Jimmy Kimmel of punditry:

Consider for a moment the current French position – and, no, I don’t mean prone. This week they announced that containment works. The French foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, declared, “Already we know for a fact that Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programs are being largely blocked, even frozen. We must do everything possible to strengthen this process.”
Well, if France knows for “a fact,” then France also knows for a fact that Iraq has such weapons programs. After all, you can’t block or freeze what doesn’t exist (if you don’t find this logic compelling, go right now and tell your wife that your longstanding efforts to bed Filipino hookers have been “largely blocked, even frozen” by her constant inspections into your bank account and that she therefore has no reason to take a more aggressive posture towards you. Then, see what happens).

The Filipino hookers analogy is a little strained, perhaps. But I’m cheered up now, the way sanity always cheers me up.

This story won’t leave my head. Can you imagine what they’re doing to this guy in some Saddam hell-hole now?:

About 40 minutes later, another Iraqi man stopped a U.N. vehicle outside the headquarters pleading “Save me! Save me!” in Arabic, according to the U.N. The man, apparently unarmed, forced his way into the driver’s seat of the stopped vehicle, as an Iraqi guard struggled to pull him out, while an unfazed U.N. inspector watched from the passenger seat.
Appearing agitated and frightened, the young man, with a closely trimmed beard and mustache, sat inside the white U.N.-marked utility vehicle for 10 minutes, AP reported. At first, an inspection team leader sought help from nearby Iraqi soldiers, but the man refused to leave the vehicle as the uniformed men pulled on his sleeve and collar.
“I am unjustly treated!” he shouted.
Then U.N. security men arrived, and they and Iraqi police carried the man by his feet and arms into the fenced compound, journalists said. The man was turned over to Iraqi authorities at a government office adjacent to the compound, U.N. officials said.

Every now and again, the reality of Saddam’s evil peaks through the veil of secrecy and terror. Remember: this is the regime some want to leave in peace to get weapons of mass destruction.

Man I hope not. I believe not. The Washington Post, far more reliable than the New York Times, emphasizes the need to build up military forces in the region as the reason for a war in March rather than February. But every week we delay, the forces of appeasement will grow, Saddam’s allies will regroup, opportunists like the North Koreans will jump in, and the chances of a successful defanging of Saddam with a minimum of casualties decline. I disagree with Bill Keller’s op-ed. We’re in the right. The evidence of Iraq’s non-cooperation is clear. By waiting, we merely give credence to the phony and insincere arguments of the French and the Germans, arguments that are not designed to disarm Saddam, but to weaken the U.S.

“THE ENEMY”: Here you have some anti-war protestors proudly declaring themselves the enemy of the United States. Yes, you could argue that they’re quibbling with Bush’s post 9/11 statement that “I made it clear to the world, you’re either with us or your with the enemy.” At the same time, their complete insouciance about a message that states they side with those terrorists who murdered so many Americans sickens me. It should sicken anyone.

You don’t have to read the editorials at the New York Times to catch the paper’s support for France, Germany and Russia in derailing a possible attempt to disarm Saddam Hussein. Here’s a classic from a piece by Joel Brinkley:

Mr. Schröder spoke today by phone with Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, and a spokesman said that Mr. Putin had “stressed the closeness of the positions of Russia and Germany in calling for a political solution of the Iraq problem.” At the White House, Mr. Bush’s chief spokesman, Ari Fleischer, maintained the administration’s hard line. Saddam Hussein, Mr. Fleischer said, “is engaging in a constant pattern now” of “defying inspectors, refusing to cooperate with inspectors, showing the inspectors facilities in which he knows nothing will be found.” The Iraqi leader, Mr. Fleischer added, “is making the end of the line come even closer by his unacceptable behavior.” [My italics.]

Now why is the administration’s position a “hard line” and the German refusal to contemplate any military means to disarm Saddam not one? The U.S. has tried diplomatic and non-military methods to disarm Saddam for over eleven years. Yes, the eleven-year “rush to war” continues. If that’s a hard line, what would a soft one be?