I’m not sure which is weirder — that Maureen Dowd and William Safire both wrote alternate histories of the Iraq War on back-to-back days (in Dowd’s It’s a Wonderful Life takeoff, Donald Rumsfeld was never born; in Safire’s reboot of The Plot Against America, Iraq was never invaded) . . . or that Dowd’s is actually the more plausible of the two.
Yeah, I know what you’re going to say. In Dowd’s vision, relayed via Clarence the guardian angel, Saddam is forced from power by a combination of SecDef Sam Nunn, Veep Chuck Hagel, and the tender ministrations of Hans Brix — sorry, Blix. Not terribly believable, huh? But is it really any less absurd than Safire’s tale of how leaving Saddam in power leads to 1) an immediate Saddam-PLO-Al Qaeda alliance, 2) a Gulf-State-sponsored worldwide recession, and 3) the union of Libya and Egypt into a nuclear-armed, Islamist superstate (!!!!) . . . all within two years?
I report, you decide.
–Ross Douthat
The Dish 