The Review
Powell's Mastery
(
Review) Colbert King, after watching COlin Powell's performance at the UN, has some pointed things to say about Harry Belafonte's odiuus criticisms of the Secretary last year.
If Belafonte had taken on Powell on the basis of policy or other issues, fair enough. But there is no just cause for questioning the blackness or race loyalty of someone who believes that Saddam Hussein, with his nerve gas, chemical weapons and lust for nuclear devices, is a menace to the world and a threat to all Americans without regard to race, color, creed, gender, age, national origin or sexual orientation. Apply that kind of racial litmus test to war with Iraq and you brand every American officer and enlisted man and woman of color who ships out to the Persian Gulf as a racial traitor. That would be reprehensible.
As we used to say on the corner, Harry put some stuff in the game.
Belafonte had every right to attack Powell's views on the best way to handle Saddam Hussein or for the secretary's presence in an administration that Belafonte opposes. But by resorting to slurs, racial breast-beating and suggestions that Powell was a white man's tool, Belafonte betrayed his own intellectual limitations and inability to marshal the substantive arguments to his side.
There's nothing self-hating about Colin Powell, who stands up for affirmative action and freedom of choice in crowds that don't think well of him for it. Unlike some of us in the darker race who can really do a number on "The Man" while safely in the company of an audience that looks like us, Powell doesn't spend his time preaching to the choir. He has taken it publicly to his Republican Party, and he has been booed for it, too. But he stood tall for what he believed.
The suggestion that he may be a traitor to black folks because he doesn't see the world through Belafonte's lens is as arrogant as it is weak and pitiful. I'm certainly on the other side of many issues championed by the Republican administration of which Powell is a part. But does that make me blacker than Powell? Puhleeze!
The person who abandons what he thinks, who lives out his life on the basis of what he believes others want him to think, all in the name of racial loyalty -- or, equally as bad, to suck up to the perceived powerful -- is the one whose life has been marginalized. He is the real slave.
That's not Colin Powell. And if that simple fact is lost on Harry Belafonte, at least the rest of the world knows it.
There's a reason why the Presidency would almost certainly be Colin Powell's if he wanted it, and it's not because he's a house slave.
Yet another sign of the apocalypse
(
Review) The
Guardian has an online poll asking readers whether Colin Powell presented a convincing case for military action against Iraq.
Shockingly, 57% say he did.
Anti-American Studies
(
Review)
The New Republic 's Alan Wolfe describes how university American Studies programs became...something else.
Clearly, some ideas are so whacky that only postgraduate education can prepare someone to believe them.
Threat Level: Yellow
(
Review) The Bush administration raised the national terror threat level from yellow to orange, meaning the country is at "high risk" of a terrorist attack.
The doomsayers return
(
Review) With war in Iraq imminent, writes Victor Davis Hanson, the doomsayers have returned with more Cassandra-like warnings of death and despair for the US.
It's the "brutal Afghan winter" all over again.
I expect our victory in Iraq to be swift, decisive, and relatively bloodless. My only fear is that Iraq will use it's chemical and biological arsenal in a last, desperate gasp. But I am reassured by the fact that we train constantly for such attacks. Indeed, one of my most painful memories is wearing full chemical gear for hours in the hot summer of the New Mexico desert during operational readiness exercises. We take nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) attacks very seriously, and we train for them. In Desert Storm, we wore our NBC overpants and jackets regularly, despite the heat, so that, in case of an attack, all we needed to do was don our hoods, gloves, and overboots.
With adequate precautions, we can hold the loss of life, from even an attack by such horrendous weapons, to a bare minimum.
More on McGrory
(
Review) Jonah Goldberg has more on Mary McGrory's conversion.
But McGrory's explanation reveals how dishonest and even dishonorable many anti-war liberals have been.
She calls President Bush a "flighty thinker," and says, "I have resisted the push to war against Iraq because I thought George W. Bush was trying to pick a fight for all the wrong reasons -big oil, the far right -against the wrong enemy." She adds, "Among people I know, nobody was for the war" and "We wished Powell would oppose the war, because it seemed like such a huge and misdirected overreaction to a bully who got on the nerves of our touchy Texas president."
This is a woman who writes a regular column for The Washington Post, and not one of her reasons has anything to do with the actual facts at issue. She doesn't like Bush. She doesn't like his advisers. Comments about Bush's intelligence seem to be the lynchpins of her opposition to war. When she says that "among the people" she knows, "nobody was for the war," she sounds like Pauline Kael, the New Yorker writer who famously said in 1972 that Nixon couldn't have won because, "I don't know a single person who voted for him!"
Ultimately, McGrory says she's convinced because Powell's on board with a war and she likes Powell. She deserves credit for publicly changing her mind, but that is what's so damning about the knee-jerk opposition of so many anti-war liberals -it's based in animus, not logic.
One wonders why you expected otherwise, Jonah.
Too hispanic to join a country club, but not quite enough to be a federal judge
(
Review) The Democrats' newest argument against Miguel Estrada's judicial nomination? He's not quite Hispanic enough.
"Being Hispanic for us means much more than having a surname," said New Jersey Rep. Bob Menendez, a member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. "It means having some relationship with the reality of what it is to live in this country as a Hispanic American." Even though Estrada is of Hispanic origin, and even though he lives in this country, Menendez argued, he falls short of being a true Hispanic. "Mr. Estrada told us that him being Hispanic he sees having absolutely nothing to do with his experience or his role as a federal court judge. That's what he said to us." Menendez found that deeply troubling.
In other words,
real Hispanics are liberal.
I am reminded of the French Revolution, which, when it began to feed on itself, started executing the original leaders of the Revolution for the crime of "inauthenticity". This is much the same thinking that's being directed at Mr. Estrada's nomination.
Bring our boys home
(
Review) Mark Mazetti reports that the Bush Administration is thinking about drawing down our trrop strength in South Korea.
France abstains?
(
Review) François Heisbourg writes for the
Financial Times that, contrary to the expectation of some, France will not eventually join in any attack on Iraq.
Leaning left
(
Review) Fred Barnes says the Democrats are starting to follow the same losing strategy they followed in 1984.
He expects it to be equally successful.
French Kiss-Off
(
Review) David Brooks writes that the response of French Diplomats to Colin Powell's presentation was eminently reasonable compared to the news coverage watched by the French population.
Greenway gets on board
(
Review) The Boston
Globe's H.D.S. Greenway has joined Mary McGrory on the need to whack Saddam Hussein.
I have argued in this column that pursuing Iraq at this juncture was a mistaken priority, that it would distract from the war on terror, and that solving the Palestinian problem first would better ''drain the swamp'' of terrorism than going after Iraq at this juncture. And I am terrified of imperial overreach in a postwar Iraq.
But now that the case of Iraq has been brought before the high court of the United Nations and adjudicated, I find myself in agreement with The Economist that if the Security Council fails to act, ''it will not be because of a lack of time or a failure of diplomacy. It will be because of a difference of opinion.'' Governments may demur, but it is ''hard to see how extra time will convert them.''
The world is fast reaching a moment similar to that of Munich in 1938. Neville Chamberlain had a choice between dishonor and war. Winston Churchill said at the time: ''He chose dishonor. He will get war.'' The choice today is containment or war. My fear is that containing Iraq is a failed policy and that if we choose containment over war, we will still get war, and a worse war when Saddam has achieved his clandestine weapons goals.
Better late than never, I suppose.
A little late for a conversion
(
Review) John Podhoretz feels much the same as I do about the "conversion" of Mary McGrory and other liberals in the wake of Colin Powell's UN presentation.
I understand the impulse to cheer. But McGrory and her ilk don't deserve it. They deserve raspberries, not cheers. They deserve ridicule, not praise. We hawks shouldn't feel vindicated by their conversion. Rather, they should feel embarrassed by how long it took them and how patently silly the cause of their conversion is.
A single speech by Powell made all the difference? Whom are they kidding? That would be acceptable for a regular citizen who doesn't read four or five newspapers a day, who doesn't attend panel discussions on world topics and who doesn't make judgments on matters of national import for a living.
In American political terms, the only really new thing is that Colin Powell has emerged as the voice of gathering war when for a year we were told he had been serving as the voice of diplomatic restraint. He was supposedly, the "liberal" in the administration.
So, in essence, liberals in the media are using a liberal fig leaf. Because of a contempt or hatred for George W. Bush that is nothing short of demented, they simply refuse to believe the truth when he speaks it.
So they wait for Colin Powell to speak it, at which point they can use his words as a fig leaf and give in without looking like they are in agreement with President Bush.
This is intellectual dishonesty of the highest (or lowest) order.
Not that intellectual dishonesty on the left comes as any particular surprise.
Weasel Words
(
Review) Pejman Yousefzadeh comments on the power of bloggerdom in shaping news coverage.
Steyn Speaks
(
Review) And he suggests we quit the UN.
"The Game is Over"
(
Review) President Bush has made it clear to the UN today, they the US will support another resolution in the UN, but only one that authorizes force to disarm Iraq. In other words, he told the UN to put up or shut up. The money quote:
On Nov. 8, by demanding the immediate disarmament of Iraq, the United Nations Security Council spoke with clarity and authority. Now, the Security Council will show whether its words have any meaning. Having made its demands, the Security Council must not back down when those demands are defied and mocked by a dictator.
The United States would welcome and support a new resolution which makes clear that the Security Council stands behind its previous demands.
Yet resolutions mean little without resolve. And the United States, along with a growing coalition of nations, is resolved to take whatever action is necessary to defend ourselves and disarm the Iraqi regime.
September the 11th, 2001, the American people saw what terrorists could do by turning four airplanes into weapons. We will not wait to see what terrorists or terrorist states could do with chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear weapons.
Saddam Hussein can now be expected to begin another round of empty concessions and transparently false denials. No doubt he will play a last minute game of deception.
The game is over. All the world can rise to this moment. The community of free nations can show that it is strong and confident and determined to keep the peace. The United Nations can renew its purpose and be a source of stability and security in the world. The Security Council can affirm that it is able and prepared to meet future challenges and other dangers.
And we can give the Iraqi people their chance to live in freedom and choose their own government.
Just so that you know, the night of March 2-3 will be a moonless night, with the bright light of Saturn setting at 11:00pm, after which, it will be very, very dark.
I'm just saying.
Happy Birthday, Mr. President
(
Review) On February 6, 1911, Ronald Wilson Reagan was born to Nelle and John Reagan in Tampico, Illinois. Drop by and say hi for his birthday. Here's my message:
Dear President Reagan;
I wish you could read this, and remember the great things you did for our country.
I wish you could know how radically you changed the world for the better.
I wish you could recall how they DID tear down that wall.
I wish you could see how many people live their lives in peace and freedom because of what you said, and what you did.
I wish you could feel the deep gratitude and appreciation so many of us have for your courage and leadership.
But we remember, and we know, and we won't forget.
Godpseed, Mr. President. Godspeed.
Screaming Eagles hit the road
(
Review) The 101st Airborne (Airmobile) Division has received deployment order to the Central Command Area of Operations.
Iraq, in other words.
An Unbiased Jury
(
Review) My newest TechCentralStation Column is up. This time, I discuss Secretary Powell's UN presentation, and the mealy-mouthed response that followed.
The Rat that Roared
(
Review) Christopher Hitchens writes that France is the rat that roared.
Here, also, is a positive monster of conceit. [Chirac] and his foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, have unctuously said that "force is always the last resort." Vraiment? This was not the view of the French establishment when troops were sent to Rwanda to try and rescue the client-regime that had just unleashed ethnocide against the Tutsi. It is not, one presumes, the view of the French generals who currently treat the people and nation of Cote d'Ivoire as their fief. It was not the view of those who ordered the destruction of an unarmed ship, the Rainbow Warrior, as it lay at anchor in a New Zealand harbor after protesting the French official practice of conducting atmospheric nuclear tests in the Pacific. (I am aware that some of these outrages were conducted when the French Socialist Party was in power, but in no case did Mr. Chirac express anything other than patriotic enthusiasm. If there is a truly "unilateralist" government on the Security Council, it is France.)
Well put.
Who's unilateral?
(
Review) Statement by the Foreign Ministers of Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia in response to the presentation by the United States Secretary of State to the United Nations Security Council concerning Iraq:
Earlier today, the United States presented compelling evidence to the United Nations Security Council detailing Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs, its active efforts to deceive UN inspectors, and its links to international terrorism.
Our countries understand the dangers posed by tyranny and the special responsibility of democracies to defend our shared values. The trans-Atlantic community, of which we are a part, must stand together to face the threat posed by the nexus of terrorism and dictators with weapons of mass destruction.
We have actively supported the international efforts to achieve a peaceful disarmament of Iraq. However, it has now become clear that Iraq is in material breach of U.N. Security Council Resolutions, including U.N. Resolution 1441, passed unanimously on November 8, 2002. As our governments said on the occasion of the NATO Summit in Prague: "We support the goal of the international community for full disarmament of Iraq as stipulated in the UN Security Council Resolution 1441. In the event of non-compliance with the terms of this resolution, we are prepared to contribute to an international coalition to enforce its provisions and the disarmament of Iraq."
The clear and present danger posed by the Saddam Hussein's regime requires a united response from the community of democracies. We call upon the U.N. Security Council to take the necessary and appropriate action in response to Iraq's continuing threat to international peace and security.
Funny how all the former communist nations of Europe understand the seriousness of the Iraqi threat, isn't it?
The economic front
(
Review) Larry Kudlow writes that the uncertainty over Iraq is masking real improvements in the economy.
Powell laid out charges that there is "irrefutable and undeniable" evidence that Saddam is hiding weapons of mass destruction, moving weapons from place to place to avoid detection by UN inspectors, failing to provide evidence of chemical weapons that were supposedly destroyed and preventing scientists from meeting alone with inspectors. He also supported claims that Iraq is not only harboring terrorists, but teaching Al Qaeda operatives how to make biological and chemical weapons. As he did so, the U.S. stock market rallied significantly. Gold and oil prices fell.
Our financial markets have long been suffering under the fog of war. They would vastly prefer that the United States and its allies implement regime change and disarmament in Iraq sooner rather than later. Instead of fearing war, markets have been greatly concerned over the delay of war.
Why? Every day we wait for the impending invasion of Iraq is a day Saddam Hussein grows stronger, a day our national security is threatened and a day our economic security is jeopardized.
Every day of waiting raises the probability of another terrorist attack in the United States. What kind of attack? Perhaps poisonous toxins in our water supply or the assassination of our citizens. Maybe more bombings of our key institutions, or any of a thousand nefarious plots to prevent families from being safe and hinder businesses from remaining open to work and produce.
This is the fog of war. And not only does it have our citizens skittish, it's masking real improvements inside our economy.
I suspect the period of uncertainty is about to end.
Thanks for cheering us up, Derb
(
Review) John Derbyshire is evidently filled with foreboding.
Now, I am not a fundamentalist. I don't believe I am going to be "raptured" up to Heaven, or whatever the opposite is down to the other place, in between breakfast and lunch next Tuesday. I don't even think the world is going to be annihilated. I just think that we have come to the end of a golden age of peace and security, and there are some nasty things lurking in the near future. We are heading, in Kevin Myers's memorable phrase, into the realm of chaos.
The other day I was on the checkout line at a convenience store. The people in front of me were having a conversation. One of them, a middle-aged man, was talking about his daughter, whose car had just been stolen. The girl was, apparently, inconsolable. Said her Dad: "She just mopes around the house saying, 'They stole my Camry.' The poor kid, she loved that car. It had a CD player with a six-disk changer. Really, she just can't get over it." The man speaking looked to be no more than 45. I can't imagine his daughter was much over 20. And this was the great disaster of her life: "They stole my Camry."
Look at us! Look at the gross vulgar overflowing fat wealth we live amongst! Look at the great cars that 20-year-old kids drive 400 yards to the mall, to buy things they don't need, gadgets to pack into houses already overflowing with gadgets, clothes to cram into closets stuffed with clothes. Look at the work we do, sitting in humming cubicles scrolling through screens full of numbers, numbers that measure our wealth. Look at the bright, airy schools our kids attend, to be taught that their ancestors were moral criminals, their parents are liars, their culture is a sham. Look at our "reality TV" programs, where people with empty heads wallow in infantile hedonism. Look at our fool diplomats, poring over their treaties and resolutions and communiqués, while young men with burning eyes slip silently into our cities with boxes, canisters, cargoes, vials, and suitcases curiously heavy. Look at this proud tower! And feel its foundations tremble.
Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not out to get you.
Or, in this case, us.
Recalling Davis
(
Review) John Fund writes about the effort to recall Gov. Gray Davis that's starting in California.
Where do I sign?
More on Powell
The punditry is concentrating on Powell's presentation with full force today, including
Jim Hoagland: If war comes, it will come because of the weakness and self-willed blindness of a Security Council that will go down in history as having destroyed the United Nations' credibility and effectiveness.
Richard Cohen: The evidence he presented to the United Nations -- some of it circumstantial, some of it absolutely bone-chilling in its detail -- had to prove to anyone that Iraq not only hasn't accounted for its weapons of mass destruction but without a doubt still retains them. Only a fool -- or possibly a Frenchman -- could conclude otherwise. (Katrina vanden Heuvel, please take note.)
Jim Robbins: The opposition to intervention in Iraq will never define what constitutes "proof" for fear that the United States might be able to produce it, so they adopt the technique of simply questioning what evidence is uncovered. So while the presentation was proof enough for those who acknowledge that there is a degree of ambiguity in the process (at least in what can be publicly known), for those demanding something more definitive, it was hardly proof at all.
Jonathon Schanzer: With Saddam now linked to Osama bin Laden, Americans with doubts about invading Iraq are likely thinking twice. The administration already had justification for military action against Iraq, but Saddam's regime is now clearly a legitimate target in the war on terror.
Paul Greenberg: It is not Colin Powell whose word is at stake here; it is the will of the United Nations. That debating society can finally act, or it can join the League of Nations in the museum -- the latest sad example of the world's failure to build an effective system of collective security.
Robert Kaplan: The conceit of Powell's presentation was that it could budge the likes of Germany and France from their official stances opposing war and thereby extricate the Bush team from its inspections trap. But that opposition has nothing to do with the merits of America's case against Saddam. It has to do with the self-interested motives of Paris, which will do anything to frustrate U.S. policy, and of Berlin, which after supplying Saddam with much of his deadly chemical inventory now fears the domestic political costs of supporting a war to rid him of that inventory. The United States is not dealing here with individuals but with governments--and rapacious ones at that. The United Nations is simply a collection of sovereign states. And different states have their own reasons for being less than resolute in the face of evil.
Look like a win for Secretary Powell.
And, hopefully, the people of Iraq.
The French: Experts on retreat
Review) George Will is unimpressed by French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin's response to Colin Powell's presentation.
Perhaps de Villepin's statement lost some clarity in translation. More likely, it was incoherent because his position is.
He said "the disarmament of Iraq" is "a clear objective which we cannot compromise." He said inspections require Iraq's "active cooperation." Then, although Powell's evidence was still fresh in the minds of the Security Council members, de Villepin said "this cooperation still contains some gray areas." Gray, indeed.
Three paragraphs after saying the inspections "are working," de Villepin said the inspectors have encountered "real difficulties." Three paragraphs later, insincerity producing stammering, he said "our evidence suggests - the evidence suggests that there are significant stocks - there is the possible possession of significant stocks of anthrax and botulism toxins and the possible - possibly a production capacity today."
But in the next paragraph he said, so what? "The absence of long-range delivery systems reduces the potential threat of these weapons" - as though ballistic missiles are necessary.
Concluding with cascading billows of fog about "a collective demarche of responsibility by the international community," de Villepin proposed using "some unused space in Resolution 1441" by "decisive reinforcement" of the inspections, tripling the number of inspectors (to all of 300 for an uncooperative nation the size of California) and opening regional offices. In a flourish that defies satire, de Villepin called for Iraq to pass "legislation" prohibiting itself from manufacturing prohibited weapons.
You gotta love that last line, huh?
Facing irrelevance
(
Review) Jed Babbin says the UN must act, or else it's nothing more than a polite, but useless, debating society.
The most significant aspect of Powell's address was what it did not contain. Powell never asked the U.N. to do anything. He asked for no Security Council determination that Iraq was in "material breach" of U.N. resolutions. He simply declared it to be the case. He asked for no resolution authorizing military action. He asked for — nothing. It was left to the British to explain. British Foreign Minister Jack Straw said that Iraq has no intention of disarming. Straw said that though Britain does not want war, the U.N. now stands — as the League of Nations did in the 1930s — looking on, doing nothing as a small evil grows large. Straw is right, and in his remarks he should be speaking for America as well as Britain. With his evidence, Powell cornered the Security Council. It must act to enforce its resolution, or dissolve into irrelevance.
Unless the U.N. resolves to disarm Iraq by force, and does so in the next few weeks, no American president should ever again bring before it any issue of importance.
And, by the way, any chance we can open up some nice office space in Manhattan by moving the UN to, say, Geneva?
Irrefutable and Undeniable
(
Review) Bill Safire writes that Powell handed the UN a smoking gun, but they don't want to do anything about it.
But unreasonable or fearful or self-interested people — the leaders of France, Germany, Russia, China and Luxembourg (where is Ambassador Perle Mesta now that we need her?) — do not want to find the crime that would necessitate war. That's why they shrug off the cover-up. Their reaction to Powell's graphic presentation of smoking guns: Send more inspectors to meet more delays, and tell the C.I.A.'s George Tenet to keep those tapes and pictures coming.
He won't. Rather than tell the Iraqis or the penetrated U.N. inspectors what we know about portable and underground sites, which would be quickly moved elsewhere, we will mark them as targets for destruction.
Just as we've already marked Saddam.
Mary McGrory's on Board
(
Review) Even an old leftist like Mary McGrory was persuaded by Colin Powell's speech at the UN. Sure, she still hates Bush, and it pains her to have to say he was right on Iraq. So painful that it's all she can do to admit it, through her disdain for the president.
My favorite line:
But I had heard enough to know that Saddam Hussein, with his stockpiles of nerve gas and death-dealing chemicals, is more of a menace than I had thought.
You're just learning about this now? You have a regular column in the Washington
Post, one of the nation's premier newspapers, where you write about politics, and you're
just now figuring this out? Where have tyou
been for the last 12 years?
Jeebus.
Well, OK, welcome on board, Mary, but I gotta tell you, we're keeping you away from anything sharp or pointy. It's for your own good.
Whither Germany?
(
Review) Reihan Salam analyzes Gerhard Schroeder's attempt to turn Germany into a "normal" nation.
He isn't impressed with the results so far.
He's merciless
(
Review) Lileks delivers a vicious fisking to the Green Party moron in Minneapolis who responded to the State of the Union speech.
Smoking Gun
(
Review) Fred Kaplan says that COlin Powell delivere the goods today.
But contrary to his own (clearly low-balling) remarks of recent days, Powell did produce the proverbial "smoking gun." And, while his evidence may not have been quite as shattering as Adlai Stevenson's U-2 photos of Soviet missiles in Cuba, it came remarkably close—so much so that, if the Security Council does not now take action against Iraq, it might as well disband.
Yep. It might as well, based on the reactions from France, Russia, and China.
Our allies, the Turks
(
Review) This is how
real allies behave.
France, Germany, take note.
We're going to war
(
Review) That's Joel Mowbray's take, and it's probably right on target.
Powell's speech wasn't about changing minds
Review) Andrew Bacevich says that Colin Powell's UN presentation had some other purposes.
To those governments hitherto opposing intervention, Secretary Powell provides cover to permit them to follow Washington's lead. To those who wish to have some say in the coming effort to transform the Middle East, Powell has offered one final invitation: Either get on board now or be left behind.
Because the train is leaving the station. With or without allies — and barring Saddam's removal by a coup or voluntary exile — the Bush administration is going to war.
All aboard.
The right questions
(
Review) Jim Robbins gives us a list of questions he'd ask if he, like British lefty Tony Benn, got the chance to interview Saddam.
The Peace movement
(
Review) Ralph Peters comments of the Peace Movement.
The "peace movement" is and has been a curious affair for at least a century. It has always found its recruits in those who believe, against all evidence, that their own governments are malevolent, whether in Washington, London, Ottawa or Canberra, while even the bloodiest foreign dictator really wants peace. Although there undoubtedly are sincere souls in the movement, one wonders about their psychology and the extent to which their unhappiness with their own democratically elected, rule-of-law governments is a reflection of inner, not outer, discontents.
Actually, one doesn't wonder much at all.
Our "allies", the French
(
Review Fred Barnes writes that Colin Powell's presentation made it harder for the international nay-sayers. But France may be up to the challenge.
Steyn Speaks
(
Review) Like me, Mark Steyn is torked off by the mealy-mouthing at the UN that followed Secretary Powell's presentation.
Resolution 1441, painstakingly negotiated by General Powell and French Foreign Minister de Villepin, was never a test of Saddam. It was a test of the U.N. The faxed-in boilerplate responses to the Powell presentation couldn't have been clearer.
France: "They raise questions which deserve further investigation…."
China: "We support the continuation of inspections…."
"Russia welcomes the continuation of dialogue…. We hope that this dialogue will be extremely concrete…. The Security Council may need to adopt a new resolution, and perhaps more than one…."
Four, five, nine, there's always room for one more. You got the feeling that if they could have dragged out their expressions of condolences regarding the space shuttle for the full seven minutes, they'd have been happy to do so.
That's OK. We'll take care of it.
(
Review) Seth Gitell writes that Colin Powell did a good job today.
Powell’s presentation shifts the debate. There can no longer be any doubt that Hussein is playing a cat-and-mouse game with the UN. The UN can decide to do one of two things: 1) do nothing and be relegated to a fancy debating club along the lines of its precursor, the League of Nations; or 2) enforce its resolutions and disarm Iraq. If it chooses the first course, it, as Powell suggested, "puts itself in danger of irrelevance."
So far, it looks like the UN is choosing "irrelevance".
Appeasement or Empire
(
Review) Max Boot offeres a history of US appeasement in the Mideast. Sometimes, he says, Empire brings much more security than appeasement.
In centuries past, the wild and unruly passions of the Islamic world were kept within tight confines by firm, often ruthless imperial authority, mainly Ottoman, but, starting in the late 19th century, increasingly British and French. These distant masters did not always rule wisely or well, but they generally prevented the region from menacing the security of the outside world. When the pirates of the Barbary Coast (as Europeans called North Africa) could not be dealt with by the payment of ransom, the new American republic, and then the Europeans, took matters into their own hands. Ultimately, Algiers, Tripoli, Morocco, and Tunis were colonized, and thus ended their piratical threat. When a group of Egyptian army officers led by an early-day Nasser named Arabi Pasha tried to seize power in 1882, the British occupied the country, and wound up administering it from behind the scenes for decades to come. When a fanatical Islamic sect led by a self-proclaimed Mahdi (or messiah) took over the Sudan, and threatened to spread its extremist violence throughout the Islamic world, Gen. Horatio Herbert Kitchener snuffed out the movement in a hail of gunfire at the Battle of Omdurman in 1898. When a pro-Nazi regime took power in Baghdad in 1941, the British intervened to topple the offending dictator, Rashid Ali.
Strong medicine, that. And no longer considered acceptable in today's post-colonial world. As America slowly took over Britain's oversight role after 1945, Washington tried self-consciously to carve out a different style of leadership, one that was meant to distinguish the virtuous Americans from the grasping, greedy imperialists who had come before. America wanted to show that it sympathized with the Arabs, Persians, and Muslims, had no designs on their lands or oil wealth, and would not even choose sides in their struggle to eradicate the nascent state of Israel. Unfortunately America showed something else--that we were weak, and could be attacked, economically and physically and rhetorically, with impunity. That we were a paper tiger--or, to use Osama bin Laden's metaphor, a "weak horse." "When people see a strong horse and a weak horse," the leader of al Qaeda has said, "by nature they will like the strong horse." It is no wonder that America today has so few real friends in the region. Why would anyone ride alongside a weak horse?
Why, indeed?
Are we ready
(
Review) Tom Friedman says the Bush Administration is getting ready for WWII, while the US electorate is getting ready for Grenada.
No bitterness
(
Review) Tony Blankley cautions us not to be too hard on the French and Germans, or on the UN.
Today, we need to rise above our temporary anger and seek to preserve our bonds with our European cousins — despite their current behavior. If we have to go off to war without them, let us do so with good cheer — not with angry words. While we hope that the war on terrorism will not metastasize into a clash of civilizations, that possibility must be considered and prepared for. If that terrible contingency does result, it is the Euro-American civilization that must be on the same side. Even if there is no great struggle in which we will need Europe's help, there is a thousand years of common heritage with them that we should cherish — not scorn.
The United Nations, too, can be of value to us. We created it to help us manage a troubled world. It has fallen far from its purpose, but we should try to rejuvenate its values. Even in its current sordid state, it may yet prove useful to us in the upcoming war — both to calm foreign peoples and (as the polls disclose) to strengthen the president's domestic support for war. Whether we get the U.N. endorsement or not, we should act on behalf of the United Nations, confident that by our conduct — and our victory — we champion and strengthen the universal principles of justice which engendered its birth a half-century ago.
This is probably wise advice. But tough to follow.
Time to stop talking
(
Review) British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw says the time has come to act on the matter of Iraq.
I have hoped and prayed all along that this crisis could be resolved by Iraq’s co-operation with weapons inspectors. But as each day passes without an Iraqi response to the inspectors’ outstanding questions, so the prospect of a peaceful outcome diminishes. It seems increasingly clear that Saddam will never voluntarily relinquish his weapons.
Calls to give the inspectors more time are futile as long as Saddam refuses to co-operate. We must not allow endless calls for more time to become a cop-out. Iraq’s non-compliance stretches back not just 60 days but 600 weeks. The chief inspectors will report to the Security Council on February 14 and we will listen with care to their view on whether there is any sign of active co-operation. The teams are employed to verify compliance, not to act as detectives conducting a hunt for evidence in the face of persistent obstruction.
For the past 13 years, Saddam has typified the threats the world faces in the post-Cold War era. WMD — weapons of mass destruction — is a rather abstract phrase. But it covers poisonous gases, chemical weapons, and viruses for deadly diseases like anthrax and smallpox, biological weapons, as well as nuclear missiles and bombs. Saddam has not only developed but used WMD in contravention of international arms control agreements and a host of UN resolutions. And he has been a consistent supporter of terrorist causes.
At times, the world has struggled to respond. But in unanimously adopting SCR 1441 last November, the international community showed that it could yet summon the collective will to meet the Iraqi threat. Given the UN’s painful experience of Iraqi prevarication, deceit and contempt for previous resolutions, the demands of SCR 1441 were necessarily simple: full Iraqi disarmament via immediate and active co-operation with UN inspectors. The consequences of non-compliance could not have been clearer. Saddam was to expect “serious consequences”, diplomatic code for disarmament by force.
Despite the clarity of its uncompromising message, there are no signs that Saddam is about to abandon the habits of a lifetime and comply with SCR 1441. As I am sure the Secretary of State Colin Powell’s presentation will confirm today, his preferred strategy remains, as ever, concealment, evasion, intimidation and deceit.
And the UN Security Council met that presentation with more appeasement and delay.
The Presentation
(
Review) Here is the full text of Colin Powell's speech to the UN today.
Making the Case
(
Review) Colin Powell laid it all out. It's hard to argue with the evidence he presented. Even Dianne Fienstein said it was compelling.
It's "Stevenson Day"!
(
Review) This should be interesting, at the very least.
Hitchens on Mandela
(
Review) Christopher Hitchens describes Nelason MAndela's views on Iraq "odious".
I have never in my life kept a photograph of myself with any politician or celebrity except the one I have of my meeting with Mandela. I can remember sitting and drinking several times with his successor Thabo Mbeki, in the latter's student leftist days. Nothing can take anything away from the imperishable movement that they and others led. But this latest garbage is a very timely caution against our common tendency to make supermen and stars and heroes out of fellow humans. Iraq is not Saddam any more than Zimbabwe is Mugabe, and being on the right side of history once is no guarantee that the subsequent fall will not be from a very great height.
All heros have feet of clay.
Actually, it didn't even work that well even when DeGaulle himself was doing it
(
Review) Amir Taheri writes that Jacques Chirac is just playing the same old Gaullist power games.
Not very well, though, and not even to France's eventual benefit.
A few days of freedom
(
Review) Zainab Al-Suwaij remembers a few brief days in 1991, when Iraq was a free country.
I felt this was an historic moment for the Iraqi people, and I wanted to record it. So I grabbed my family's camcorder and started filming the scene in the streets, where people were dancing and shouting in celebration after many of the troops retreated. Cars honked, people handed out sweets, and women and children hugged and kissed. Walking around with the camcorder, I felt as if I were taping an enormous wedding celebration.
That first night of the uprising was the first time I ever saw Iraqis reveal themselves to one another and talk openly about who we were and what had happened to us and our families. Our neighbor, Said, a former army general, told us he had been jailed for ten years for refusing to join the Baath Party while he was in the military. I was shocked to find out he'd been in prison; I had always thought of him merely as our strange, aloof neighbor. Two of the injured men, Sami and Hazam, recounted their experiences. Years before, Sami had been jailed for no reason and had spent four years in prison. He described how prison guards had beaten him, tied him to a ceiling fan, and then turned it on. Hazam had also been imprisoned. He later joined the army to get out of prison but deserted when the military invaded Kuwait. Now he was hiding in Karbala.
That night, we also discussed some of our hopes and visions for the future of Iraq. A medical student named Ali, who had come to the mosque and volunteered to treat the wounded, joked, "When we capture Saddam, we'll charge five dollars to everyone who wants to spit on him." We all started laughing because previously nobody had ever dared to make jokes like this. Ali continued, "If someone wants to kick him, ten dollars. That's how we'll raise the money to rebuild Iraq."
Later that morning, I walked over to the city jail. The front door was open, and most of the guards had fled, leaving the prisoners alone. At first, the remaining guards wouldn't let me in because I was a woman, but, when I insisted, they backed down. I explored the jail for over an hour. It was a huge building with many floors. People were wandering through the halls, and inmates were banging on the walls of their cells, yelling to be let out. There were prisoners from many countries--Kuwaitis, Saudis, Palestinians, Jordanians, Egyptians, and even a few Europeans who had been arrested during the invasion of Kuwait and shipped to Karbala. Although there were still a few cowed guards around, everyone was being freed by members of the uprising who had come to the jail over the past day. One man, a Kuwaiti, told me he had come to Iraq to check on his brother, a prisoner of war from Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. He was arrested and held for three months; prison guards tortured him every day. "Get out of the city," I told him. "It's not safe." I pointed him in the direction of the U.S.-held zone in southern Iraq.
Some of the older prisoners didn't even know what year it was. Some prisoners no longer remembered why they were imprisoned in the first place.
As I wandered around the jail, some of the liberated prisoners gave us a tour. I saw huge meat grinders that fed into a septic tank and rooms I believe were used for sexual abuse. Instruction manuals on how to use torture devices were posted on the wall. A terrible smell was everywhere. Here before me was the dark secret of Saddam's Iraq. I felt sick but free. Now, I thought, these rooms will never be used again.
How wrong she was. To our eternal shame.
Higher dreams
(
Review) Charles Krauthammer says it's time to get off our butts and begin dreaming outrageous dreams again.
What an end. What a dead end. After millennia of dreaming of flight, the human race went from a standing start at Kitty Hawk to the moon in 66 years. And yet in the next 34 years, we've gone nowhere. We've gone backward. We've retreated from the moon and spent our time spinning around endlessly in low-Earth orbit.
The way to consecrate the memory of those noble souls on Columbia is not to mindlessly repeat the past 20 years but to rethink the whole enterprise. For now, we need to keep the shuttle going because we have no other way to get into space. And we'll need to support the space station for a few years, because we have no other program in place.
But that is not our destiny, nor our purpose. If we're going to risk that first 150 miles of terrible stress on body and machine to get into space, then let's do it to get to the next million miles -- to cruise the beauty and vacuum of interplanetary space to new worlds. Back to the moon. Establish a lunar base. And then on to Mars.
On to Mars!
Daschle Loses It
(
Review) Tom Daschle is hardly the person to accuse the president of a credibility gap, writes Stephen Hayes in
The Weekly Standard.
By suggesting that Saddam may not currently possess weapons of mass destruction, Daschle implicitly accepts a series of bizarre assumptions: (1) that Saddam Hussein unilaterally disarmed at some point between 1998 and 2002, the four-year gap between U.N. inspections on Iraqi soil, (2) that he disarmed despite his refusal to do so for the seven years inspectors were in Iraq (1991-1998), and (3) that he somehow failed to notify the international community of this disarmament--a heads-up that would have ended the U.N. sanctions that have strangled the Iraqi economy.
No serious person believes this. Does Tom Daschle? I put the question to him directly.
"You don't think Saddam disarmed unilaterally, do you?"
"We don't have any concrete evidence that he has not," Daschle replied. "And that's the issue."
And that's about the stupidest thing I've ever heard about coming from the lips of a man who fancies himself a national political leader. And it explains why the electorate beleives the Republican Party is more trustworthy on national security issues, by a margin of 47% to 16%.
Taking a second look
(
Review) Jeffrey Goldberg explains in the
New Yorker why the CIA and Pentagon have been taking a second look at the links between Iraq and Al-Qaida.
The case for war
(
Review) Jim Baker says the case for disarming Iraq by force has been made. Tomorrow's "Stevenson Day" at the UN is a necessary "go the extra mile" step, but, in the end, we will probably have to go in ourselves.
There is still a slim chance that war can be averted. Saddam's regime may be overthrown or he may go into exile. But the odds in favor of military action are now overwhelming. Whatever the Security Council does now, the U.S. is well positioned to justify its actions to the American public and other countries. Moreover, when the U.S. and its allies achieve victory in the field, we can expect to see governments that opposed military action falling in line behind U.S. leadership.
But let us have no illusions. Armed conflict is never cost-free. With good planning and some luck, losses will be low. But there will be casualties among American and allied servicemen and women as well as Iraqi civilians. In addition, war can create dynamics that are difficult to predict and control. This is particularly true of the Middle East, where a U.S.-led campaign against Iraq may give rise to even more anti-American sentiment.
Yet we cannot allow the real risks associated with acting against Iraq to paralyze us. They must be balanced against the risks of inaction--in this case, a future nuclear, biological or chemical attack against the U.S., its allies, or Iraq's neighbors. We cannot permit Iraq to become another North Korea. Leadership is not about making easy decisions. It is about making right ones. When it comes to Iraq, the administration has made the right one. With Secretary Powell's mission to the U.N., it is now up to the Security Council to make the right one as well.
It will be interesting to watch the next few days to see if the UN completely loses its relevance.
Definitely not rocket scientists
(
Review) According to CNN, the space shuttle was traveling at 18 times the speed of light, when the disaster occured.
I was previously unaware that the space shuttle had reached a speed of warp 2.6.
Smearing Pickering
(
Review) Civil Libertarian Nat Hentoff details the unscrupulous tactics used by Democrats to smear Judge Charles Pickering.
Steyn Speaks
(
Review) Mark Steyn comments on French hypocrisy.
A few weeks ago, there was a spot of bother in Ivory Coast. Don't ask me what's going on: President Wossname represents the southern Wotchamacallit tribe and they're unpopular with natives in the northern province of Hoogivsadam. Something like that. But next thing you know, Chirac's troops have locked down the entire joint and forced both parties into a deeply unpopular peace deal that suits nobody but the Frenchies. The streets of Abidjan are full of guys jumping up and down calling Chirac ''Satan.'' All of this while the UN is hunkered down in a monthlong debate on whether to approve Article IV Sub-section 7.3(d) of Hans Blix's hotel bill. Ivory Coast is nominally a sovereign state. The French have no more right to treat it as a colony than the British have to treat Iraq as a colony. But they do. And they don't care what you think about it.
So they're not appeasing Saddam Hussein. On the matter of Islamic terrorists killing American office workers and American forces killing Iraqi psychopaths, they are equally insouciant. Let's say Saddam has long-range weapons of mass destruction. If he nuked Montpelier (Vermont), Chirac would insist that Bush needed to get a strong Security Council resolution before responding. If he nuked Montpellier (France), Iraq would be a crater by lunchtime.
France isn't upset about what we're doing vis a vis Iraq. It's just upset that
we're doing it.
Ah, Those Principled Europeans
(
Review) Tom Friedman appears to have lost patience with our French and German "allies".
Last week I went to lunch at the Hotel Schweizerhof in Davos, Switzerland, and discovered why America and Europe are at odds. At the bottom of the lunch menu was a list of the countries that the lamb, beef and chicken came from. But next to the meat imported from the U.S. was a tiny asterisk, which warned that it might contain genetically modified organisms — G.M.O.'s.
My initial patriotic instinct was to order the U.S. beef and ask for it "tartare," just for spite. But then I and my lunch guest just looked at each other and had a good laugh. How quaint! we said. Europeans, out of some romantic rebellion against America and high technology, were shunning U.S.-grown food containing G.M.O.'s — even though there is no scientific evidence that these are harmful. But practically everywhere we went in Davos, Europeans were smoking cigarettes — with their meals, coffee or conversation — even though there is indisputable scientific evidence that smoking can kill you. In fact, I got enough secondhand smoke just dining in Europe last week to make me want to have a chest X-ray.
So pardon me if I don't take seriously all the Euro-whining about the Bush policies toward Iraq — for one very simple reason: It strikes me as deeply unserious. It's not that there are no serious arguments to be made against war in Iraq. There are plenty. It's just that so much of what one hears coming from German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and French President Jacques Chirac are not serious arguments. They are station identification.
They are not the arguments of people who have really gotten beyond the distorted Arab press and tapped into what young Arabs are saying about their aspirations for democracy and how much they blame Saddam Hussein and his ilk for the poor state of their region. Rather, they are the diplomatic equivalent of smoking cancerous cigarettes while rejecting harmless G.M.O.'s — an assertion of identity by trying to be whatever the Americans are not, regardless of the real interests or stakes.
It will be interesting to see whether or not France decides to join us in Iraq once they realize that we are going in with ot without them.
Get right back up
(
Review) Military Sci-Fi author John Ringo says the Columbia disaster shouldn't deter us from keeping the space program active.
I'm sure that as I write this, there are people dancing in the streets. In Jordan. In "Palestine." In Syria and Iraq and Egypt and Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Cheering that another American symbol, best of all one that had an Israeli on board, has been destroyed.
So what? We can build another space shuttle. And there will be applicants out the door to fly on it. That is why our enemies hate us.
Brave men and women will be going up again soon. Trusting their lives to fragile tiles and Rube Goldberg engineering. They're going up there to tell the universe, to tell the world, that we Americans, we people of the West, can be smacked down, but we just get right back up. We may wobble, but nobody has ever been able to put us down.
Well, said, John.
Kerry vs. Kerry
(
Review)
The New Republic's Peter Beinart writes that John Kerry, the Democratic presidential contender, and John Kerry, the senator, appear to be opposed to each other on the war with Iraq.
Kerry voted for the broader resolution and against the narrower one--thus avoiding a problem in the general election and potentially creating one in the Democratic primary. And, in the nearly four months since, he has dealt with this potential problem by doing something remarkable: He has pretended the vote never happened. The resolution that the Senate passed--and Kerry supported--encouraged Bush to work with the United Nations, but it required him to do nothing more than alert Congress 48 hours after initiating hostilities and report to Congress every 60 days after that. West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd, who opposed the measure, accurately described it as "handing the president unchecked authority." But Kerry said exactly the opposite. Two days after the vote, he visited Tucson, where he told a Democratic group, "Don't for an instant think the president has some great free hand." He went on to say, "If the president of the United States decides to go [to war] unilaterally, I think it would be one of the great catastrophes and mistakes of our time." It was a rather astonishing statement for a man who had just voted to grant the president the authority to do exactly that.
This is the kind of intellectual disconnect one has to deal with when one's party is so out of touch with the feelings of the general public, and lacks seriousness in national security issues.
