World Affairs: May 2003 Archives

I trusted Bush, and unless something big develops on the weapons front in Iraq soon, it appears as though I was fooled by him. Perhaps he himself was taken in by his intelligence and military advisers. If so, he ought to be angry as hell, because ultimately he bears the responsibility.

It suggests a strain of zealotry in this White House that regards the question of war as just another political debate. It isn't. More than 100 fine Americans were killed in this conflict, dozens of British soldiers, and many thousands of Iraqis. Nobody gets killed or maimed in Capitol Hill maneuvers over spending plans, or battles over federal court appointments. War is a special case. It is the most serious step a nation can take, and it deserves the highest measure of seriousness and integrity.

When a president lies or exaggerates in making an argument for war, when he spins the facts to sell his case, he betrays his public trust, and he diminishes the credibility of his office and our country. We are at war. What we lost in this may yet end up being far more important than what we gained.

Mark Bowden - author of Black Hawk Down and a very interesting profile of Saddam - on the problems resulting from selling a war on false pretenses.

Go listen to Kenneth Pollack, author of "The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq" retract (with plenty of qualifications) his Case for Invading Iraq.

Don't feel too bad Kenneth. A lot of folks fell for it, myself included.

[via Metafilter]

If we were telling the Saudis the truth, we would tell them that their antimodern and antipluralist brand of Islam — known as Wahhabism — combined with their oil wealth has become a destabilizing force in the world. By financing mosques and schools that foster the least tolerant version of Islam, they are breeding the very extremists who are trying to burn down their house and ours.

But we also need to tell ourselves the truth. We constantly complain about the blank checks the Saudis write to buy off their extremists. But who writes the blank checks to the Saudis? We do — with our gluttonous energy habits, renewed addiction to big cars, and our president who has made "conservation" a dirty word.

In the wake of the Iraq war, the E.P.A. announced that the average fuel economy of America's cars and trucks fell to its lowest level in 22 years, with the 2002 model year. That is a travesty. No wonder foreigners think we sent our U.S. Army Humvees to control Iraq, just so we could drive more G.M. Hummers over here. When our president insists that we can have it all — big cars, big oil, lower taxes, with no sacrifices or conservation — why shouldn't the world believe that all we are about is protecting our right to binge?

And so the circle is complete: President Bush won't tell Americans the truth, so we won't tell Saudis the truth, so they won't tell their extremists the truth, so they can go on pumping intolerance and we can go on guzzling gas. Someday, our kids will condemn us for all of this.   

Tom Friedman on hard truths that aren't being told.

The great struggle being waged by President Bush and his supporters is not really about making "the world a safer, better place." It's not even really about an imperial "Pax Americana." It's about the search for meaning by a people so bored, complacent, comfortable and desperate for significance that for them war gives birth not only to terrible beauty but to terrible joy.

This is why even dispassionate, prudential questions about foreign policy provoke outraged invective. Such questions are not merely seen as a threat to a policy position, but as a threat to a metaphysical, religious belief system.

"There comes a time in the late afternoon, when the children tire of their games," G.K. Chesterton wrote. "It is then that they turn to torturing the cat."

It is late afternoon in America, and tired at last of our meaningless games, we're looking for a new source of excitement.

An interesting commentary.

[via Matthew Yglesias]

The American people agree with us on many vital issues--but they believe that we Democrats are weak and indecisive when it comes to standing up to dictators and terrorists, and when it comes to the primary responsibility of government: defending the nation. No matter how compelling our positions on the economy, health care, Social Security, the environment and privacy, if voters continue to see us as feckless and effete they will not listen to our message next year and they will re-elect Mr. Bush.

As we prepare to mount our challenge in 2004, Democrats need to return to the muscular national security principles of Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy and the other Democrats who understood that only by confronting threats abroad could our party achieve its other great mission of expanding equality, opportunity and progress here at home

An important "call to arms" for the Democrats in an op-ed from Donna Brazile - Gore 2000 campaign manager, and Timothy Bergreen - founder of Democrats for National Security.

At long last, the military brass, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, his civilian advisers at the Pentagon, and even the State Department agree about U.S. policy toward Iraq. They all support an administration plan that calls for a fairly rapid drawdown of American forces there: Whereas the United States currently has 130,000 troops in Iraq, by the fall it intends to have just 30,000.

Don't miss this month's issue of TNR. Iraq is rapidly falling apart, and the administration seems to show no capability or interest in fixing it. All of the "Balking Hawk" concerns seem to be coming to fruition and we've found no sign of WMD. Now, I was one that bought Powell's presentation to the UN hook line and sinker, so I still think there were WMD's in Iraq somewhere, but if we're having this much trouble finding any evidence of them, were they really the imminent threat they were presented as? I don't think so and, needless to say, neither does the rest of the world. And if we can't find them, where did they go?

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Right here!

If Syria is ever expelled—a big if—and Hezbollah is allowed to set its own agenda, it may well moderate considerably and invest in the future an independent Lebanese state. Moreover, if the U.S. is successful at integrating disenfranchised Iraqi Shiites into the nascent government—another big if—the Iraqis could provide a model for Shiites in multi-ethnic Lebanon.

A very interesting article in the Columbia Political Review on Hezbollah, Syria, Iran and the future of Lebanon in a post-Saddam world.

[via Matthew Yglesias]

Enough already! It's time to end all the bickering and back-stabbing about our war against Saddam Hussein.

Jeffrey Shaffer of the Christian Science Monitor has an interesting suggestion for our own national reconciliation.