Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

So it is understandable that le Carre's essay has flitted around the Internet where, as it happened, it landed in my in-basket. I found it riveting -- not for its content, which is absolute blarney -- but for what it says about America's image abroad and, just as important, the intellectual collapse of what is called the antiwar movement.

Jan. 30, 2003:

In a way, Bush is as trapped as his nemesis, Saddam Hussein. The Iraqi dictator cannot give up his weapons of mass destruction, because without them he is just another Middle East despot -- not the modern-day Saladin he once proclaimed he was. He would be perceived as weak -- a terminal illness in his part of the world -- and lacking the very weapons he credits with forcing the Americans to pause on the so-called Highway of Death during the Gulf War and leave him in power.

And if Hussein cannot do an about-face, neither can Bush, who has sent an expeditionary force halfway around the world. He can neither let it sit in the desert, its energy and morale being sapped, nor accept some sort of compromise deal that would bring it home. He has laid out his case in the boldest, clearest language: Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction must go. Anything less would make Bush look like a temporizer and America a blowhard. War is inevitable.

Feb. 6, 2003:

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.

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But the case Powell laid out regarding chemical and biological weapons was so strong -- so convincing -- it hardly mattered that nukes may be years away, and thank God for that. In effect, he was telling the French and the Russians what could happen -- what would happen -- if the United Nations did not do what it said it would and hold Saddam Hussein accountable for, in effect, being Saddam Hussein.

The French, though, are so far deaf to such logic. Their foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, said that the consequences of war are dire and unpredictable. He is right about that. But the consequences of doing nothing -- and mere containment of Iraq amounts to nothing -- are also dire and somewhat predictable.

Feb. 23, 2003:

Liar" is a word rarely used in Washington. This is not because the town lacks liars but because the word is so unambiguous -- so lacking in customary fudge -- that its use was long ago forbidden by, of course, consensus. So it was particularly shocking, not to mention refreshing, to hear Richard Perle on Sunday call Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) a liar to his face. I paused to see if the Washington Monument would crack down the middle.

It did not. Moreover, Kucinich himself seemed only momentarily fazed by Perle's sharp right to his integrity and went on, indomitable demagogue that he seems to be, to maintain that the coming war with Iraq will be fought to control that nation's oil.

March 11, 2003:

Pope John Paul II, former president Jimmy Carter and a host of other religious and civic leaders have declared that the coming conflict with Iraq would not meet the test of a "just war." Carter laid out his case in a New York Times op-ed essay the other day, and I read it agreeing with some of his points, arguing with others but, in the end, raising a question of my own: Never mind a just war, what about a just peace?

There ought to be such a thing. There ought to be an understanding that while war is bad -- very, very bad -- sometimes peace is no better, especially if all it does is postpone a worse war. That is what would happen if the United States now pulled back, leaving Saddam Hussein in power and our troops sweating in the desert, their morale and their strength dissipating.

March 20, 2003:

How could I, a supposed liberal, support the war in Iraq? I have several reasons, but the most important has to do with a recurring dream I used to have. In it, I am entering Auschwitz.

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I don't know -- and I somehow doubt -- that George W. Bush spends much time ruminating on the Holocaust and pairing it with what happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I do think, though, that he thinks about evil. He does so, we are told, in religious terms, and in that he is different from me. But we both come out in the same place: Evil must be confronted. Since Hiroshima, there is little room to maneuver. Bad guys can do an awful lot of damage.

April 11, 2006:

We all know the cliche about generals fighting the last war, but in Iraq it is not the tactics that were duplicated -- certainly not compared to the Persian Gulf War -- but the tendency of the military to do what it was told and keep its mouth shut. Shelton, who retired in 2001, cannot be blamed for this and maybe no one but Donald Rumsfeld can, but the fact remains that the United States fought a war many of its military leaders thought was unnecessary, unwise, predicated on false assumptions and incompetently managed. Still, no one really spoke up.

Mideast envoy and retired Marine Corps Major Gen. Anthony Zinni, Aug. 23, 2002:

Attacking Iraq now will cause a lot of problems. I think the debate right now that's going on is very healthy. If you ask me my opinion, Gen. Scowcroft, Gen. Powell, Gen. Schwarzkopf, Gen. Zinni, maybe all see this the same way.

It might be interesting to wonder why all the generals see it the same way, and all those that never fired a shot in anger and really hell-bent to go to war see it a different way. That's usually the way it is in history. (Crowd laughter.)

But let me tell you what the problem is now as I see it. You need to weigh this: what are your priorities in the region? That's the first issue in my mind.

The Middle East peace process, in my mind, has to be a higher priority. Winning the war on terrorism has to be a higher priority. More directly, the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Central Asia need to be resolved, making sure Al Qaeda can't rise again from the ashes that are destroyed. Taliban cannot come back. That the warlords can't regain power over Kabul and Karzai, and destroy everything that has happened so far.