[iwar] [fc:War.Comes.Closer]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2002-08-14 06:53:02
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From: Fred Cohen <fc@all.net>
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Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2002 06:53:02 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [iwar] [fc:War.Comes.Closer]
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Washington Times
August 14, 2002
War Comes Closer
By Tony Blankley
I have the feeling that the future is imminent. The pace, volume and variety
of war rumors and comments increase weekly. Here in Washington, in pro-war
circles there is a nasty story going about that Colin Powell is trying to
veto the president's war plans with the threat of resignation (and some sort
of implicit racial backlash that would ensue).
Meanwhile, in some anti-war conversations there is a barely veiled, and
slanderous, suggestion that Jewish war-advocates in high government office
are trying to bamboozle our president into starting a war with Iraq for
Israel's sake.
For whatever reason, the rash of Pentagon leaks or disinformation releases
(or both) that filled the papers in July seem to have subsided. Does that
mean the president has reached his conclusion and laid down the law?
On the Republican side, traditionally strong supporters of the president,
men of honor (if not necessarily wisdom on this matter) such as Jack Kemp,
Dick Armey and Brent Scowcroft feel obliged to state publicly their
opposition to the war. One can only presume that they sense they ought to
get their convictions on the record before hostilities start in a few
months.
On Monday of this week, Henry Kissinger, the high mandarin of the American
foreign-policy establishment, published in The Washington Post his
begrudging, but nevertheless dispositive, endorsement of the president's
pre-emptive war strategy. The timing, substance and authorship of this
extraordinary document hardly can be overstated.
Mr. Kissinger's entire career as statesman and scholar has centered on the
inviolability of the nation-state (and as a result, his opposition to
pre-emptive war). In this article, he kicks over his world-historic career
principle, and endorses - just for Iraq - pre-emption. He expressly embraces
this challenge to an international order that has existed for 354 years -
since the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, and that he has made his life pursuit.
Such a man does not make such a concession, but for the extremity in which
he believes we find ourselves today.
He also rejects, en passant, solving the Middle East crisis before Iraq. He
insists on a congressional debate and vote, and on a time-limited demand for
"a stringent inspection system" from Saddam Hussein. He justifies such a war
only if we are prepared to sustain it and the aftermath of nation-building,
"however long it is needed."
In perhaps his most incisive assertion, he justifies "bringing matters to a
head with Iraq" for what he calls a "generally unstated reason" - "While
long-range American strategy must try to overcome legitimate causes of
[Islamic] resentments, immediate policy must demonstrate that a terrorist
challenge . . . produces catastrophic consequences for the perpetrators, as
well as their supporters, tacit or explicit." In other words, we must break
the will and pride of all those in the Islamic world who would dare
terrorize us and the international system.
It is noteworthy that the Texas-based Strategic Forecasting Co.
(Stratfor.com) published on the same day a report that concluded "the Bush
administration is not abandoning its strategy [of war with Iraq] because it
sees a successful campaign against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein as a prime
way to shatter the psychological advantage within the Islamist movement and
demonstrates U.S. power."
The usually well-sourced Stratfor explains that from the 1973 oil embargo,
through the defeat of the Russians in Afghanistan, Saddam's 1991 survival,
the U.S. defeat in Somalia to September 11, the centuries-old Islamic sense
of impotence has been reversed. In explaining the Bush war aims, they
elaborate, Mr. Bush intends to defeat the Islamist sense of their inevitable
triumph - to defeat their psychology of manifest destiny.
I take it as possibly not coincidental that both Mr. Kissinger and the
well-connected, Texas-based Stratfor state on the same day this "unstated"
Bush war aim. If it is true, I commend the president for his strategic
wisdom and his moral courage in facing the heart of the threat to our
nation.
When I wrote at the lead of this column that I sensed the future is
imminent, I did not mean a future as we have daily and benignly experienced
it each morning these many decades. The imminent future the signs suggest we
are facing is a violent and perhaps prolonged struggle to defeat the will of
an aroused and myriad people. As Winston Churchill warned shortly before
World War II, we are moving into a time of "measureless peril."
Tony Blankley is editorial page editor of The Washington Times. 

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