BY DAN
KENNEDY
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Wednesday, April 13, 2005
FISH, BARREL, MARK STEYN.
This is way too easy, but here I go anyway. Yesterday I was reading
right-wing columnist Mark
Steyn - who, you will not
be surprised to learn, is a major fan of the red-faced ranting UN
ambassador-designate, John Bolton - when my eyes alighted upon this
extraordinary passage:
The assumption seems to be
that, with things going Bush's way in Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt and
Saudi Arabia, Bush needs to reach out by stiffing the counselors
who called it right and appointing more emollient types who got
everything wrong. Each to his own. But as I see it, the question
isn't why Wolfowitz and Bolton should hold these jobs, but why
Kofi Annan, Jacques Chirac, John Kerry and assorted others still
hold their jobs. (Mark
Steyn, Chicago Sun-Times,
3/20/05)
Now, I realize it has become a sign
of terminally unhip liberalism to point out that we supposedly went
to war to root out Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.
Nevertheless, I thought it would be fun to review Steyn's
pronunciamentos before and during the war. Roll the tape:
There may be valid
arguments for not going to war with Iraq, but not the ones that
begin: Oh, even if Saddam has weapons of mass destruction, he'd
never use them against the West. Never bet on a dictator's
rationality. (Mark Steyn, Jerusalem Post, 1/22/03)
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. (Mark Steyn,
Chicago Sun-Times, 2/7/03)
"Weapons of Mass Destruction.
Remember them? Not a single one has yet been found" (Bill Neely,
ITV, April 10). MBITRW [Meanwhile Back in the Real World]:
Actually, I almost wish this one were true. Anything that turns up
now will be assumed to have been planted. If I were Washington,
I'd consider burying anything I found. After all, an America that
feels no need to bother faking justifications for invasion would
be far more alarming to most Europeans. Instead, horrible things
will turn up, but will never be "conclusive" enough for the
French, who've got all the receipts anyway. (Mark Steyn, Daily
Telegraph, London, 4/12/03)
Maybe the Bushies took Steyn's
advice and buried the weapons. Because here, lest we forget, is the
conclusion of Bush's hand-picked weapons inspector, David
Kay:
Two days after resigning
as the Bush administration's top weapons inspector in Iraq, David
Kay said Sunday that his group found no evidence Iraq had
stockpiled unconventional weapons before the U.S.-led invasion in
March. (CNN,
1/26/04)
Now, a fair-minded observer would
note that Steyn never came right out and said that Iraq had weapons
of mass destruction - rather, he claimed that Bush's war was
justified because of strong suspicions that Iraq had such weapons.
True enough. Check the record, and you'll see that even Hans Blix
thought Saddam possessed such weapons.
But what Steyn omits, of course, is
that UN inspectors were on the ground, assiduously searching for
those weapons, and were forced to leave only so that Bush could get
his war on before the desert got too hot. Bush's mistake wasn't in
being wrong, or in overhyping the evidence; it was in
short-circuiting the very process he'd agreed to as an alternative
to war. Sorry for the italics, but this stuff just drives me
crazy.
And remember, Mohamed ElBareidi,
director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, had
already pretty much cleared Iraq of possessing nuclear weapons. (Yes,
Saddam wanted nukes. News value, please?) Except that folks
like Bush, Dick Cheney, and, of course, Steyn didn't believe
ElBareidi. Except that ElBareidi was right.
But what about the progress Iraq
appears to have been made? I'm glad; I hope it lasts; and it could have been accomplished far more effectively if Bush had been willing to build a genuine international coalition. Since the weapons turned out not to exist, then there really wasn't any hurry, was there?
Now, let me return to trying to
figure out what Bush was right about, and what Chirac, Annan, and
Kerry were wrong about. The mind boggles.
posted at 11:40 AM |
1 comments
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1 Comments:
"assiduously searching", yeah, like the assiduous oversight of the "Oil for Food" Program. Please.
So anyone who doesn't buy into Kofi Annan is suspect? Face it, this is an intractable subject that both sides will debate forever, (or as long as people are more interested in being "right" than being true). "Success has many parents, failure is an orphan".
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Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
