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What Mr Bush has in mind is nothing less than a reshaping of the world
(Fergal Keane, The Independent, 01 February 2003)
The op-ed pages of US newspapers have been full of sceptical pieces about Bush and the looming war. Here's Frank Rich writing in The New York Times on Pearl Harbor Day, last 7 December: "History will eventually tell us whether Pearl Harbor Day 2002 is the gateway to a war as necessary as the Second World War, or to a tragedy of unintended consequences redolent of the First World War. A savage dictator is delivering a 'full' accounting of his weapons arsenal that only a fool would take for fact, and a President of the US is pretending (not very hard) to indulge this UN rigmarole while he calls up more reserves for the confrontation he seeks." . . . Bush knew that he could depend on Saddam screwing up the inspections and delivering a plausible justification to oust him. While we can argue all day and night about the motives for ousting Saddam, don't ever doubt the goal. . . . According to the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive strike, Saddam is a potential threat and is weak enough to be attacked. North Korea, on the other hand, is also a threat but is not yet weak enough to be attacked. The US may adopt different strategies, but it has determined that the political system in North Korea is itself a weapon of mass destruction. The dear leader in Pyongyang is also being sized up for the long drop. What Mr Bush has in mind is nothing less than a reshaping of the world. He wishes to turn it into a place without enemies. Part of his strategy will be to use military as well as economic power. If he wins in Iraq with an "acceptable" level of death and destruction, the President will be emboldened and we will enter what is potentially a more dangerous period than any in the last half century. Dangerous because military success too often invites hubris and is never an automatic guarantor of a stable political order.

posted by LoZo 2:00 PM