What we're up against. This doesn't persuade me that we should wait and hope that he's changed his spots. If anything, it means we'd better move.


NPR, as I type, is broadcasting an interview with Matt Rothschild, editor of The Progressive, in answer to David Brooks' piece, The Fog of Peace. I'm still not impressed. It bothers me that these people are pulling out all the old Vietnam cliches and apealling to international law. I really don't want the governed by institutions the leadership of which I have no voice in electing. Besides, I get the distinct feeling that this isn't really a debate with these people; there's really no possibility of changing their minds. They were against the Gulf War, and, I suspect, even if Saddam obtained and used nuclear weapons, they'd still probably be against doing anything about it. Brooks makes the same point:

You begin to realize that they are not arguing about Iraq. They are not arguing at all. They are just repeating the hatreds they cultivated in the 1960s, and during the Reagan years, and during the Florida imbroglio after the last presidential election. They are playing culture war, and they are disguising their eruptions as position-taking on Iraq, a country about which they haven't even taken the trouble to inform themselves.