AS THE STUBBORN TRUTH SLOWLY DAWNS:

Be warned, this President means what he says: George Bush has now cleverly turned the argument against the UN: it can't enforce its own resolutions (Rupert Cornwell, 14 September 2002, The Independent)

First, a confession. I have changed my mind. I did believe that, when push came to shove, war against Iraq would not happen. International opinion would deter Washington, and, after a summer of sabre-rattling, normal service would be resumed.

No longer. What finally persuaded me, of course, was President Bush's speech to the United Nations this week. But that speech was no more than the logical conclusion to what Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld have long been saying - and, it should be noted, never publicly contradicted by that supposed leader of His American Majesty's loyal Republican opposition, Colin Powell.

The great Republican revolt has fizzled. As I and many others pointed out, the objections of Brent Scowcroft, James Baker and other members of Bush Snr's old high command were always about style, rather than substance. No one disputed that Saddam was a nasty and dangerous piece of work to be got rid of. The question was whether you went through the motions at the UN first.

Bush has now done so, in the process cleverly turning the argument against the UN: what's the value of a world body if it can't enforce the resolutions it does pass? Both America's allies and its homegrown "multilateralists" - including Colin Powell - are happy. The Security Council is being consulted; but even if it withholds formal benediction, the US will make its own decision regardless. [...]

This President projects himself as a straightshooter, patient but not to be deflected, a man who could not be more different from the evasive and emollient Bill Clinton. Unlike my predecessor, Bush indicates, if I say something I mean it. [...]

It would be wonderful, of course, if Saddam caved in, allowing UN inspectors speedy and total access, so that the weapons of mass destruction, if not necessarily the man himself, are removed without a shot being fired. Bush would have scored a tremendous triumph, even without "regime change". But the chances of that are remote; far more likely, Saddam the brilliant tactical prevaricator will yet again prove the strategic lunatic, just as he was in 1980 with Iran, and in 1990 when he invaded Kuwait.

In which case a loathsome dictator will be attacked and driven from power.

Try as I will, I cannot see how that will not be a boon to Iraq, to the region and to the world in general.

Nothing so confuses the political class as a man who keeps his word. The Left, especially in Europe, seems so trapped in their belief that George W. Bush is an idiot or a tool of business or a minion of his father or whatever, that they are constantly surprised when he does precisely what he said he was going to and when, even worse from their perspective, it works:
Posted by Orrin Judd at September 13, 2002 6:48 PM