TIMBER!!!!!!!:

The Wrong War at the Wrong Time (Tony Judt, October 20, 2002, NY Times)

Today many people outside America believe that Washington has lost interest in this war, except as rhetorical cover for a retreat to more familiar territory: an old-fashioned battle against an old-fashioned kind of enemy--Iraq. We are seeking a fight we can win instead of concentrating on the war that we must win. [...]

The worst thing about Mr. Bush's pre-announced war with Iraq is that it is not just a substitute for the war against terrorism; it actively impedes it. Mr. Bush has scolded President Megawati Sukarnoputri of Indonesia for not cracking down on Islamic terrorists. But thanks to the war talk spilling out of Washington, heads of states with Islamic majorities are in an impossible position.

If they line up with the Bush administration against Saddam Hussein, they risk alienating a large and volatile domestic constituency, with unpredictable consequences. (Witness this month's elections in Pakistan, where two provinces adjacent to Afghanistan are now controlled by a coalition of religious parties sympathetic to Osama bin Laden.) But if they acknowledge popular opposition to a war with Iraq, they will incur Mr. Bush's wrath. Either way the war on terror suffers.

With all due respect to Mr. Judt, this is a classic example of failing to see the forest for the trees. The war is not against terrorism per se but against the Islamic radicalism and anti-Zionism/anti-Westernism that undergirds both states in the region and terrorist groups like al Qaeda, Hammas, Hezbollah, etc.. It matters little what we do about an organization like al Qaeda, which is fairly small, diffuse and already on the run, if the actual governments of the Islamic world are so precariously perched atop pro-radical populations that they can't even afford to support a war on someone like Saddam Hussein.
Posted by Orrin Judd at October 20, 2002 7:39 AM