ALL ABOARD:

America's War Train Is Leaving the Station (SERGE SCHMEMANN, February 2, 2003, NY Times)

In challenging the United Nations last fall to join in the attack on Saddam Hussein, President Bush did not say, You're with us or against us. He said something far more shrewd: Either you're with us, or you're irrelevant.

That has been the standing warning ever since, put most bluntly by Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld when he dismissed the two big holdouts, France and Germany, as "old Europe." Sure, we'll consult you, President Bush told the world in his State of the Union address, "but let there be no misunderstanding": we're going in with you or without you.

If measured by the way the world was lining up last week, the approach has been effective. In September, when the administration began to talk seriously about going after Mr. Hussein, the questions were whether this was necessary or productive or a vendetta.

The skepticism has not waned, but most world leaders today are thinking less about how best to deal with Mr. Hussein than about how to deal with an unstoppable superpower.

Saddam's Arab 'brothers' desert Iraq: Their chronic disunity, backstabbing and petty tribalism is once more on display (ERIC MARGOLIS, February 2, 2003, Toronto Sun)

Never has the old maxim "hang together or be hanged separately" been more fitting than for the Arab states now quailing before U.S. President George W. Bush's evangelical crusade against Iraq.

The Arab world's startling weakness and subservience to the West has never been more evident than in its open or discreet co-operation with Bush's plans to invade "brother" Iraq. Though 99.99% of Arabs bitterly oppose an American-British attack on Iraq, their authoritarian regimes, which rely on the U.S. for protection from their own people and their neighbours, are quietly digging Iraq's grave.

Every Arab leader knows the U.S. will crush Iraq, so none will support unloved megalomaniac Saddam Hussein and risk ending up on Washington's hit list.

In order to deflect the coming fury of their people over the almost certain invasion of Iraq (barring a last-minute coup against Saddam Hussein), Arab rulers have ordered their tame media to launch broadsides against Iraq and lay blame for the impending Gulf War II on Saddam. Never has the Arab world's chronic disunity, backstabbing and petty tribalism been more pathetically on display.

There's really only one intriguing aspect of being a Leftist, one thing that might make it worthwhile: for a man of the Left every day is filled with surprises. After all, since Adam and Eve fell, we've well understood the quality of human nature. Man is, despite his best efforts to the contrary, susceptible to selfishness and sin. This is the fundamental wisdom at the core of Judeo-Christianity and, thereby, of conservatism.

The Left, on the other hand, denies human nature and thinks that Man is infinitely malleable. So, for instance, they apparently expected the Europeans and Arabs to stand tall in the face of Anglo-American determination to depose Saddam Hussein. Instead, of course, as war approaches they're fleeing Saddam's side like rats deserting a sinking ship. And the usual suspects are flabbergasted. This time they thought things would be different...

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 2, 2003 1:08 PM