YA' GOTTA PAY TO PLAY:

Now for the good news: the unremarked progress being made by the coalition forces in Iraq (Simon Henderson, 11/01/03, The Spectator)

On an international level, the issue was never simply Saddam but rather Russia, France and Germany trying to use multilateralism to negate America’s unilateral tendencies. But George Bush decided that, post–9/11, being asked to provide both the big stick and the fat wallet allowed him to have a say on when to use them. In the Middle East, Moscow and Paris are now considered quantitatively less important. They were further weakened by the success of the Madrid donors’ conference, which was one more nail in the coffin of their hopes to have the debt owed to them by Saddam’s Iraq paid back. [...]

Things can go wrong, but many of the challenges of Iraq come down to physical engineering and financial engineering. The American approach is successful on these fronts. The human and political angles are more challenging but not insurmountable. Washington and London differ here over the balance between stability and democracy, with the British favouring the former at the expense of the latter. So far the Americans are allowing a surprisingly free press, even though some rags contain nothing more than conspiratorial rubbish. The political future? Almost certainly a series of rather weak coalition but democratic governments, with the US needed to make sure that Iraq’s neighbours do not meddle.

Does George Bush have the stamina to see it through? Will Karl Rove, his election strategist, whisper in his ear that in order to win the presidential race the US should speed up its exit strategy? George Bush is likely to respond by saying that he will certainly lose if the American people think that he bottled out when the going got tough. Will he win? It is, as always, far too early to say until the first ballot has been cast in the primaries. But if Bush doesn’t win, it will be because of the economy and not because of Iraq.

That first paragraph above is an especially neat summary of the metaforces at play in the rather small war.

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 1, 2003 11:58 AM