ASHINGTON
There was no smoking gun last night. There was merely a smoky
allusion.
President Bush tried to sell skittish Americans on a war with Iraq by
alluding to the possibility of a link between Saddam and Al Qaeda.
Outlaw regimes seeking bad weapons, Mr. Bush said, "could also give or
sell those weapons to terrorist allies, who would use them without the
least hesitation."
The axis of evil has shrunk to Saddam, evil incarnate. Iran and North
Korea were put aside with the dismissive comment: "Different threats
require different strategies."
The state of the union is skeptical.
At a moment when Americans were hungry for reassurance that the
monomaniacal focus on Iraq makes sense when the economy is sputtering, Mr.
Bush offered a rousing closing argument for war, but no convincing bill of
particulars.
Republican senators tried to back up the president. While admitting
that there was no evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction yet,
John Warner told reporters that an attack was justified "if you put
together all the bits and pieces that are out there right now."
Americans will never understand the Bush rationale for war if they
simply look at the bits and pieces of physical evidence.
They will understand the Bush rationale for war only if they look at
the metaphysical evidence, the perfect storm of imperial schemes and
ideological stratagems driving the desire to topple Saddam.
The Bush team thinks the way to galvanize the public is with fear, by
coupling Saddam to 9/11 and building him up into a Hitler who could
threaten the world, as the White House chief of staff, Andy Card, told Tim
Russert last Sunday, "with a holocaust."
But their reasons for war predate 9/11. The conservatives have wanted
Saddam's head for a dozen years.
Dick Cheney; his chief of staff, Scooter Libby; and the Pentagon
official Paul Wolfowitz also think Saddam is the perfect lab rat on which
to test their new pre-emptive "empire strikes first" national security
strategy, which Mr. Wolfowitz and Mr. Libby first drafted back in 1992,
during the Bush 41 administration, when Mr. Cheney was defense
secretary.
The first President Bush found the ideas too far out. But now his son
has put them into play. Bush 43, former prep school football yell leader,
is reputed to be the author of the phrase in the new national security
strategy that sums up the policy: "We recognize that our best defense is a
good offense." (Didn't Sunday's Super Bowl prove that the best defense is
a good defense?)
After removing the super-rat, Mr. Wolfowitz, Mr. Libby and their fellow
hawk Richard Perle can turn his country into a laboratory for democracy in
the Arab world � creating a domino effect to give Israel more security.
Once they have planted Athenian democracy on Mesopotamian soil, they
envision orchestrating more freedom throughout the Middle East � as long
as the region plays ball with the new sheriff. They'll put pressure on
Syria and Iran to abandon their support for terrorism. And then, with an
American spigot, the oil will flow free � except to the French, who will
pay dearly.
Mr. Rumsfeld sees a war with Iraq as a chance to exorcise American
ambivalence about the use of force left over from Vietnam, and the
"pinprick bombings" of the Clinton years. And Mr. Cheney sees it as an
opportunity to exorcise all the ghosts of the 60's and the feel-good
Clinton era � the loss of moral authority and the feeling that America is
in decline or in the wrong.
The vice president jumped up last night to cheer brawny unilateralism
when Mr. Bush said: "The course of this nation does not depend on the
decisions of others."
Despite its fixation on Saddam, the administration hasn't completely
forgotten about Osama. The Economist ran an ad this week that said: "For
over 100 years Arab-Americans have served the nation. Today we need you
more than ever. . . . For additional information and to apply online,
please visit our website at www.cia.gov."
The C.I.A. is seeking Arabic-speaking agents.
Now they get around to that?
