Andrew Sullivan is fighting an uphill battle. He is finding it difficult to understand the reluctance of the left (or, at least, the majority left "establishment") to cope with the calamitous implications of Saddam's on-again-off-again weapons of mass destruction program, and the fact that Kay has found nothing but evidence of such a threat. I'm not sure how much utility is really left in ramping up the incredulity about this attitude, though I certainly understand it. What's wrong with these folks? I submit that "what's wrong" isn't all that difficult to comprehend, and boils down to the following set of observations:
1. There isn't much fight left in the economic or social arguments of the left, so their default strategy is to tie "conservative" politics to moral degeneracy: war-mongering, corruption of power, fascistic conspiracies, etc.
2. For reasons not unrelated to 1. (stemming from a naieve and wishful assessment of human nature) they have no philosophical or programmatic response to calamity, so their only recourse is to deny its possibility.
3. As a result there simply is no way for them to even perceive a pragmatic non-ideological assessment of the threat posed by totalist regimes and failed states.
And one should not expect this situation to change, especially with the election season looming.
I don't think Kay's report leaves any doubt whatsoever about the fact that Saddam was systematically thwarting the terms of 1441, and would have continued to do so. One has to conclude that there was a reason he was so single-mindedly "reckless." It may have been the protection of actual WMD, or it may have been the protection of a swift ramp-up capability, set to take advantage of the ongoing missile program that sought a range capability of up to 1000 km. Either way, the notion that we could have contained him, or that the effort to contain him would not have had severe consequences for the Iraqi population (whether successful or not) is simply and unequivacally wishful thinking. And what we really ought to be calling for is some sort of psychotherapy for those who can't seem to find the pragmatic thread.
Posted by Demosophist at October 3, 2003 11:25 AM | TrackBack