I think you and Raspberry are in lockstep on Powell, John.
washingtonpost.com
A Case for Powell, but Not War
By William Raspberry
Monday, February 10, 2003; Page A21
It was a spectacular performance, and by the time Colin Powell was finished, I was a complete convert.
But what, exactly, have I been converted from and to? It's a question I've been turning over in my mind ever since last Wednesday's tour de force before the U.N. Security Council.
I am, for one thing, converted to the idea that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is in "material breach" of the U.N. mandate he was required to carry out. Before the Powell show, the analogy in my head was of sheriff's deputies executing a search warrant. It was an unusually broad warrant the weapons inspectors had, of course, essentially authorizing them to look in every nook and cranny of every room in the house for unspecified contraband.
But how serious a breach could it be that the suspect had failed to tell the searchers: "You should look in the false ceiling above the clothes closet in the third bedroom"? Wasn't it enough that he unlocked every door when requested to do so? Okay, there were suspicions that the scientists whom the inspectors sought to interview were either Iraqi agents posing as scientists or else actual scientists certain that their candor would amount to suicide.
What now seems clear is that Hussein was not merely less than forthcoming; he was determinedly duplicitous. That was the effect of those spy photographs showing how entire chemical or biological labs, built on trucks, were routinely driven off to unknown sites days or hours ahead of the inspectors' arrival -- becoming virtually unfindable in the mix of highway traffic.
I had my doubts as to how much active production of weapons of mass destruction was happening in Iraq. Powell's display removed those doubts.
What the earnest, effective and utterly believable secretary of state did not remove -- at least not yet -- are my doubts on two other scores.
First, he fell short of convincing me that madman Hussein has either the intent or the near-term capability of attacking America -- although that was the implication of several of the exhibits, including the rather strained attempt to link Hussein to al Qaeda and the 9/11 attacks. The maps showing which countries lie within range of Iraqi rockets drove home again what seems to be the unspoken element of our official concerns: the damage Hussein could do to Israel.
I'm not sure why we don't talk about this. Surely the case can be made that Israel is a sufficiently valuable ally that we would come to its aid militarily if it were attacked. Do we fear that saying so would drive Israel-hating Arabs into a frenzy? Or are we afraid that open acknowledgment would reduce support for "regime change" here at home?
Powell came up short -- for me, at least -- in another way. He made a virtually irrefutable case that Hussein is a malevolent man, full of hatred and cunning, and more dangerous than some of us believed.
But he did not make the case for war. Indeed, in a perverse way he made the opposite case. Our ability to know what is going on in Iraq's secretive society is nothing short of stunning. Doesn't it follow that we will know, in advance, of Iraq's intention to launch an attack? Doesn't Hussein now know that we'll know -- and that we are prepared to act?
I wouldn't want to hang my hopes for peace on any new promises emanating from Baghdad. But Powell did convince me that Hussein is so unlikely to get away with any funny stuff that a unilateral military attack on him becomes less necessary.
But maybe not permanently unnecessary. Hussein is fully capable of the kind of miscalculation that might make war the least unattractive of our options -- and I won't be surprised if that happens. But if it happens, it may turn out that Powell's most important accomplishment will have been to make certain that we will go into war not as the American bully but as a truly international force. That would give us the best hope of averting an aftermath of terrorism worse than the terrorism that led us to war in the first place.
I'm not yet converted to war, or to the Bush administration's rationale for it.
But I am unabashedly converted to Colin Powell. |
