A small group of men (and with the exception of Condi Rice, they are men) with a long-standing imperial dream, Napoleonic in scope, of reshaping the world in their own image, took a contested election by storm and, with the help of a providential catastrophe seen by and shocking everyone to the core, ran with it. Now, they are mad for the war that, they believe, will give their shape, their stamp, to the world. And they are quite capable of making that war of their dreams, too, despite the fact that it's utterly unwanted globally, even, largely, domestically, even by our top military men.
Why, the Washington Post reports today ("Desert Caution" by Thomas E. Ricks), that "Stormin' Norman" Schwartzkopf, the general who led our last blitz into Iraq as commander of US forces in the Gulf War in 1991, doesn't see the need for war this time around. "Candidly," he's quoted as saying, "I have gotten somewhat nervous at some of the pronouncements Rumsfeld has made." |
