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To: Haim R. Branisteanu who wrote (228309)	3/15/2003 1:51:09 PM
From: Haim R. Branisteanu	Respond to of 436258

Was it Worth It? nationalreview.com Surveying the wreckage at the Security Council, Andrew Sullivan argues this morning that the effort was nonetheless worthwhile: By going the extra mile, showing the world that the U.S. and Britain really did want a second resolution, the two countries earned themselves goodwill abroad and greater public support at home. Let’s hope he’s right about those benefits, because the costs have been enormous – and a lot less speculative. 1. Saddam has been given almost four extra months to prepare his defenses, booby traps, and plans for revenge. 2. U.S. and British troops have spent four extra months in tents in the desert. I don’t know about you, but five months of breathing sand would not do wonders for my morale. 3. The U.S. now goes into the war without even a figleaf of UN support. In November, we could have said that we were going to war on the authority of Security Council Resolution 1441 – or because Iraq had violated the terms of its 1991 armistice. Now, we’re going to war despite being told “no” by the UN. 4. The antiwar demonstraters of Europe have used the time to organize and mobilize – creating political problems for many American friends and offering radical Islamist forces inside Europe (for the first time) access to something close to mainstream politics. These costs may not ultimately be prohibitive, but they are onerous. Oh and one last one – for four months, we’ve deprived ourselves of the best reply to the antiwar opponents: victory. My father-in-law served in two wars and covered many, many more as a journalist, and he observes that there never has been any such thing as an unpopular winning war. France Exposed True, there has been one more side-benefit to delay – it has flushed out the French. They have exposed themselves as something more even than allies of Saddam’s. They have revealed and acted on their ambition to organize a global anti-American bloc. They did not, for instance, limit themselves to merely opposing the U.S. at the UN – Foreign Minister de Villepin actually jetted to Cameroon and Guinea to cudgel these former French colonies into voting France’s way. There is something comic about these French pretensions, no doubt: Americans defeated first the German bid for global domination and then the Russian – after that, France’s hostility feels as formidable as an overstuffed profiterole. But let’s not laugh too soon: There is an emerging anti-American global coalition. It’s a pretty motley collection of unattractive elements, from radical Islamists in the Middle East and Serbian nationalists in the heart of Europe all the way over to the post-ideological radicals of Venezuela and Colombia – yet in the crunch, the members of this coalition usually can expect to find France on their side. If the French could ever figure out how to make common cause with the government of China, the “renversement des alliances” would be complete. What? Michael Tomasky quotes an amazing remark of Seymour Hersh’s. In Harvard Wednesday to collect (of all things) a lifetime achievement award for journalism, Hersh was asked about Richard Perle’s Monday remark on CNN that he, Hersh, was the closest thing the America had to a terrorist. Hersh, Tomasky says, shrugged it off. “Forty years ago, he would have called me a communist, and 70 years ago, he would have called me a Jew. It’s the same thing with these people.” I’m not sure which people are “these people” to Hersh. But I love the “called me a Jew” touch: For six months, conspiracy mongers have identified Richard Perle as the leader of the Jewish “cabal” supposedly leading the U.S. to war. Hersh first signs up with that cabal - and then turns around andn suggests that Perle combine his role as the Cabalist (Kabbalist?)-in-Chief Hersh with a second responsibility as lead persecutor of the Jews. Perle packs an awful lot into his days. But even he has his limits. Too bad Hersh knows none – not even the limit of minimal internal intellectual consistency.