The Washington Times

Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has been on a steep learning curve on the subject of its own power and role in the world. In the rush of events, it’s easy to lose sight of how much has changed and how slow we have sometimes been in understanding it. Only now, I think, as we deal with the aftermath of Iraq, is the picture of our recent past coming clearly into focus.

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The Washington Times

The famous formulation attributed to National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice about how to handle recriminations for the diplomatic crackup prior to the Iraq war goes as follows: Forgive Russia, ignore Germany, punish France. In Ankara, the capital of Turkey, where a badly fractured parliament narrowly voted against providing access to U.S. ground troops for a massive northern front against Iraq, thereby forfeiting perhaps $24 billion in U.S. assistance, Miss Rice’s formulation has a certain existential resonance.

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The Washington Times

The lesson of the Bush tax-cutting record is that what matters is structural change and political leverage down the line. What matters not so much are the projected dollar “costs” of the tax cuts and, accordingly, the deficit.

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The Washington Times

Senior French officialdom now has a consistent message about the diplomatic breakdown prior to the Iraq war. What happened was that in January, French officials first realized that the United States was determined to go war to oust Saddam Hussein. The United States would accept no diplomatic resolution pertaining to the disarmament of Saddam, as called for in U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441.

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The Washington Times

The Senate voted earlier this month to approve admission of seven Central and Eastern European countries from the former Soviet bloc into NATO, the transatlantic alliance. The vote was 96-0, which was testimony not only to the strength of the political case that has been laid out over the years in behalf of a whole, free and secure Europe, but also, no one doubts, to the diplomatic support the United States received from the aspirant countries in the debate that preceded the Iraq war.

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The Washington Times

We have now had the first shakeup in postwar Iraq reconstruction, key changes of top officials mere weeks after they began their tasks. The critical question has always been whether the United States is committed to genuine liberalization in Iraq. That’s because liberalization offers the only hope for a Greater Middle East free of such menaces to the United States and the West as al Qaeda, the Taliban and Saddam Hussein.

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The Washington Times

Let’s go over the possibilities on the question of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Their supposed existence constituted the principal legal rationale for going to war [to disarm Saddam in accordance with U.N. Security Council resolutions] and a major part [but not all] of the strategic case. What would be the implications of failing to turn any up?

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The Washington Times

I never quite agreed with George F. Will’s famous line that if there had been television at the time of the Civil War, America would be two countries today. Nevertheless, he perfectly captured a sentiment that is all the more pronounced now that there are not just three television networks, but multiple 24-hour cable channels, talk radio, as well as near-infinite Internet Web sites offering nearly simultaneous discussion of current events. The sentiment is his own exasperation, and in the case of Iraq and before that, Afghanistan and Kosovo, I share it.

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The Washington Times

Down at the bottom of the front pages over the past few weeks, well below the war news, was the ongoing story of how President Bush’s tax cut proposal was faring on Capitol Hill. The administration, the story line ran, did fairly well in the House but ran into serious trouble in the Senate, where the defection of a couple Republicans enabled Democrats to cut the size of the tax cut essentially in half.

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The Washington Times

Three weeks from the onset of hostilities until the fall of Baghdad has to come as a relief. The reason to pursue “regime change” in Iraq was never that it would be an easy target for regime change, even though some people thought the military action would proceed swiftly to a certain conclusion, namely victory. But, even forecasts of victory made room for any number of nasty sideshow scenarios, from hundreds of burning oil wells, to chemical attacks by Scud on Israel, to a shooting war between Turkey and the Kurds in Northern Iraq to terror attacks in the region and beyond [i.e., in Europe or the United States] by Saddam’s covert operatives. Very rational but unmaterialized fears, all of them. If it wouldn’t upset the Europeans so, one might even be tempted to say “thank God.”

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