Tuesday, November 08, 2005
Steyn On The Real World
Mark Steyn in NRO enumerates the possible costs of Joe Wilson's fifteen minutes:
Suppose a guy yells “Fire!” in a crowded theater, and the audience hisses back, “Shh! We’re in the middle of a play about how Bush engaged in a massive conspiracy to use a small chimney fire as a pretext for burning down some other theater three years ago.”
That’s pretty much what happened the other week. The president of Iran announced that Israel “must be wiped off the map” — and the entire capital city of the world’s hyperpower hissed back, “Shh! Patrick Fitzgerald’s about to indict Scooter Libby!” Insofar as I understand the Left’s three-year investment in Joseph C. Wilson IV, it’s that the selfless patriot exposed the Bush administration’s rationale for the war — Saddam’s WMD — as a lie cooked up by a cabal of sinister neocon warmongers (Clinton, Gore, Kerry, etc). Just for the record, WMD was never my rationale. As I’ve said on many occasions, when it comes to toppling dictators, there’s no such thing as an “illegitimate” rationale. In his obstruction of U.N. weapons inspectors, Saddam certainly acted as if he had WMD and, in his “trade” missions to Niger (principal exports: uranium, goats, cowpeas, and onions), as if he were eager to acquire more. There’s something to be said for taking a chap at his word.
Suppose a guy yells “Fire!” in a crowded theater, and the audience hisses back, “Shh! We’re in the middle of a play about how Bush engaged in a massive conspiracy to use a small chimney fire as a pretext for burning down some other theater three years ago.”
That’s pretty much what happened the other week. The president of Iran announced that Israel “must be wiped off the map” — and the entire capital city of the world’s hyperpower hissed back, “Shh! Patrick Fitzgerald’s about to indict Scooter Libby!” Insofar as I understand the Left’s three-year investment in Joseph C. Wilson IV, it’s that the selfless patriot exposed the Bush administration’s rationale for the war — Saddam’s WMD — as a lie cooked up by a cabal of sinister neocon warmongers (Clinton, Gore, Kerry, etc). Just for the record, WMD was never my rationale. As I’ve said on many occasions, when it comes to toppling dictators, there’s no such thing as an “illegitimate” rationale. In his obstruction of U.N. weapons inspectors, Saddam certainly acted as if he had WMD and, in his “trade” missions to Niger (principal exports: uranium, goats, cowpeas, and onions), as if he were eager to acquire more. There’s something to be said for taking a chap at his word.
