Good stuff on the NY Times op-ed page today.
My personal favorite is a letter to the editor about the Times’ recent
coverage of a protest against traditionalist priests:
“As I read about the group of parishioners who phoned the news media and then
picketed against a traditionalist Roman Catholic priest…I thought of the many conservative Catholics, inclined toward
obedience, who have silently endured pop-psychologizing, “Kumbaya”-singing
clergymen.”
Thank you, Christopher Henzel!
In addition, Gary Giddins does a good job of summarizing the whole Bob Hope
episode. Yes, his
comedic talents waned in his later years, but his dedication, good works, early
career, and natural talents are surely worth remembering and cherishing.
The always-readworthy Max Boot has a solution for the
question of when America should seek UN assistance: when it helps America’s
foreign policy objectives. Boot argues that the UN is neither always the
solution, nor always the problem. But, he concludes, “the primary objective” of
our foreign policy in the short term “should be to help Iraq and help America,
not to hurt the United Nations.”
And Tom Friedman
argues that Blair’s best argument for war was one recounted in the book, “30
Days,” written by British journalist Peter Stothard. Stothard followed Blair
around during the lead-up to the Iraq war, and shortly before the British
parliament vote, Blair made this argument to him in private: `What amazes me,’
[Mr. Blair says,] `is how many people are happy for Saddam to stay. They ask why
we don’t get rid of [the Zimbabwean leader Robert] Mugabe, why not the Burmese
lot. Yes, let’s get rid of them all. I don’t because I can’t, but when you can
you should.’
Friedman believes this case would not have persuaded the British public because
they had not suffered through 9/11 and “because it didn’t like or trust George
Bush.” The only way to get Britain to go to war was to turn what he calls “a
war of choice” into “a war of necessity.” Hence Friedman’s allegation that B&B
“hyped the direct threat from Iraq and highlighted flimsy intelligence
suggesting that Saddam was . . . an immediate undeterrable threat.”
I happen to disagree with Friedman’s assessment of the intelligence, but as a
political matter, I think he is quite right: “Unless real W.M.D.’s are found in
Iraq, Gulf War II will for now and for years to come be known as ‘the
controversial Gulf War II’” That can hurt both Bush and Blair. The benefits
that may, or may not, come–the democratization of Iraq, the effect on the
Middle East–will not be known in time to affect their political careers. It
really does seem, at least to me, that the two are, in large part, going to rise
or fall based on what we learn about the pre-war arguments.