WAR ON WAR

Uh-oh, Bush. Word is, the vultures are beginning to gather around your Rumsfeld. Republicans, too. McCain. Trent Lott, now. I think that others will start to pile on, now that it's getting politically safe to grab a bite of him. The sad thing is, it should have happened long ago, when it was already evident that his planning and handling of your war was a disaster. He spoke once contemptuously of "old Europe", but it turns out that it was his own thinking that was old. Blitzkrieg, Bush. It worked in the short run for Hitler. That was nearly seventy years ago. It worked in the short run for your Rumsfeld. In the long run, though, it failed for both of them.

I happen to be among those who believe that violence and aggression always fail in the long run. Your Rumsfeld's war fell apart the moment his enemy capitulated. You should have known that as soon as the looting started; as soon as it was clear that the looters were doing a more effective job of destroying the country's infrastructure than anything your troops could do--with Rumsfeld's hopelessly inadequate force there to protect it. In retrospect, that moment seems like the beginning of Saddam's counteroffensive, and you and your Rumsfeld have been slowly losing that battle ever since. You fight with the army that you have, he says, with cynical disingenuousness. That man fought, Bush, with the army that he asked you for!

And now… the elections? If you do manage to shove this sham demonstration of democracy down the Iraqis' collective throat, are you going to get what you've been fighting for? Suppose--it seems not unlikely--that you get the Ayatollah Sistani, Bush? Does the prospect of a Shiite-led Iraq next door to a Shiite-led Iran begin to worry you a bit? A possible alliance of theocratic states? A new nuclear superpower in the Arab world, if Iran succeeds in its plan to develop nuclear weapons? With a strangle-hold on a vast part of the world's oil supply? Was this what you envisioned? Will you not have marvelously achieved precisely what you set out to prevent?

And isn't this always the way with violence, Bush? I mean, honestly. You beat your kids, you end up with vicious and resentful adults. You invade your neighbor's yard, and all his friends gang up on you. You wage the war to end all wars, and end up with more war. What does it take for us to learn the truth of that old, simple-minded chestnut, that the pen is mightier than the sword; that the power of ideas will always, in the course of time, trump the power of military might?

I have a modest proposal for you this morning, Bush. You Presidents are fond of wars: the War on Poverty. The War on Drugs. The War on Terror. (And which one of them, tell me, was ever half-way won?) So how about a War on War, Bush? Wouldn't that be timely? Wouldn't that get you in the history books? Let me know what you think.