Gaullism along the Potomac:
I suppose I'm all stupid-like, but how is it that President Bush#1 managed to gain U.N. backing, NATO backing, and regional backing for HIS gulf war in 1991 whilst today his haughty dim-witted son leads a coalition of Britain and the dregs of the Warsaw Pact?
I remember the first Gulf War with the simplest nostalgia, the speed of the whole thing hamstrung peace activists quite nicely, democrats could take comfort in the multilateralism of the affair.
And it paid for itself in the weary wicked end thanks to generous invoices from interested nations.
Granted liberating Kuwait did exactly nothing for enhancing the chances of peace in the region....but it was a well-managed thing compared to this loud circus-like diplomatic catastrophe we got now.
Is Saddam really worth breaking up NATO over?
Is Saddam really worth humbling the U.N. the way we've humbled South Korea, The Russians, The Olde Europeans etc etc etc?
The punditariat asserts that NATO and the U.N.'s reluctance to assist in destroying Iraq is conclusive evidence of the systemic decline of those organizations.
If all goes well with this war, look for the likes of Laura Ingraham and Big Bill Safire to start beating the tom-toms for a new international organization or worse a kind of super-situationism that posits the rapid collection of a coalition to deal with all imminent threats.
If all doesn't go well...look for likewise and the same to blame both Bill Clinton and Colin Powell in equal measure.
So a kind of Texas Gaullism is what we are left with to replace with fifty years of collective security and tacit alliance with the functioning democracies of the world. Here for once I don't fault the President's mind, I do fault his ideas which are radical in a bad way and absurdly idealistic in the long run.