Posted on 08/23/2002 6:37:54 AM PDT by TADSLOS
I never thought I'd be glad to see Lawrence Eagleburger, secretary of state in the first Bush administration, worm his way back into the public eye.
But as I live and breathe, all I can say is: Welcome back, Eagleburger.
With his trembling jowls and furrowed brows, Eagleburger is issuing dire warnings to Bush the younger about any imminent invasion of Iraq.
Let's hope the second President Bush breaks away from the pressing issues of his August agenda — chopping cedar, speed golfing and raising campaign money for his political cronies — long enough to listen to reason from his father's inner circle.
For months, George Dubya has been running hard against Saddam Hussein. He might have pulled off an invasion of Iraq without any serious argument were it not for several old hawks from his father's term — including Eagleburger and former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft.
The very men who thought it was in America's interest to get Saddam in 1990 believe Bush hasn't made the case for an attack now.
What that means is there are two kinds of bottom lines in this Iraq deal.
One is the bottom line held by Eagleburger and Scowcroft.
Simply stated, it is that America needs to carefully build coalitions with other nations in its ongoing war against terrorism.
And the second is the trigger-happy, chest-thumping view of Bush the younger's advisers, including Richard Perle and Condoleezza Rice, that Saddam is so darn evil America must lead the assault against him and hope other countries follow.
Any citizen who has ever lost a loved one in a war — or has a son or daughter who might get killed in a war with Iraq — has an obligation to resist the advice of the shoot-first-ask-questions-later crowd, including George Dubya himself.
The issue is not whether Saddam is a nice guy — clearly he's a threat to the United States who must be dealt with at some point.
The issue is how do we deal with him, when do we deal with him, and how many friends can we rally to help us deal with him?
You see Eagleburger making the rounds of the TV talk shows, arguing that Bush has not made the case that Saddam has weapons of mass destruction and is likely to use them. When you hear him tell Fox News he is "scared to death" that Bush believes he can take out Saddam in a "cakewalk" — Eagleburger thinks it will take hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops and many casualties — then you know it's time for Dubya to stop beating the war drums.
Scowcroft, in an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, pointed out that there is a "virtual consensus" in the world against an attack on Iraq and concluded "we simply cannot win that war without enthusiastic international cooperation."
When you have an old hawk like Scowcroft warning we need to spend some time in multilateral conversations with our allies and not go off half-cocked, then you know Bush the younger has not made his case.
Indeed, Bush's repeated warning that he's comin' after Saddam has accomplished only three things so far.
One, Saddam has said come on, he's ready. Two, our would-be allies — Germany, England, Turkey and Jordan — all have said, go to war if you want, but go it alone. And three, not even the elder statesmen in Bush's own party believe an attack of Iraq is a good idea.
Nonetheless, Perle, one of Bush's key advisers, told the New York Times the United States has to go to war with Iraq: "The failure to take on Saddam after what the president said would produce such a collapse of confidence in the president that it would set back the war on terrorism," he said.
To go to war to make good on Bush's blustering and protect his ego is not a good enough reason.
For heaven's sake, a reasonable person might think it's time to fall back at the ranch or in the golf cart or on the campaign money trail and regroup.
After all, the war hasn't even started and the protesters are out in droves.
Now it's more accurate.
Now they have another dead horse to beat.
I was thinking the same thing. Molly must have mutated.
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