MUST READ: A decade of stupor breeds anxious times ("Makes yer blood boil" ALERT)

The Seattle Times ^ | 2/17/03 | Charles Krauthammer

[ppaul]

A decade of stupor breeds anxious times

WASHINGTON — The domestic terror alert jumps to 9/11 levels. Heathrow Airport is ringed by tanks. Duct tape and plastic sheeting disappear from Washington store shelves. Osama resurfaces. North Korea reopens its plutonium processing plant and threatens pre-emptive attack. The Second Gulf War is about to begin.

This is not the Apocalypse. But it is excellent preparation for it.

You don't get to a place like this overnight. It takes at least, oh, a decade. We are now paying the wages of the 1990s, our holiday from history. During that decade, every major challenge to America was deferred. The chief aim of the Clinton administration was to make sure that nothing terrible happened on its watch. Accordingly, every can was kicked down the road:

Iraq: Saddam continued defying the world and building his arsenal, even as the United States acquiesced to the progressive weakening of U.N. sanctions and then to the expulsion of all weapons inspectors.

North Korea: When it threatened to go nuclear in 1993, Clinton managed to put off the reckoning with an agreement to freeze Pyongyang's program. The agreement, surprise! was a fraud. All the time, the North Koreans were clandestinely enriching uranium. They are now in full nuclear breakout.

Terrorism: The first World Trade Center attack occurred in 1993, followed by the blowing up of two embassies in Africa and the attack on the USS Cole. Treating terrorism as a problem of law enforcement, Clinton dispatched the FBI and the odd cruise missile to ostentatiously kick up some desert sand. Osama was offered up by Sudan in 1996. We turned him away for lack of legal justification.

That is how one acts on holiday: Mortal enemies are dealt with not as combatants, but as defendants. On June 19, 2000, the Clinton administration solved the rogue-state problem by abolishing the term and replacing it with "states of concern." Unconcerned, the rogues prospered, arming and girding themselves for big wars.

Which are now upon us. On Sept. 11, 2001, the cozy illusions and stupid pretensions died. We now recognize the central problem of the 21st century: the conjunction of terrorism, rogue states and weapons of mass destruction.

True, weapons of mass destruction are not new. What is new is that anyone with a reasonable education in modern physics, chemistry or biology can brew them.

There is no avoiding the danger any longer. Last year, President Bush's axis-of-evil speech was met with eye-rolling disdain by the sophisticates. One year later, the warning has been vindicated in all its parts. Even the United Nations says Iraq must be disarmed. The International Atomic Energy Agency has just (politely) declared North Korea a nuclear outlaw. Iran has announced plans to mine uranium and reprocess spent nuclear fuel; we have recently discovered two secret Iranian nuclear complexes.

We are in a race against time. Once such hostile states establish arsenals, we become self-deterred and they become invulnerable. North Korea may already have crossed that threshold.

There is a real question whether we can win the race. Year One of the new era, 2002, passed rather peaceably. Year Two will not: 2003 could be as cataclysmic as 1914 or 1939.

Carl Sagan invented a famous formula for calculating the probability of intelligent life in the universe. Estimate the number of planets in the universe and calculate the tiny fraction that might support life and that have had enough evolution to produce intelligence. He prudently added one other factor, however: the odds of extinction. The existence of intelligent life depends not just on creation, but on continuity. What is the probability that a civilization will not destroy itself once its very intelligence grants it the means of self-destruction?

This planet has been around for 4 billion years, intelligent life for perhaps 200,000, weapons of mass destruction for less than 100. A hundred in the eye of the universe, less than a blink. And yet we already find ourselves on the brink. What are the odds that our species will manage to contain this awful knowledge without self-destruction not for a billion years or a million or even a thousand, but just through the lifetime of our children?

Those are the stakes today. Before our eyes, in a flash, politics has gone cosmic. The question before us is very large and very simple: Can and will the civilized part of humanity disarm the barbarians who would use the ultimate knowledge for the ultimate destruction? Within months, we will have a good idea whether the answer is yes or no.

[ppaul]

On June 19, 2000, the Clinton administration solved the rogue-state problem by abolishing the term and replacing it with "states of concern."

States of Concern.

[Congressman Billybob]

Another brilliant piece of work by Charles Krauthammer. I'd read this before today, by clicking on Krauthammer on Drudge.

To all Freepers who read this, I strongly recommend that you NEVER skip a Krauthammer byline. His clear thinking gets to the heart of any matter, and his clear prose laysit out so no reader with an open mind can possibly miss the point. Thats the top of the line for anyone who writes newspaper columns.

Congressman Billybob

Latest column, "Using the Old Noodle," now up on UPI and FR.

[Stefan Stackhouse]

I don't think that the extinction of the human race will quite be Clinton's legacy. But the thought that we might even come close should be testimony enough.

[RippleFire]

BUMP

[TheExploited]

Yesterday, on the liberal Ski and Skinner Show on WLS radio in Chicago, that dimwit Nancy Skinner was longing for the "eight years of peace and prosperity" under Clinton. I sent her the Krauthammer article this morning. It is so interesting to listen to this show because all they can do for three hours every week is bash Bush. They cannot come up with one single concrete thought of their own. They are embodiment of the Liberal mindset described by Ann Coulter in Slander - all insults, no ideas. This is why Liberal talk radio will fail.

[ppaul]

Clinton Legacy ping

Turn on the tears!

[desertcry]

All these things, I call the clinton poison pills. It takes decades to make, but it's so potent, it takes only a few months to feel it's deadly effects. More than 3000 lives have already felt it's deadly effects, I fear tens of thousands more lives, and billions of dollars of American assets will be destroyed, before it's flushed out of America's system, that is if it survives.

[desertcry]

I will never forget, thanks to Rush.

[Helms]

If you have studied postmodern French Philosophy, then you know that French Intellectuals have been responsible for the Nihilism which would and has make the world a dangerous place. They secretly loathe life itself.

[MEGoody]

"all they can do for three hours every week is bash Bush."

But, but, but. . .I thought there were no representatives of liberal views in the media!

[JoJo Gunn]

That famous formula for guessing about intelligent life is actually "Drake's Equation", originated by Paul Drake of Cornell, and written about by Sagan in the book "Cosmos".

[NYC GOP Chick]

Did I hear someone mention the Clinton Legacy? I got his legacy right here (literally 5 blocks from me):

[Jumper]

"We've just discoverd two secret nuclear facilites" in Iran... Our Friends and Allies the French, no doubt!

[RAT Patrol]

The question before us is very large and very simple: Can and will the civilized part of humanity disarm the barbarians who would use the ultimate knowledge for the ultimate destruction? Within months, we will have a good idea whether the answer is yes or no.

And that's not an overstatement. We cannot be destracted by those blind to the danger.

[tom paine 2]

And if the answer is no, then we are headed into another Dark Age.