Free Republic

<p>I was in the English countryside over the weekend at a gathering of Europeans and Americans trying to talk through the question of how to set rules for international order. But that was the official program. In the hallways, the dining room and the bars, the questions posed to the Americans (a politically diverse group) were all about handicapping the presidential election.</p>

<p>I guess we should consider Sen. Edward Kennedy's op-ed in The Washington Post Sunday the state-of-the-art in sober, Democratic anti-war criticism of President Bush. The piece is noteworthy not for the shrillness of its tone or the harshness of its judgment — the senator left that to the wrecking crew on the Democratic campaign trail and their overheated comradesat MoveOn.org, et. al. — but for its elegiac, more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger tone. The problem is that his own relatively sober description of events simply doesn't support the charge of dishonesty that is the essence of Mr. Kennedy's case against Mr. Bush.</p>

<p>PARIS. — Some of my fellow American panelists at a conference here, sponsored by the French Center on the United States, were expecting to get an earful from French panelists and members of the audience on the subject of the prime-contractor restrictions against France, Germany and Russia for Iraq reconstruction. I was,too. Wrong. The subject was barely touched upon.</p>

<p>Professional Republicans are increasingly getting the idea that they are a governing majority party, just as the Democrats under FDR became a governing majority party -- and visions of 60 years or so of GOP electoral dominance, in the manner of the New Deal coalition, are dancing through their heads.</p>

<p>A while back, a well-placed acquaintance of mine asked me about my thoughts on how President Bush should run for re-election and specifically, could I draft and send him a memo offering a campaign theme for Mr. Bush in 2004. I was flattered, of course. But I never wrote the memo.</p>

<p>One of my fellow dads angled up to me on the sidelines of our daughters' soccer game two Saturdays ago, gave me a wry smile and asked whether I thought this leak scandal had legs.</p> <p>This wasn't the first time I'd run into an unexpected question about the potential severity of an unfolding Washington scandal. My favorite instance took place getting off a bus in Geneva with a group of Swiss and American "young leaders." An American Roman Catholic priest I'd just met asked me, out of the blue, "Do you think Filegate has legs?"</p>

<p>When I first met Wes Clark at a small Washington dinner party when he was supreme allied commander in Europe, I quickly concluded that he had a bright political future if he was inclined to pursue it. That he might well be so inclined once his military career came to a close was an impression he did little to dispel. In addition to an obvious intelligence and the demeanor of complete self-assurance that is common in the top ranks of the military, he spoke about foreign policy and the importance of the spread of freedom in neo-Reaganite terms. This was especially important to me at the time, coming as it did as some of us were working on making the case for the enlargement of NATO to the territory of the former Warsaw Pact (and since, of the former Soviet Union itself).</p>

<p>We have now had the first shakeup in postwar Iraq reconstruction, key changes of top officials mere weeks after they began their tasks. The critical question has always been whether the United States is committed to genuine liberalization in Iraq. That's because liberalization offers the only hope for a Greater Middle East free of such menaces to the United States and the West as al Qaeda, the Taliban and Saddam Hussein.</p>

<p>Three weeks from the onset of hostilities until the fall of Baghdad has to come as a relief. The reason to pursue "regime change" in Iraq was never that it would be an easy target for regime change, even though some people thought the military action would proceed swiftly to a certain conclusion, namely victory. But, even forecasts of victory made room for any number of nasty sideshow scenarios, from hundreds of burning oil wells, to chemical attacks by Scud on Israel, to a shooting war between Turkey and the Kurds in Northern Iraq to terror attacks in the region and beyond (i.e., in Europe or the United States) by Saddam's covert operatives. Very rational but unmaterialized fears, all of them. If it wouldn't upset the Europeans so, one might even be tempted to say "thank God."</p>