Gerard Baker - Times Online - WBLG

Iraq

I've been a slow blogger this last week - for which apologies.   

Iraq still dominates all thoughts, obviously, but with the focus on whether or not we're in a civil war insufficient attention has been paid to the new information coming to light from Baghdad about the nature and policies of Saddam's regime.  Turns out he wan't the innocent, WMD-eschewing, terrorism-rejecting good guy so many in the media have portrayed.  What a shocker!

Manliness

Gordon Brown doesn’t seem to have much of it. George Bush certainly thinks he has it but there’s something ever so slightly ersatz about it. Tony Blair has acquired it. David Cameron probably has it in spades but is trying hard to pretend that he doesn’t. Margaret Thatcher had more of it than any recent leader on either side of the Atlantic. Hillary Clinton is loaded with it. John Wayne epitomised it but almost no leading Hollywood male star today has it, with the possible exception of Mel Gibson. It goes without saying that the courageous men who rescued three hostages in Iraq yesterday had it in spades; I’m less sure about the men they rescued.

It's three years since the disarmament of Saddam and all that followed . . .

IN MARCH 2003 Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, of the UN, secured a remarkable, last-minute deal that averted war and seemed to guarantee the disarmament of Iraq. “Saddam Hussein has finally consented to eliminate all his weapons of mass destruction,” they said, in a signing ceremony with the Iraqi leader.

Saddam, flanked by his two sons, Uday and Qusay, accepted the plaudits of the UN with pomp and grace. Beaming as he smiled at a hastily assembled crowd of French, German and Russian children, he said he had saved the world from the bloodlust of George Bush and Tony Blair with a magnanimous gesture of international friendship. There were approving murmurs of support in many Western capitals. In Oslo there was talk of a Nobel Peace prize.

To enforce the deal and ensure compliance, of course the US and Britain were required to remain on a war footing, with almost 250,000 troops in the neighbouring Arab countries. Over the following months Arab terrorist groups demanded the expulsion of infidels from Muslim lands and a series of attacks sapped the morale of allied servicemen and women. Steadily, over the next few months public support in the allied countries ebbed away.

The Great Conservative Crack-Up

Ronald Reagan's Eleventh Commandment famously ordered his party: Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican.

Dubai

Congratulations to the US Congress on securing a stunning victory for bigotry, obscurantism and economic myopia.

Abortion in South Dakota

"Welcome to South Dakota", the old joke goes, "Remember to set your clock back 30 years."

It was intended as an insult to the supposedly backward citizens of the Mount Rushmore State (could they really not have come up with a better nickname than that?)  But with the ban on abortion signed into law this week by the governor, it actually becomes a literal description of the state's political objective - to take the US back to its pre-1973 legal framework for abortion.

Is America becoming isolationist?

When I eventually get around to putting up links to other blogs and columns on this site (I crave the forgiveness of those who've been kind enough to link to me, so far without reciprocation - it's coming, I promise)  David Brooks of the New York Times will get a spot high on the blogroll. 

Always thoughtful and well-researched, his columns are a rare grace note on the increasingly batty op-ed pages of the New York Times (I'm now convinced, by the way, that Paul Krugman and Maureen Dowd are actually the same person - a kind of Professor Jekyll and Ms Hyde act - the polemical professor and the demotic damsel).

Iraq's Death Spiral II

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