Thoughts on Steven den Beste’s Timetable Analysis
To Steven:
I think you frame the issue a little wrong, when you say we are wainting for the doctor’s diagnosis — cancer or not — in wating for the president’s “decision” on Iraq. That we are going is a moral certainty. Rather, I think it is a little more like we are in England in early June 1944 wondering when D-Day is.
1) The President’t personal statements on Iraq cannot be a bluff unless he intends to resign — and this is an inner directed, non-mercurial (your phrase?) man.
2) Rather, any wishy-washy talk must be seen as tactical.
3) However, the recent behavior by France and Germany is at least a little puzzling. Germany not so much because Shroeder is truly ideologically anti-American (though his party is now <25% in popularity). France, more so, because although France is temperamentally anti-American, it is commercially as cutthroat as the next fellow and you’d think they’d want to be on the winning team.
4) Leaving two possibilities. One is this is bluster by France and they will sign on at 11:59 — maybe in a week or two when that arrives. Two is that they are truly and deeply worried about devastating terrorist reprisals when we launch (there are a lot more Algerians in Paris than in the Finsbury Park mosque).
5) Bringing us to the SOTU. One of the really interesting aspects of the speech will be the extent to which the President stresses our domestic vulnerability after we commence the Iraq attack. If there is a high probability of serious attack — eg, smallpox — the President will take great pains not to undersell the risk. And if the President stresses a substantial risk of attack on the US civilian population, then I would lean toward explanation #2 regarging the French. Personally, I always take madmen like Sadaam et fils seriously when they say they will unleash such attacks. Correspondingly, if these terrorist risks are not characterized as important, then I would lean to as sleazy an interpretation as you can attribute to the Gallic mind.
6) Back to the timing issue. I am struck by the thought that we have maybe a couple of thousand troops in central Iraq now, and I go back to the huge September(?) air strike which probably was the cover operation leading to their insertion. My point is that we have had feet on the ground for months now, setting up forward intelligence positions and doing all the things that such elite, daring people do. Likewise, I am sure that we have been establishing domestic intelligence and such other foreign intelligence as we can. In intelligence it would seem that they longer you are engaged, the longer you wait, the more you can find out.
7) So we have logistics and intelligence. The logistics angle you have discussed at some length, and it seems we will have the pieces in place as early as this week. (I note in passing one piece of logistics which has just made its first public appearance — smallpox vaccine distribution — clearly a sine qua non of starting war.) As for intelligence, that side of it argues for waiting rather than moving, since you learn more every day, but the time of waiting has largely passed.
8. So, psychologically at least, we are back sitting around in some lousy barracks in eastern England waiting for a word to be given. Thank God we don’t have to endure the smallest fraction of what those brave men endured, but I still wouldn’t put it past Sadaam or Uday to try to bring a little of the perils of Normandy to the home front.
9) We’ll know more about the President’s assessment of the risks on Tuesday.