I just heard Bill Kristol use the phrase “you can’t just suddenly use force”, talking about Iran and the recent Bush administration rhetoric trying to lay the foundation for a bombing campaign.
He said it of course, with that usual smugness: a voice so relaxed into the back of his throuat that it sounds almost like the churning of gears. It’s not a smuggness that comes from being right, as the anonymous liberal and Glenn Reynolds point out. Here’s Kristol before the war:
We are tempted to comment, in these last days before the war, on the U.N., and the French, and the Democrats. But the war itself will clarify who was right and who was wrong about weapons of mass destruction. It will reveal the aspirations of the people of Iraq, and expose the truth about Saddam’s regime. It will produce whatever effects it will produce on neighboring countries and on the broader war on terror. We would note now that even the threat of war against Saddam seems to be encouraging stirrings toward political reform in Iran and Saudi Arabia, and a measure of cooperation in the war against al Qaeda from other governments in the region. It turns out it really is better to be respected and feared than to be thought to share, with exquisite sensitivity, other people’s pain. History and reality are about to weigh in, and we are inclined simply to let them render their verdicts.
Lesson learned: you can’t just suddenly use force.