More evidence that conservatives don't stand for anything besides their own venality.

The Threatening Storm: a review

Check out Kenneth M. Pollack's The Threatening Storm. If you visit the amazon.com site, pay especially close attention to the customer reviews. Pollack was a policymaker with the Clinton Administration -- and now here he is, with his book prominently displayed in my local Borders bookstore, and with an elaborate, rational-sounding, defense of why the US should go to war with Iraq. Anyone who wants to debate this issue in all seriousness should be willing to confront the arguments contained therein -- and the folks out there who have been spending the past two years bashing Ralph Nader as the "spoiler" of the 2000 election should consider the (in my mind, distinct) possibility that, even if Gore had been appointed President instead of Bush, American troops might be in Baghdad next year anyway, thanks to the Kenneth M. Pollacks of the world. Don't you think? The Threatening Storm is, after all, a book which contains the imprimatur of the Council on Foreign Relations, with its enormous pull upon the world of the elites.

As for Pollack's argument itself, I could only skim the book in the bookstore (not wanting to spend a lot of money on it), but I came away from my skim thinking that he painted an unduly rosy picture of the effects of an invasion of Iraq, and I don't really think he's looking at the oil part of the picture with any great degree of care. As readers of this blog know already, my main objection to this upcoming war is in the predictions of overwhelming casualties, and in its effects upon the global economy. (And then there are my secondary objections...)

And as for Saddam Hussein, have the bright guys in DC considered in the least the possibility that the end of sanctions could be used as a Trojan Horse to overthrow him?