And This is Why I Read Lileks

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy it when he waxes poetic about Gnat and Jasper, describes the changes of the seasons with such vivid imagery, but when he screeds….

I went back to the editorial archives today, to see what was said around the time of the Dec 1998 “Desert Fox” campaign. (And let us just imagine the panic if the current administration started naming military operations after famous Nazi nicks.) As I trolled back and forth in the microfiche looking for the relevant piece, I was struck by the other things the chattering classes brayed five years ago. “Lift the sanctions” was a popular item. And why? Because it would show Saddam the world was serious about giving him one last chance. Okay, here’s your gun back. But if you shoot us we’re going to take it away. The naivety nearly makes you weep. These people didn’t want Saddam’s body bobbing ass-up in the Tigris. They wanted a world in which the fascist clique that ruled Iraq curtseyed and bowed in the lovely gavotte of international diplomacy. However many people died in Saddam’s gulags was irrelevant; what mattered was that the UN was Concerned, and that the Iraqi Ambassador – clad in a nice Western suit, skilled in many tongues, daubed with a Macy’s cologne – agreed to facilitate the process of calibrating the precise nature of the consquences of failing to live up to the spirit of the letter of the penumbra of the –

That’s right. “Lift the sanctions” was the meme. And that’s why (I believe) that the invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam was on Bush’s agenda from before the election.

And I’m perfectly fine with that.

Anyway, that’s just a small taste of today’s Bleat. Go Read.