THE WANDERER, MAY 11, 2006
JOSEPH SOBRAN'S
WASHINGTON WATCH
The Age of Terror
We have arrived at an awful moment in history, and
worse may lie ahead. And yet it has been in the cards for
a lifetime.
The most fateful decision since, oh, the Garden of
Eden was Franklin Roosevelt's order to develop the atomic
bomb. This is not to blame him alone; the idea originated
with others, among them Albert Einstein, who urged the
project on Roosevelt.
It must have seemed like a good idea at the time;
with the urgency of war, it seemed vital for the United
States to get the weapon before Germany did. The idea of
using it on Japan came much later.
Only a few of the scientists in the Manhattan
Project, such as Robert Oppenheimer, seem to have been
troubled by the implications. A terrible threshold had
been crossed, irreversibly. Not only would it mean the
slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent people in the
short run; it would bring an era of endless terror
afterward, as other governments acquired the same weapon.
What could prevent them? The inevitable might be delayed
for a while, but the U.S. had no monopoly or patent on
the use of new discoveries in physics to make the
horrible thing.
"Proliferation" loomed from the beginning. But our
rulers chose to get on with the business of the day and
worry about the consequences later.
It's astounding that the man who launched the age of
nuclear terror is still venerated as a benefactor of
mankind. When will the obvious lesson sink in? Second
thoughts are at least half a century overdue.
So here we are, weighing the option, as they say, of
war on Iran, which has at least the capability of
manufacturing nuclear weapons. This won't be the last
time. The dilemma is more or less permanent.
Interestingly, in light of all that has been written
lately about "the Israel lobby," the Jewish weekly THE
FORWARD, in an April 14 editorial, offered the most
measured, forceful, and intelligent argument I have yet
seen against attacking Iran.
Quoting European diplomats who have called the idea
and its certain results "inconceivable," "completely
nuts," "a catastrophe," "an absolute calamity," and
"unimaginable," the editorial listed some of those
results: another unwinnable quagmire, far worse than the
Iraq war, chaos in Iran itself, an explosion of global
terrorism, and worldwide fury against America, not to
mention the blame that would be directed at Jewish and
Zionist influence. And all this is assuming the unlikely:
that the Bush administration would, in spite of its
record, execute the attack with competence and precision.
"The world faces terrifying choices right now," the
editorial concluded. "No options are good ones. Some
carry a high risk of calamity. Others carry a certainty."
The editorial might also have mentioned the global
economic impact of war on Iran, beginning with the world
oil market. Readers who own cars may already have noticed
higher prices at the gas pump.
But there is really no telling what the ultimate
consequences might be; even those who opposed American
entry into World War II never foresaw its chief result,
an era of nuclear terror, which didn't end with the Cold
War.
Finally, could the state of Israel withstand an
uncontrollable conflagration in the Mideast? In the short
run, the government (which has its own nuclear and other
high-tech weapons) probably could; but what would happen
to the Jewish and Palestinian people?
All we can be sure of is that they wouldn't be
better off; the only question is how much worse off they
would be in the long run after such a convulsion.
Wars are usually started by optimists (I could name
one) who expect easy victories and beneficial results --
optimists oddly tinged with hysteria about the enemy,
that is.
They rarely turn out to be right. Should we trust
them this time?
The Gracious Giant
The noted economist John Kenneth Galbraith is dead
at 97. I met him once in Switzerland, in the company of
our friend Bill Buckley; and it was immediately apparent
why, in spite of their differences, they were so fond of
each other. This tall liberal with the slashing wit was,
in person, a kind and gentle man, a charming giant.
Of course his opinions were generally wrong, because
they generally boiled down to the proposition that more
power should be given to "the public sector," meaning
government, at the expense of "the private sector,"
meaning you and me. For all that, it was hard to resent a
man who spoke his mind so wittily and forced you to
think. If he was a bit short on common sense himself, he
provoked it in others.
Only once did I ever agree with him: An obituary
quoted his quip that George W. Bush made him miss Ronald
Reagan. (Liberals can be funny, sometimes on purpose!)
Writing in THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, David Henderson
wrote a fine critical assessment of his work, pinpointing
its flaws without spite. One was Galbraith's tendency to
exaggerate the power of corporations and advertisers to
manipulate consumers, as witness the collapse of General
Motors against foreign competition. Like the USSR, GM
turned out not to be so formidable after all. And "the
public sector" has turned out to be much less competent
than Galbraith's generation of liberals had dreamed it
would be.
Snow's Job
Another old acquaintance of mine, Tony Snow, has
succeeded Scott McClellan as President Bush's press
secretary. The virtually unanimous early word on him is
that he'll be more candid and free-wheeling than the
starchy McClellan; as a columnist and Fox News pundit, he
has sometimes been sharply critical of Bush, from a
conservative angle. Bush picked him because of, not in
spite of, his relative independence. So they say. I
wonder.
I should say that I haven't seen Tony for years. We
used to dine occasionally with an informal group of
conservatives, and though he's a perfectly decent fellow,
I always sensed that he was anything but a maverick. He
struck me as an ambitious young family man, not a bad
thing to be, but one who wouldn't take risks by straying
too far from the herd. Intelligent enough, quick on his
feet, but not exactly exciting.
Since then he has won a fierce, nearly fatal
struggle with colon cancer, so he must have iron in his
soul. I'm happy for his success, even if it's not the
kind of success I myself would aspire to; but I hope
he'll be something more than an apologist for this sorry
administration. He reportedly accepted the job only on
condition that he'll be included in policy discussions,
not as a mere mouthpiece or robot.
Who knows? Maybe he'll turn his boss into something
more like the conservative Bush is wrongly accused of
being.
+ + +
"I suspect we hold elections so that at least some
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