Stardate 20021003.1412

(On Screen): In an interview a couple of days ago, Senator Chuck Hagel (R-Neb) said the following:

I don't understand why the president would not want all the congressional and international support he can get if, in fact, the last option is taking a nation to war. The allies want to have a say, and should have a say, in how we initiate this effort."

It's true that the allies want to have a say, but that's because what most of them want to say is no.

International support would be a fine thing. We'd love to have many other nations agree with us that Iraq must be attacked, and to offer troops to help us take the place, kill Saddam, and eliminate the Baath Party as a viable political movement in Iraq, and locate and destroy their stocks of WMDs and their equipment and supplies for making them.

We'd love to have support. But few of them actually do support it, and inviting them into the decision making process is an exercise in futility.

I think we're all agreed that of the three choices of attacking Iraq with international support, attacking Iraq without international support and not attacking Iraq, that attacking with international support would be the best. It's also extremely unlikely, and we are faced with choosing between attacking without support or not attacking. I believe we have to attack even if we don't have support.

What we're running into here is a difference of opinion about the value of coalitions. Is formation of a coalition an end in itself, or is it a means to accomplishing a goal? If you think that coalitions are ends, then inviting France and Germany and Russia and China and Saudi Arabia (and Iraq itself, for that matter) into an omnibus decision making process regarding what we should do in Iraq makes perfect sense, because the act of forming the coalition is itself a victory.

But if you see coalitions as a means to accomplishing a goal, then inviting our allies into such a coalition at this time would be at best useless, at worse completely counterproductive. We are not going to convince Chirac or Schröder to change their minds and support this war, unless something terrible happens (like somebody's city somewhere getting nuked with a bomb that clearly came from an Arab source).

We are building a coalition. But like a well-designed machine, we're including in that coalition the components needed to make it work well, without adding anything superfluous. That's why Qatar and Kuwait and the UK are in that coalition (and Turkey and maybe Jordan will end up being in it), and that's why France and Germany are not. Qatar and Kuwait and the UK have things to offer us which will make it easier for us to accomplish our goal. France and Germany have nothing to offer and the stated intent of trying to prevent us from accomplishing our goal and winning this war. (It's a good thing I know that they're allies. Otherwise I'd be suspicious that they might be enemies. I'm much comforted to know that they're actually allies, like Saudi Arabia is. What would we do without allies like France and Germany and Saudi Arabia? If we're lucky, maybe we'll find out.)

The President would love to get huge amounts of international support. But he can't get it if it isn't there to be gotten, and pretending that it's there when it actually isn't is a good way to lose this war.