Helmintholog

After all my tergivisations, my daughter has a cold. I have a cold. So we shall be snotty liberals at home, and watch the march on television. My wife has gone, though. But if you look for me on the demo, I’ll be not found.

I’ve been trying to think straight about the march on Saturday. I shall go, if only to because I regret never bothering to watch the Diana hysteria in Kensington Gardens, and this promises to be the most significant mass demonstration since then. My wife and daughter are completely committed to it. But I feel more reluctance with every passing day.

One reason is that I oppose the war, and if the march has any immediate practical effect, it will be to close off the last chance of peace (assuming peace has a chance at all). It will strengthen Saddam in the belief that he might be able to get away with a war, because his enemies are divided as well as cowardly. It will show Blair that he can’t teeter any longer on the brink, but must risk everything on a quick and overwhelming military victory.

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For taking Glenn Reynolds seriously a couple of posts back. Here is his grand explanation of the bin Laden tape:

HOW CONVENIENT. Personally, I think this is evidence that Osama is dead, and that the CIA is supplying these tapes for purposes of its own. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that). But now that he’s admitting a “partnership” with Iraq, it’s going to be tough for people who’ve been saying “you can’t even catch Osama” to deny this evidence. Heh.

I won’t do it again.

Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit man, has posted a rant on MSNBC about how a real Empire would not at all behave as America does. Let me say at once that America is not yet an imperial power. But that is where the war in Iraq will leave it, in relation to the Muslim world. And already, it is thinking like one, as his article shows.

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Andrew Sullivan is not a fool. He is, of course, an ideologue of the sort who can’t see creditable reasons for people to disagree with him about the stuff he really cares about. But can even he sincerely believe that “From any rational point of view, the end of the Saddam regime in Baghdad cannot be a huge blow to European interests. In fact, it’s pretty much a no-brainer, a necessary international police action to remove an obvious potential threat from terrorists and weapons of mass destruction”
Let’s try that idea another way round: “From any rational point of view, the persistent presence of a large British occupation force in Iraq cannot be a huge blow to British interests.” Still sounds like common sense, Andrew?
I’m beginning to think that it’s not just the experience of World Wars fought at home which cuts off Euope from America, but the fact that we actually know in our bones and blood why colonialism went out of fashion, while the Americans, still full of sentimental admiration for the Irish Catholics, are picking up the White Man’s Burden as if it weighed nothing at all.

God knows, our own dear press is stupid, ignorant and vicious often enough. But not as bad as this.
The New York Sun is arguing against granting a permit for the anti-war march next Saturday:

” we wouldn’t want to overstate the matter, but, at some level, the smaller the crowd, the more likely that President Bush will proceed with his plans to liberate Iraq. And the more likely, in that case, that the Iraqi people will be freed and the citizens of New York will be rescued from the threat of an Iraqi-aided terrorist attack.”

Well, yes. You wouldn’t want to overstate the matter. Compare this with another pro-war New Yorker, Nick Denton: ” Even supporters of the war know that the official rationale for war — nukes, links with Al-Qaeda, disrespect for the UN — is bogus. There is a powerful case — involving the defense of Israel, security of oil supplies, and reform of the troublesome Middle East — but mention of these is neither politic nor politically correct.”
Of course, Denton believes that the hyperpower can get away with someting grotesquely impolitic and “politically incorrect” — which means “repugnant to a large section of its own electorate”. This isn’t self-evident. I don’t know — no one knows — whether America is ready to pay the cost of Imperium. But it’s not, quite, too late to say ‘if you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime’.