Editor's Page
Cohen, Mitchell
DID A "new world order" materialize out of communism's collapse and the Gulf War, only to impose itself now on Iraq? With 9/11 a convenient, mediating excuse? The events of 1989-1991...
...In it, Mr...
...Yitzhak Nakash's discussion of Iraq's Shiites is an antidote to the instant expertise that has cropped up everywhere...
...Those doves didn't propose that Iraq's dictator had spent years frustrating inspections in order to save a nonexistent arsenal...
...Claims of settled "order" rested on cold war premises...
...For example, Fred Smoler's dissection of myths about what happened in the war...
...It is easy to take immediate circumstances for a bigger conceptual reality (your own), as Marxists used to point out...
...K., who then "turned pale...
...The world-wide debate demonstrates "that although the international community's behavior sometimes warrants disdain or even contempt, the administration can neither ignore nor override it," except at great cost...
...n As I followed pre-war political rows, ranging from Testosterone TV (aka Fox News), where swagger substitutes for reflection, to shoddy attempts on the left to prove that Saddam's crimes were really Washington's sins, I recalled "Meeting Again," a pithy story by Bertolt Brecht...
...K.'s experience...
...One expects conservatives to resist reordering their thoughts...
...DID A "new world order" materialize out of communism's collapse and the Gulf War, only to impose itself now on Iraq...
...The events of 1989-1991 produced vast change, but I think fluidity resulted—a new world flux, not a global fix...
...Why discuss costs when we cut taxes...
...While I wonder if what she describes as democratization might turn out to be something different, pluralization of international power, her nuanced argument merits special attention...
...Keuner runs into a fellow he has not seen in some time...
...one wishes the left would be less conservative...
...Doing so, power or prejudices may be served but not studied engagement with our world...
...Simplistic conservatives celebrated "Western victory" Left-wing counterparts reduced the post-communist globe to "American imperialism...
...Oh!," says Mr...
...n This issue has stimulating articles for people who don't want Mr...
...With 9/11 a convenient, mediating excuse...
...Recall doves insisting that UN scrutiny could reveal all weapons of mass destruction sequestered in Saddam's fascist state...
...Sanford Levinson provokes a debate about torture that lends moral complexity to a chilling subject in this hour of war, terror, and John Ashcroft...
...Recall hawks insisting that Iraqi democracy would come easily and cheaply...
...Her account of global democratization suggests to me that we should treat with skepticism the claim that American "imperialism" was the last decade's key geopolitical feature...
...You haven't changed a bit," the chap remarks...
...Perhaps some folks—whether right, left, or both at once—will revisit their pre-war exchanges and do likewise...
...n Suzanne Nossel's important essay emphasizes how "proliferation of independent voices" and breaks in "traditional patterns of allegiance" characterized the lead-up to war...
Vol. 50 • July 2003 • No. 3
