May your life
light the night sky.

It is so humbling to see these entries completely overtaken by events. As of today, we are looking at two non-resolvers: (1) the weapons of mass destruction may not really be there, at least not in any quantity - it may simply be an active capacity without a stockpile. I still don't believe it. I still believe we'll find the real thing, including scary nuclear stuff. Also I think we're going to find much more compelling links to terrorists. But this will all look so out of date so quickly. (2) Saddam may be alive and uncaught. I did email someone over the past couple of weeks that I had thought he would be Trotsky, assassinated in exile. I can't see him dying of old age. But Stalin and Mao did, and as far as I can remember Idi Amin is alive and well in Saudi Arabia.

There is a type of revenge bombing taking place against the anti-Bush camp, and it is not over yet. The case against Saddam has been overstated. Boom. We did not bring in enough troops to fight this, a nationwide guerrilla war. Boom. We will be stopped in Baghdad, tens of thousands will die in house-to-house fighting. Boom. The Iraqis will never welcome us as liberators. Boom.

And the last one, not yet dropped: You will not find weapons of mass destruction. Boom. Boom. Boom.

I am honored to witness the celebrations in Iraq, and I believe them. I do not completely understand, however, why so many of the celebrants seem to be able, draft-age men. Is this what's left of their Army?

What will be the end of Saddam Hussein? Mussolini was lynched by partisans. Hitler killed himself in his bunker, rather than be taken by Russians. The Japanese went to war crime trials. None of these will sound appealing to Saddam.

A wild guess. He will try to make a deal, and enlist some international support to do so. Say to the Americans, OK, you aggressors, you have taken us, I will capitulate to avoid further bloodshed (including mine), and in the meantime, let’s have a ceasefire and talk about terms. Minimum, I want the exile you offered earlier. And we will say… no thanks, no ceasefire, no nothing, come out with your hands up and we’ll decide. And he’ll say, then watch all the carnage I will cause. And the UN and the Arab world will say… US, if you don’t deal, you’ll be responsible for the carnage.

My short-term predictions like this are always wrong. I hope this one is too.

For good or ill, when we launch a war we are guiding the path of history in a much more deliberate way than when we simply fight back. We are imagining a future and fighting forward, towards that future. We still try to couch the enterprise in defensive terms, since this is the premise of so much international law of armed conflict (the UN Charter) and domestic politics (the Department of Defense - not, as it was for many years, the Department of War). And we have here some good defensive arguments under international law, particularly the one that links this invasion of Iraq back to Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait, and his breach of the ceasefire terms.

But whatever the justifications, this American invasion seems contrary to a long-taught position that democracies are slow to war and then only wage them in self-defense. I wonder if it was ever true in America. We have always pushed our defensive perimeter way, way forward. The reason we have so many soldiers buried overseas is that that is where they fought. America in the 19th century saw war on its soil with Britain, with Mexico (sort of), and a great civil war. In the 20th, just Pearl Harbor, and not many think of that as homeland. And here in the 21st: 9/11.

I believe this American President, right or wrong, sees this historical sweep. He may be deluded to think he can guide history to make the world a safer place for America. But I have no doubt this is what he is trying to do.

Does he also see it in terms of empire? We beat Germany and Japan, occupied them, installed democracies, and keep troops there to this day. There are US military bases in Afghanistan. You better believe, even after the re-democratization of Iraq, there will be US bases there.

On the other hand – and here is where it gets really interesting – we are probably going to see our troops pulled out of Germany soon. We will probably withdraw them from Saudi Arabia because with Iraq pacified they will no longer be needed. I wonder if we will stay in Turkey.

It is an empire. But the Romans were in and out with their garrisons, they played the local politics, it was not the same from place to place, things changed. Same with us.

But who are our Goths, Visigoths, Vandals, and Huns, and when do they sack us?

I am probably the last to figure out that the lack of UN support for this war is a curse and a blessing. It’s bad, of course, for all the obvious international-comity reasons, and probably a bad precedent for the future. But how about for the conduct of the war? When it looked like we were just rolling over the Iraqis, Saudi Arabia called for a “breather” to work the diplomatic front. And Bush Senior halted our first advance on Baghdad because he knew we’d lose support of our allies. If we were in this with the UN they would be calling for a cease-fire at the first heavy resistance, the first bad case of civilian casualties, each time it looked like the war was not going to be bloodless and short.

I am sorry to conclude that if we are to fight a war that does not stop short of the objectives of regime change and disarmament, it has to be waged by a determined American commander in chief. We could never have obtained UN support for such a war.

There is an echo here of the American requirement of unconditional surrender to end WWII. It has been criticized, particularly with Japan. It took nuclear bombs to effect it - and even then, we let them keep the Emperor. Chilling.