Certain conservative webloggers who happen to be former editors of the New Republic are crowing about how President Bush’s assertive stand on Iraq is making former opponents into allies: the Saudis, the French, the Egyptians, et.al. Actually, this line of reasoning — this interpretation of recent events — is pretty widespread. But it could scarcely be more foolish.
The opposition of more or less all of these countries was explicitly tied to the president’s eagerness to sidestep the UN 
Security Council and his indifference to the return of inspectors. Has the president bent these countries to his will? Or did they bend him to theirs?
A few months ago I wrote a long article on Iraq in the Washington Monthly in which I endorsed the Powell-ite policy and drew sharp criticism from the usually Iraq-hawk quarters for doing so …
The same goes for the State Department’s efforts to get weapons inspectors back into Iraq. The hawks tend to view weapons inspections as a contemptible joke, a half-measure that will bog us down with kibitzing at the U.N. and rob us of our justification for invasion. Properly done, however, inspections are not a way to avoid war but to build the ground work for it. Before a single soldier hits the ground in Iraq, the U.S. should demand a virtually air-tight inspection regime–not the half-measures the U.N. is currently negotiating with Saddam. Our European allies would oppose this strenuously, as will Russia and China. But it is well worth drawing them into that conversation, because the force and logic of our argument is quite strong. Once the concept of inspections is granted, the need to make them effective is difficult to refute. If Saddam were to accept a truly robust inspections regime–one which would allow the inspectors to roam the country more or less at will–we will have achieved our aim of neutralizing the threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. But, of course, when he doesn’t agree–and he won’t–then we will have forced our allies to confront the reality of Iraqi intransigence head-on. Some may still oppose our imminent military action. But others might join us, and that will make us stronger.
A return of inspectors is the only sensible policy since we win either way. If they’re allowed to do their job our problem is solved. If not, our argument is made.
This of course is — for all the Cheney-ite bluster in the UN speech — precisely what the administration is now doing. Cheney and Rumsfeld are out of the saddle. Disingenuousness and ignorance is just keeping their allies out of government from admitting it.
If the president fell flat on his face in the middle of the Rose Garden some of these characters would applaud his uncanny foresight in having arranged for the ground to be in just the right place to break his descent. Shades of the personality cult.
