The Pupkin Presidency
Mitch Berg's Shot In The Dark has a "poll" going:
See how many of them [the "usual leftyblog suspects"] try to disavow the link between the invasion of Iraq and Libya's disavowal of WMDs.
That's similar enough to one of my bingo posts that I'm claiming blog bingo ;).
But anyway, here's Josh Marshall on Libya:
[...]a few comments on the Libya deal.First, this has only a tenuous link to the Bush Doctrine, though the White House and some of the more gullible columnists are going to great lengths to portray it that way. Libya has been trying to get good with the US and Europe for half a dozen years -- as signalled by the first on-going and now just concluded negotiations over the Pan-Am bombing.
(The Libya deal looks like an especially good example of the Bush Doctrine in action if you haven't been paying any attention to Libya for the last dozen years. Along those lines, here's a good article on that history, and a recent update by the same author.)
Second, Libya's 'WMD' are awfully primitive compared to be the big-boys of the rogue state universe. They have mustard gas, a World War I era weapon, and some very preliminary nuclear stuff, not even remotely close to having a serious facility let alone a bomb. So that context is important.
Having said all this, some are pointing to this development as a sign of the merits of talking versus fighting in turning back the scourge of weapons proliferation.
But that won't do either.
Talking, in itself, means nothing. It's only a way of lubricating or finessing the application of different kinds of force or pressure. And the pressure applied to Libya has been fierce. Only it wasn't principally military, but economic.
Libya has been under fierce UN-sanctions for a decade. And the strangling pressure of those sanctions, combined with rising internal political strains which magnified their effect, prompted the shift of course.
Does the backdrop of Iraq play into the decision? Of course, it does. But this isn't a break with the direction Libya's been pursuing, but a continuation of it.
Got that? This would've happened under President Gore, too. It was just a matter of time. Josh is apparently running a home-made tape in his head, of President Gore praising the UN's mighty works in Libya, thanking President Clinton for his historically significant work in laying the groundwork for this achievement, praising Col. Qadaffi for his cooperation (maybe offering him a promotion to General), and warning Saddam Hussein (politely, of course) that he's about to receive the UN's undivided attention unless he stops developing WMD's right now. (Remember, in this tape, the Democrats still believe Saddam has WMD's.)
Oooh, I got goose pimples. Call it the Pupkin Presidency. In Martin Scorses's "King Of Comedy," pathetic wannabe talk show host Rupert Pupkin ran his idea of the perfect talk show in his basement, with mostly imaginary guests. I can't help but think of Josh and others as imagining an endless series of Gore presidential press conferences announcing breakthroughs in the "Response To 9/11 Program" (what, you think they'd have called it the "War On Terror?" Get real.)
Somebody needs to put together an alternative history of the Gore presidency. The "Thank you, Libya" press conference would definitely be there.
Josh gets style points for the blithe reference to "gullible columnists." Of course that's the only word for anybody who fails to see to the dark heart of the Bush administration, right?