The Fruits of Pragmatism

Ace of Spades takes Colin Powell to task for his double talk on the NSA eavesdropping. (HT: Michelle Malkin)

I believe that appointing Powell as Secretary of State was one of Bush’s biggest mistakes. (Democrats want Bush to admit his mistakes. Well, there’s one.) Whenever the first Bush administration fumbled with a moment of appeasement, Powell was involved.

It is my guess, and this is just a guess, that Powell was instrumental in the decision to make weapons of mass destruction the primary justification for war. Bush should have attacked Iran, but if he had to attack Iraq, he could have said, “Saddam Hussein’s Iraq is a terrorist state. America will not be safe until all terrorist states are gone. We’re taking this one out now because it is the most practical, given our strategic situation. Once Iraq is free, we can use it as a base to destroy the other terrorist states in the region.”

Had Bush said this, instead of fomenting the weapons of mass destruction justification, he would have avoided years of obstruction and nonsense from the Democrats and their media arm. He would have been poised to move on and rid the world of terrorist states. But he would not have gotten the UN to go along with his war, because the UN is full of terrorist states. The State Department would have worked overtime to undermine such a forthright stand.

With Colin Powell and the State Department we have the pragmatist mentality in full. They don’t think in long range principles, they just jury-rig fixes for the crisis of that afternoon. As a result, the offensive in our war against militant Islam has stalled out. America is not safe. The moral of the story: pragmatism is impractical.