Jackson Diehl of the Washington

Jackson Diehl of the Washington Post offers a powerful rebuttal to the claim that the Bush administration’s “imperialist” bent brought on unnecessary crises in Iraq and North Korea. Most of the rebuttal consists of the answer by an unnamed senior adminstration official to David Broder’s specious question — why has Bush come to embrace “an almost imperial role” for the United States. Jackson concludes that the conflicts that will shape the winter of 2003 were “mostly inevitable. It’s just that, as half a century ago, Americans were slow to understand the threat, and reluctant to take it on — until inaction seemed the worst choice.”