What will it take?

After reading Victor Davis Hanson’s excellent article on Anti-Americanism, I considered the curious specimens that are Barbra Streisand, Alec Baldwin, and Sean Penn. Heck, I’ll throw in Noam Chomsky, Lewis Lapham and the New York Times editorial board. You know the kind. And I wondered: what would it take, what action or development would be so outrageous to them that they would support a war against Saddam Hussein?

Imagine this scenario: after months of angry Iraqi denials that they have any weapons of mass destruction, the U.N. inspectors stop a tractor-trailer near the Syrian border that is full of nerve gas canisters and weaponized samples of Clostridium botulinum. The Iraqis, acting like a teenager caught with a pack of smokes, deny ownership. To demonstrate their shocked (shocked!) outrage to this insult to their stated innocence, the Iraqi Security Forces execute the truck driver on the spot before he can talk to the U.N. inspectors. Saddam Hussein issues a statement that the intercepted truck was clearly planted by the Israelis to create a casus belli and provoke a war with the Americans.

What would the response be from the Joan Didions, the Michael Moores, and the limousine-liberals who shop at Zabars? Oh surely they would issue some tepid statement of “concern”, before declaring that this latest episode does not constitute a material breach, that this is all about oil and power, and maybe (it’s possible!) the Iraqis were framed.

Does anyone doubt it?