Should We Go (Have Gone) to War?:  
Columnists For War
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Also see "Editorials" FAQ section, for post-war updates
and "Pre-War Columnists Against War"

1. Who were the Washington Post columnists for war?

2. At the New York Times, who was for war?

3. Who were the Wall Street Journal columnists for war?

4. What was the view of columnists at the Weekly Standard?

5. Who at the UK's Guardian was in favor of war?

6. Who were other pro-war columnists?
   

1.  Who were the Washington Post columnists against war?

Supporting the invasion included The Washington Post's George Will  ("Skeptics and Sketchy War Plans" and "Improvised War Etiquette").

In December 2002 on ABC's"This Week" Sunday morning show, Will saw weapons inspectors as a "charade" since they have "neither the ability not the duty to ferret out hidden weapons" (ABC News, 12/8/02).  Will's "Holdover from the '60s" in the Post (1/23/03) is critical of anti-war protestor.  "The left cannot mount a critique that rises above rock lyrics and name-calling...hankering for the excitements of one's youth is only human."

"Enough Said About Inspections" comes after the Blix report and the State of the Union (1/30), were Will anticipates Powell's evidence to the UN and realizes some sources cannot be revealed.  He argues that the aluminum tubes are still worthwhile evidence and Iraq is unnecessarily delaying U2 flights. 

His post-Powell "Disregarding the Deniers", criticizes the inconsistency of France and their foreign minister Dominique de Villepin.  Will figures that France will be "retreating, this time into incoherence...Perhaps de Villepin's statement lost some clarity in translation.  More likely, it was incoherent because his position is. "Also see "Allies" FAQ section.

Another of Will's post-Powell piece, "Disregarding the Denier", analyzes the power of Powell.  The presentation at the UN "will change all minds open to evidence....It is probable the President Bush decided at least a year ago that U.S. force would be necessary and would be used for regime change in Iraq, with or without UN approval."

In late February, Will criticizes European protestors.  "Today's demonstrators against a war to disarm Iraq can hardly be explained by fear for their safety, or by sympathy for Saddam Hussein's fascism.  The London demonstrators--one million strong, much the largest in British history--was not as large as the death toll from the war Saddam Hussein launched against Iran."  

Will joked in Newsweek:  "How many Frenchmen does it take to defend Paris? No one knows, it's never been tried."  In response, Molly Ivins pointed out that 1.4 million French soldiers were killed in World War I and 100,000 against Hitler (Chicago Tribune, 2/20). 

In March Will joined Krauthammer in criticizing France and others at the UN in "Permission From the Powerless".:  "Counting from April 18, 1991, the 15th day after the passage of UN Resolution 687, more than 4,330 days have passed since Iraq put itself in material breach of international obligations...So the current "rush" to war has consumed almost half again as many as all the 3,075 days of U.S. engagement in World Wars I and II and the Korean War...As the world waits to see whether the UN will cudgel Iraq with a 'second' resolution, which actually would be the 18th...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A37579-2003Mar3?language=printer

In "The War Is On", Will wrote of France and the start of war:  "The war against Iraq has begun...weeks ago, with special forces" and expanded no-fly zones.  "Soon the bow wave created by the movement of the great ship America into full-scale war will wash away Lilliputian nuisances, such as French diplomacy...No longer in any meaningful sense an ally, France does not disguise its aim to be a counterweight to the U.S....Fortunately for the U.S. which ash serious things to think about," the French Foreign Minister continue to demonstrate "the absurdity of his country's demand to be taken seriously." 

"War precipitates clarity as well as confusion, and the war against Iraq already has clarified this:  The UN is not a good ideas badly implemented, it si a bad idea."  Thus opened Will's March 13 "UN Absurdity."  Taking a lesson from history, The Post and ABC commentator continued, "Just as the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy not Roman nor an empire, the UN is a disunited collection of regimes, many of which do not represent the nations they govern."  Will suggests, as Thomas Friedman had earlier, that India became a permanent member of the UNSC.

Will's eve of war piece, "Addressing the Naysayers" criticized Bush for allowing pointless diplomacy to proceed too long but complemented him for saying, in Will's words, "Get out of Dodge by sundown Wednesday."  Will suggested that the problem for many Democrats "which threatens to disqualify their party from responsibilities for a generation, is their incontinent love of snobbery and nostalgia--condescension toward a present they consider ignorant, and a longing for the fun of antiwar days of yore."  He criticizes Senator Tom Daschle's absurdity that America is "'forced to war' because presidential diplomacy failed to produce a broader coalition..."  He feels that Lieberman and Gephardt stand out as "plausible presidents." 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A49827-2003Mar18?language=printer

Charles Krauthammer, appears in the Washington Post and is often syndicated in the Chicago Tribune.  He was a member of the PNAC (See "Was the War Inevitable" FAQ section). In the fall of 2002 he examines the potential dovish nature of Powell over the years and urged the French to be a friendly ally. ( "Call Their Bluff".)

In "What Good is Delay" (10/7/02), Krauthammer responds to Senator Kennedy's opposition to war;  "If deterrence works, by what logic does Kennedy insist that Saddam Hussein 'must be disarmed'...the virtue of delay [of the Congressional vote] is that it gives Democrats political cover.  Ever since George McGovern, Democrats have been trying to escape their reputation for being soft, indeed unserious, on foreign policy...the delay school...manages to criticize the war and still come out in favor of it: a neat trick--and given the gravity of the issue, an unseemly one."  

In response to Krauthammer's "The Myth of UN Support", a Post reader quotes from the UN charter: "'All members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state'...Iraq's violation of these principles was the cause of the first Persian Gulf War.  It would be ironic if the U.S. violated them in waging the second" (Washington Post, 10/9/02).  

In January 2003, on the eve of the inspectors' report and the State of the Union, Krauthammer felt that there was "no turning back now" (1/24/03).  Now that Germany, France, Russia, and China have declared opposition to war, now that "the 'world community' has shown that it never seriously intended to disarm Iraq, we are back on our own.  This is the moment...The president cannot logically turn back." Since inspectors can only verify "voluntary disarmament," since Hussein is a threat "there is no logical way to rationalize walking away from Iraq even if the present wanted to . Nor can the president turn back politically" because it would "destroy his credibly as a leader.  Most important, there is no turning back geopolitically" to show our pst-9/11 resolve.  Delay will cost us in many ways.  "France will be speaking very differently of the U.S. when a decent, democratizing pro-American government in liberated Baghdad begins its rule--and opens bids for oil contracts." 

In mid-February he wrote of the "deferred challenges" for the 1990s catching up to us in Iraq, North Korea, and terrorism, when Clinton was President.  He termed the '90s "Holiday from history" (2/14, no link). 

Ever critical of France, like his Post colleague George Will, Krauthammer penned "A Costly Charade At the UN", this time adding Guinea to his denunciations. "The entire exercise [of gaining a vote from 'small, powerful peripheral' Guinea] is ridiculous, but for unfathomable reason it matters to many...It is only slightly less absurd that we should require the assent of France.  France pretends to great-power status but hasn't had it in 50 years."

Krauthammer felt that France was being "obstructionist" not to contain Iraq but to contain the U.S.  He suggested that two new members of the Security Council should be added, India and Japan.  "There should be no role for France in Iraq...No peacekeepers.  No oil contracts.  And France should be last in line for loan repayment, after Russia.  Russia, after all, simply has opposed our policy.  It did not try to mobilize the world against us."  He feels that NATO and the UN will "simply wither of [their] own irrelevance."

Just one week before war, Krauthammer directly urged the President to "Call the Vote. Walk Away."  Again criticizing the French, he writes, "The French are bent not just on opposing your policy but on destroying it--and the coalition you built around it."  Examining the history of UN-sanctioned wars, Krauthammer recalled that since 1945 only Korea and the first Gulf War received UN support.  "You could very well have gone to war under the original SC resolution of 1991 and been justifed...that the international community is a fiction and the UN a farce hardly matters."  The columnist concludes, "No more dithering." Present a one-line resolution.  "Iraq is in violation of 1441"  and if it fails, "you've exposed the UN for what it is:  the League of Nations, empty, cynical, and mendacious.  Mr. President:  Call the vote and walk away." 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A13017-2003Mar11?language=printer

Another Washington Post hawk is Michael Kelly, who urges his readers that "to choose perpetuation of tyranny over rescue from tyranny , where rescue may be achieved, is immoral."  Writing "Immorality on the March" (2/19), Kelly responds to the protestors of that week: "To march against the war is not to give peace a chance.  It is to give tyranny a chance.  It is to gives the Iraqi nuke a chance.  It is to give the next terrorist mass murderer a chance.  It is to march for the furtherance of evil instead of the vanquishers of evil.  This cannot be the moral position." 

The Washington Post's Jim Hoagland joined those calling for war, arguing in the fall of 2002 in "So Long, Saddam" that with the release of "your [Hussein] 12,000 page whitewash on WMD...this is the week you sealed your fate", giving the Bush team "a decent shot" at a second UN resolution. On February 5, Hoagland wrote, "to continue to say that the Bush administration has not made its case, you must now believe that Colin Powell lied in the most serious statement he will ever make or was taken in my manufactured evidenced.  I don't believe that.  Today, neither should you."

Sometimes critical of the administration, back in October Hoagland accused the CIA of recycling old evidence on such topics as al Qaeda in "CIA's New Old Iraq File" (10/20/02). 

In mid-February Hoagland spoke of the fragile allies with France, NATO, and Asia in "America the Challenged."  "Siren Song" of late February (2/23) spoke of Persian Gulf I in comments to Hussein:  "In 1990 the Bush 41 hawks were petrified that you would partially withdraw from Kuwait and start negotiations that would split the coalition and block an invasion.  But half-measures or compromises in which you seem to give up something have never been your style.  Why start now?"

Hoagland describes "Chirac's Temptation" as leading "the week rather than [being] ignored by the strong" (2/27). 

2.  At the New York Times, who was for war?  (Jump to Bill Keller)

In the New York Times William Safire  is the most Hawkish of the regulars on the Op-ed page. In "Irrefutable and Undeniable" (Feb. 6) argues for war:  "In criminal law, that obstruction iof justice [by Hussein] would be called hiding incriminating evidence, spying on law enforcement officials, and intimidating witnesses...Powell did not try to prove that Saddam Hussein had nerve as to fill 16,000 rickets; it was enough that he gave conclusive proof of the cover-up."  But leaders of France, Germany, Russia, and China "do not want to find the crime that would necessitate war."

Back in late September 2002 he criticized the German position as "undermining its Atlantic alliance" in "The German Problem" (9/19/02).  Earlier, Safire wrote in  "Of Turks and Kurds":  "No evidence of Saddam's support of terror will convince the amalgam of today's McGovernites and yesterday's Bushies of the need to overthrow a dictator racing to acquire nukes...[We must] stop a homicidal maniac and serial aggressor from gaining the power to threaten our cities with annihilation."  

As the debate for a UN resolution heated up in late October, Safire warned that "should the UN deny the fact of Saddam's repeated and sustained defiance of its irresolute resolution, the world body will henceforth play only in a little league of nations...but the Paris-Moscow-Beijing axis of greed--whose commerce-driven politicians seek to prop up the doomed Saddam in the UN--will find its policy highly unprofitable"  ("In Material Breach", 10/28/02).

His late-November contribution, "Phony War II", concluded with this warning:  "What if the present period [UN resolution passed, no inspectors yet] drags on and on?  What if UN inspectors are manipulated and bamboozled by an Iraqi regime and...the see-no-evil Hans Blix?...tyranny would then bob and weave and survive.  Phony War II is now a year old, and time is on Saddam's side" (11/28/02). 

"Bad Herr Dye" Safire's cleverly titled piece of January 2003, criticized Germany's Schroeder [criticized for his new hair color in the past] and France' Chirac and their attempts at "Franco-German dominance" (1/23).  For his late-January "Clear Ties of Terror", see "Was the War Inevitable?" FAQ section.

In February Safire criticized the "Yes, but" group who criticize Hussein but don't want war.  His 12 "dirty dozen" examples concerning WMD, UN terrorism, the cost, etc. are followed by the conclusion that "rather than go up against a grand design, they play the devil with the details" (2/20, "The Yes-But Parade"). 

In early March Safire urged, in "Give Freedom a Chance" to not feel guilty "about doing our duty...We are not 'starting a war' with Iraq that was begun by Saddam more than a decade ago...It is futile to try to reason with passionate marchers waving signs proclaiming that America's motives are to conquer the world and expend blood for oil."  The war is to defend ourselves, he contends, because "we know he has ties to terror organization eager to use those weapons for more mass murder...Such a birth of freedom in Iraq, a land of oil wealth and a literate populating, may jsut spread to its neighbors and co-religionists.  This would counter the cancerous growth of repression and rancor that has roiled the Middle East and impoverished the people of 20 nations."  Safire concludes, "This campaign near the Ides of March will make us safer, allaying our fears; it has the potential of making the world freer, justifying our hopes."

Ever critical of Democrats, the UN, and France, like Will and Krauthammer, Safire's "The French Connection" (3/13) is true to form.  He writes, "France, China, and Syria all have a common reason for keeping American and British troops out of Iraq:  the 3 nations may not want the world to discover that their nationals have been illicitly supplying Hussein with material used in building long-range surface-to-surface missiles."

Safire's eve of war "Getting on With It" commends the President's 48-hour ultimate to end the "phony war."  He suggests we move out NATO troops from "pacifist" Germany to Bulgaria and Poland.  "Our response to the quagmire of the UN SC should be to stop pretending it is a vehicle for collective security or moral authority."  On Turkey's "unkind turnabout" Safire hopes that American have to respect the decision of "a freely elected government, wrongheaded, costly, and ultimately self-damaging thought it is."  The veteran New York Times columnist feels criticizing such a "protest paraders" the "Kennedy-Pelosi left" and Newsweek's cover story, "Why America Scares the World" with the them of "The arrogant Empire" will be countered by a victory for democracy. "Dissent will decline" as "smoking guns and hiding terrorists will be found.  European non-allies and Arab potentates will find ways to forgive us...And American voters next year will remember who offered fear and who offered hope." 

In the spring and summer of 2003 Safire wrote a series of "interviews" "from the great beyond" with former leaders, including Nixon and the Kurdish leader, Mullah Mustafa Barzani.

Another hawkish Times columnist is Bill Keller, appearing on Saturdays. "Why Bush Won't Wait" (1/25/03) appeared just before the Blix report and the Bush State of the Union:  "We can't agree among ourselves how conclusive the evidence is...Pulling the plug [on inspectors] at this pint tells the world that Mr. Bush was never very serious about the UN route in the first place." 

Keller summarizes four justification for war, some deemed worthwhile and others less. so.  Hussein has a "beastly regime", Iraq can become more democratic, getting Saddam's oil, etc.  He concludes that we should wait, so as not to rush, to gain more allies, and see more evidence.  In February, Keller labeled himself "a reluctant Hawk." 

In "Fear on the Home Front" (2/22) Keller worried about alliances of convenience Hussein might make with bin Laden.  Drawing from World War II history, he writes that "Stalin and Hitler were ideologically incompatible, too, when they signed their nonaggression pact.  All these monsters are at heart power-hungry, history-stealing opportunists [and] expedient." 

3.  Who were the Wall Street Journal columnists against war?

Peggy Noonan criticizes opponents of war in The Wall Street Journal editorial (9/27/02): "So far...they have argued that there are grave risks to action, but...there are grave risks to inaction, too...The Democrats ...have so far failed to mount a principled, coherent opposition." Another Journal editorial, "The Antiwar Resolution", argues, "The place to start is by reaffirming that the objective [of weapons inspectors] is not simply to disarm Iraq but to liberate it." In late January, on the eve of the State of the Union, Noonan advises how to make the case against Saddam.  She writes of new facts and hard data, wonders if Bush is hoping Saddam will leave or that his generals will kill him. Also see "Doing nothing...is not an option" in UK's Guardian. 

James Taranto writes often as the lead in the Opinion Journal.  In reaction to Blix's Jan 27 report, he feels it is time to "end this war," which did not officially end in 1991 as the Gulf War concluded.  We should go to war to help democracy grow, the maintain American credibility, and to end sanctions ("Start a War? No, End One", 1/27/03). 

Also in the Wall Street Journal, editor emeritus Robert Bartley wrote on Mondays.  For example on January 27 he suggests that Germany and France ought to read Resolution 1441, especially the "final opportunity to comply" phrase.  Finding 16 empty chemical warhead is nice, as Richard Armitage said, "but where are the other 29,984?"  This "where are they?" phrase was picked up a week later when Powell spoke at the UN.

4.  What was the view of columnists at the Weekly Standard?

In the September Weekly Standard, William Kristol is distrustful of Powell and includes Powell in his "axis of appeasement." Another frequent columnist at The Weekly Standard is Fred Barnes, who will write "for the editors."  In Barnes' "Endgame", after Bush "made the case" in his State of the Union and Powell reinforced it with an "irrefutable indictment of Iraq", Bush is right that "'the game is over'...Barnes feels that war is the next step.  The time for inspection is over."  There is no need to keep talking of a second resolution because "the unpersuaded are besides the point now.  The president has met every one of their demands yet...[they have] come up with new demands."  Bush was willing to get Congressional approval , approval of the UN, and show evidence.  "The demand for another resolution is simply another in a seemingly endless series of traps designed to delay and day of reckoning...Fussing over inspections, the UN, and what might entice the French...leads to inaction.  the president has cleared a better path--for action that removes Saddam and liberates Iraq." 

5.  Who at the UK's Guardian was against war?

Some British's The Guardian pieces supported the war.  "A dove in hawk's feather's" is a rare pro-war voice in The Guardian/Observer.  
http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4621435-102273,00.html
David Beresford writes in mid-March, "It is surely time to go the war...My reasoning is all 'wrong' but I think it remains compelling."  While he doesn't believe Hussein has WMD he does believe the awful pictures of him gassing the Kurds.  

Jason Burke echoes these rationale in "Why I believe this war is right."  Not a "warmonger" Burke sees torture as a sufficient reason of WMD.  Though Washington "has gone out of its war to make this war as unpopular as possible," his reporting from Baghdad leads him to the humanitarian argument.  "Disarmament will not end the torture, the rapes, the disappearances and the assassinations." 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4621305-102274,00.html

Writing in The Guardian, Bill Emott, an editor of The Economist, gave "5 good reasons for using force to topple this dictator" (11/25/02).  Emott concludes, "If there were only one reason [to be willing] to fight Saddam, it might not convincing.  but the reasons pile on top of one another:  human rights, defending multilateralism, ending resented containment scheme, deterring the spread of deadly weapons and, in the longer term, starting to spread democracy in the Middle East. 

The paper also includes a pro-American who understand all the arguments for war but still doesn't "believe in the war"  He understand the argument of "get Saddam before he gets us.' the al-Qaeda theories, the humanitarian case, the "progressive model" in Mideast promulgated by Friedman ("Catch me if you can", 2/5/03). 

Another Guardian op-ed in favor of war is "Why the Left is wrong on Saddam" because, among other reasons, post-war won't be so chaotic as many predict.  

6.  Who were other pro-war columnists?

Among others pro-war columnists, in the Chicago Tribune Dennis Byrne made the case for war in "Is this clear enough for you?"  His argument was that America is at risk and we are going to war despite the conclusions of some.  "My job," as he took the role of President Bush, "is to protect the U.S. from attack" (3/10). 

Another Tribune columnist in favor of war was Kathleen Parker, who talks of Hussein's regime in her March 12 column.  "That world opinion has been so easily massaged and manipulated by a madman proves the true power of evil and confirms only the imperative that Hussein be eliminated."