Chirac, Putin & Co.

One of our favorite newspaper columns was issued back in 1986 on the eve of America's attack on Libya. The attack was ordered by President Reagan after the bombing of the LaBelle nightclub in Berlin. President Mitterrand had just announced that American warplanes flying the mission out of Britain would not be allowed to cross French air space, with the result that our pilots would have to take the long way around to their targets and arrive there lower on fuel and energy. This is when R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. issued his famous dispatch proposing that our pilots cross France anyhow, following a route that would take them over all the American war cemeteries where our GIs lie facing the sky under which they died for French and American freedom.

We don't mind confessing we have a similar sentiment today, as the news comes over the wires that France is inclined, with Russia, to vote "no" on the war resolution America is trying to get past the United Nations Security Council. Suddenly hopes of many of us are soaring again that America will be in a position to go into this fight alone, with Britain, unencumbered by the United Nations, the Security Council, or the ungrateful French. There may be those who are inclined to support this war only if the U.N. has given its sanction. We're more inclined to support the war only if our commander-in-chief can use his best judgment free of nagging and needling from the Kofi Annans, Vladimir Putins, and Jacques Chiracs of the world.

It's more, incidentally, than just a preference for the judgment of Americans. We are with those who actually think that, while there are no doubt risks, America can win this war. When victory is at hand in the Gulf and a friendly government accedes at Baghdad, there is going to be a divvying up of the spoils. Not in the old fashioned sense of carrying off the chariots and spouses of the defeated host, but in the sense of participating in the development and the rebuilding of the liberated country. Some day there are going to be those who wish they were with the forces of freedom who joined this expedition. Because, as in any war, the advantage will be with those who were there when the chips were down.