The efforts of Drs Blix and El Baradei to uncover the weapons of mass destruction (WMD) which all right-thinking folk feel sure must be there somewhere in Iraq's vast desert wastes are admirable, if so far unavailing. This recalls nothing so much as the enigmatic words of the ancient Chinese sage K'ung Futsu (Confucius to you): "It is extremely difficult to find a black cat in a dark room, particularly if there is no cat."
Well, early days yet: the inspections go on, and where there is a real and disobliging failure to co-operate, compounded by a clear possible link to a genuine threat, it surely follows, as the night the day, there will eventually be found a smoking gun - or, failing that, perhaps a smoking cat.
Either, I think, would do at this stage.
The US position in all of this appears to be that WMD are all very well for us, as indeed they are for our allies (Britain, say, or Israel) - and even for those who are not exactly our allies but from whom it might be a bit difficult to just march in and grab them (Russia, China or India). This is a position which on the surface might seem to be logically flawed or even hypocritical. But only on the surface.
CND's big idea
Pacifist and left-wing sniping here and abroad over what is clearly shaping up to be the most exciting world news story for years is, as so often, informed by shallow and facile thinking. Some of you may remember an organisation called the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), which was quite active here about 15 years ago. CND's big idea, if I have it right, was something called unilateral nuclear disarmament, a clever scheme by which one nuclear power (usually a Western one) would, off its own bat and without consultation with its enemies or rivals, destroy its entire nuclear arms capacity, thereby provoking an inexorable virtuous cycle of disarmament worldwide.
The chief problem with this notion was that while everyone thought it had many excellent aspects and its heart was in the right place no one particularly wanted to be first to try it out, so a very good and eminently Christian idea foundered for lack of trust.
The great advantage of the present US administration's peace strategy is that it neatly circumvents this knotty problem of trust. Though the pacifist snipers have attributed to America all kinds of outrageous and unlikely motives (greed for oil, narrow domestic electoral calculation, galloping megalomania), the real thinking behind the US stand on Iraq is both more ambitious and more far-reaching in its implications, as a reading of the thoughts of Donald Rumsfeld's favourite foreign policy commentator makes clear.
Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post (winner of last year's "Mightiest Pen" award in the US) is a unilateralist, though not in quite the same sense in which CND understood the term. Mr Krauthammer doesn't much like the UN, or indeed "liberal internationalists" in general, "who have tried to impede this nation's ability to do what is right".
Over Iraq or other matters, he argues, it is simply crazy to defer to Moscow or Paris rather than to the American people's elected members of Congress. This doesn't mean he is against consultation, for the US has a "moral obligation" to consult in circumstances where "it might assist our own purposes".
American interests
Those purposes are, of course, to pursue American interests, which in the long run, of course, are also everyone else's. Afghanistan, he argues, showed what the US could do, and it's important not to lose that momentum but to go after Iraq now. And let's not worry too much about evidence; as he points out, "we are going to have retrospective evidence".
Keeping the momentum going after that, there'll be Korea, say in 2004. And that would be two disarmaments in two years, which is a darn sight more than CND ever achieved. Nor need it stop there. It is fairly obvious that when the world's remaining bad guys get to see what's going on (and they aren't stupid), they are going to grow more and more wary of giving back answers to Uncle Sam.
The next stage of the process may well take more time, perhaps even decades, but it's only common sense that when the other "big boys", such as Russia and China, see the advantages of being a US ally, and the disadvantages of the contrary position, they too will be inclined to hop on the big peace train.
The beauty of this strategy is clear. If everyone is an ally of the US (and therefore of each other) what do they need weapons for? If there is only one power, who is there to fear? In this country we have been traditionally inclined to ascribe moral virtue only to old-style peaceniks or dogged defenders of neutrality. Though God knows there is nothing inherently moral about neutrality. In the second World War Sweden supplied the German Reich with iron ore, while Portugal sold it wolfram (to toughen Panzer steel). I think it's a fair bet that if V2 rockets could have been powered with turf we would have been at it too.
God-fearing administration
But morality too can be found in the most expected of places. America is a God-fearing nation and this is a God-fearing administration. Just look at George and Laura and their lovely twins, Barbara and Jenna. Since that time back in the 1980s when Billy Graham "planted a mustard seed" in George Bush's soul, the President has talked to God every day of his life. Look at Condoleezza Rice - smart, attractive and clearly church-going. Look at Don Rumsfeld; gaze into in his eyes and ask yourself: is this a good or a bad man?
No, evil will not prevail this year and though Paradise may not come either I think I can be sure we will all be living in a better, more peaceful, and indeed simpler world at the outset of President Jenna Bush's first term in 2019.
ENDA O'DOHERTY