A TIME FOR DISSENT IN AMERICA

By Richard Reeves

June 29, 2002

WASHINGTON -- The presidency seems to be going to George Bush's head. With each morning's paper or evening's news, depending on your preference, our leader is jumping up and saying truly extraordinary things, some of them preposterous, some stupid, some terrifying.

Ariel Sharon, he says, is "a man of peace." I must have missed something. If Yasser Arafat, that other sometimes man of peace, wins an election, the election doesn't count. Nothing counts unless we like it. We are now in the first-strike business, ready to launch pre-emptive or preventive strikes against countries or groups judged hostile to our interests by someone at Central Intelligence or the Republican National Committee.

Frankly, I prefer what a bit more experienced Republican president, Dwight Eisenhower, said on that subject in 1954: "Preventative war ... I don't believe in such a thing, and frankly I wouldn't even listen seriously to anyone that came in and talked about such a thing."

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