On to Baghdad

Second, the President's speech to the UN made almost everything said in the preceding week about American "unilateralism" sound ridiculous. Bush pursued the crafty forensic strategy of focusing on how earlier UN resolutions had merely suspended hostilities against Iraq. He told the UN that we (unilaterally) consider Saddam an unacceptable risk, but the main piece of evidence for our unease is the way he's told the UN to stick its weapons inspections up its (multilateral) ass. Suddenly the difference between unilateralism and multilateralism seemed like a semantic one. And by the day after the speech, the multilateralist fig leaf was at hand. It requires nine of 15 votes on the Security Council to authorize an Iraq action. We get a vote (that's 1), France and Britain are in (3), Cameroon will do what France does (4), Singapore's our longstanding ally (5), Bulgaria's one of those ex-Communist Eastern European countries that have proved to see the world much as we do (6), Mexico and Colombia can't afford to alienate us (8) and the Russians are likely to think only of what a move against Iraq will do to the price of their oil over the short term (9). That still leaves China, Ireland, Guinea and Mauritius, all of which could still vote with us.

Again, it's my first instinct to distrust the Bush administration's touting of its own "moral clarity." But there certainly was something that stood out brightly for being set against the more general cultural muddiness. Much of this glop came from so-called moral leaders, including such Catholic prelates as Bernard Cardinal Law and the archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran, who was quoted in The Washington Post as saying: "If the international community, guided by international law and in particular by U.N. Security Council resolutions, decides that the use of force is opportune and proportional, this should happen with a decision taken in the framework of the United Nations. Obviously, we cannot combat evil with another evil. One can certainly question whether the type of operation being considered is an appropriate way to bring about real peace."

Is that Catholic doctrine now? Or is it leftism hiding under a cassock? It used to be that the Catholic Church, when it was antiwar, argued in defense of its own moral absolutes?not in defense of the volonté générale as defined by the diplomatic corps of Guinea and Cameroon.

Carrying The Torch

Whenever an answer to a poll question is just too crushingly depressing, it helps to take refuge in the large number of polls where respondents give evidence that they are insane.

Such a poll appeared recently in the New Jersey Senate race, where this week's big story was Bob Torricelli's attempts to block his Senate prosecutors from releasing their memos in the David Chang corruption case. Quinnipiac University pollsters asked New Jersey voters how they felt about the matter. The question ran, in essence: The Senate Ethics Committee severely admonished Torricelli for his dealing with convicted businessman David Chang. Does this make you more or less likely to vote for Torricelli? Unsurprisingly, 46 percent said less likely. Unsurprisingly, 44 percent said it would have little effect. What was shocking is that 5 percent of voters?and 9 percent of Democrats?said Torricelli's ethical outrages made it more likely they would vote for him. Where do pollsters find these people?

There's a Rock In My Shoe

It was not a good week for the 25-year-old presidential niece Noelle Bush, daughter of Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, to get caught hiding a rock of crack in the Florida treatment center where she's locked up. The girl is in a real spot. Twenty-five must be the very worst age to be a druggie?she's old enough that her habit will soon start eating into the years that even the most libertine upper-middle-class kids use to clean up the damage of their Wild Years, and will harm her chances of starting a family, or a career or any of the other interesting stuff that makes life bearable without drugs; and she's young enough that she's still a long way from getting help from the waning appetites of middle age.

In fact, in my experience, 25 is about the very worst age, period: you're old enough so that no one cuts you any slack anymore for "youthful hijinks." And you're young enough that you haven't established any of the grownup excuses for failure. ("She works so hard, and the pressure just got to her"; "She's a wonderful mother, but she's spent too much time thinking about other people.") Nope, she's just a junkie.

What makes Noelle's predicament more serious than it would be for you or me is that she's treated as a spoiled junkie, who's "had everything handed to her on a plate." That's both wrong and unfair. Most junkies are spoiled junkies: generally, if they're not in desperate financial straits, it's because someone is propping them up. Half the kids Noelle is in treatment with are probably living with Mum 'n' Dad?why spend the dough on rent when you can spend it on smack? A huge misconception, probably dating from the Beat era, is that addicts are "adventurers" who "live on the wild side." Yeah, the wild side of your childhood bedroom, which probably still has your baseball cards and Barbie dolls in it.

That's what makes Noelle Bush such a particularly unlucky druggie. Her position is complicated endlessly by her status as a celebrity relative. We know about her infraction in the first place because another patient called the police to snitch on her! Whatever lowlife who did this to her would not have done it to (pardon the moniker) Joe Blow. What's more, Noelle's fame-by-association is going to be an obstacle to her growing into the new character that will help her kick her addiction. This is not moralism. For a junkie a new character is more important as a source of entertainment of drug-like highs?than as a source of willpower. "The Governor's Wayward Daughter" is a pretty hard identity to break in the minds of others. The zeitgeist, too, will create its own problems. "This is a private issue as it relates to my daughter, myself and my wife," said Gov. Bush last week. No, unfortunately, it ain't?not in the age of the War on Drugs.

It is tempting to snicker at drug warriors hoist by their own petards. But those of us who at her age were still waist-deep in loserdom would be contemptible if we gave in to that impulse.