WASHINGTON--The domestic terror alert jumps to 9/11 levels. Heathrow Airport is ringed by tanks. Duct tape and plastic sheeting disappear from Washington store shelves. Osama resurfaces. North Korea reopens its plutonium processing plant and threatens pre-emptive attack. The Second Gulf War is about to begin. This is not the Apocalypse. But it is excellent preparation for it.

You don't get to a place like this overnight. It takes at least, oh, a decade. We are now paying the wages of the 1990s, our holiday from history. During that decade, every major challenge to America was deferred. The chief aim of the Clinton administration was to make sure that nothing terrible happened on its watch. Accordingly, every can was kicked down the road:

--Iraq: Saddam continued defying the world and building his arsenal, even as the United States acquiesced to the progressive weakening of U.N. sanctions and then to the expulsion of all weapons inspectors.

--North Korea: When it threatened to go nuclear in 1993, Clinton managed to put off the reckoning with an agreement to freeze Pyongyang's program. The agreement--surprise!--was a fraud. All the time, the North Koreans were clandestinely enriching uranium. They are now in full nuclear breakout.

--Terrorism: The first World Trade Center attack occurred in 1993, followed by the blowing up of two embassies in Africa and the attack on the USS Cole. Treating terrorism as a problem of law enforcement, Clinton dispatched the FBI--and the odd cruise missile to ostentatiously kick up some desert sand. Osama was offered up by Sudan in 1996. We turned him away for lack of legal justification.

That is how one acts on holiday: Mortal enemies are dealt with not as combatants, but as defendants. Clinton flattered himself as looking beyond such mundane problems to a grander transnational vision (global warming, migration and the like), while dispatching American military might to quell ``teacup wars'' in places like Bosnia. On June 19, 2000, the Clinton administration solved the rogue-state problem by abolishing the term and replacing it with ``states of concern.'' Unconcerned, the rogues prospered, arming and girding themselves for big wars.

Which are now upon us. On Sept. 11, the cozy illusions and stupid pretensions died. We now recognize the central problem of the 21st century: the conjunction of terrorism, rogue states and weapons of mass destruction.

True, weapons of mass destruction are not new. What is new is that the knowledge required to make them is no longer esoteric. Anyone with a reasonable education in modern physics, chemistry or biology can brew them. Doomsday has been democratized.

There is no avoiding the danger any longer. Last year, President Bush's axis-of-evil speech was met with eye-rolling disdain by the sophisticates. One year later, the warning has been vindicated in all its parts. Even the United Nations says Iraq must be disarmed. The International Atomic Energy Agency has just (politely) declared North Korea a nuclear outlaw. Iran has announced plans to mine uranium and reprocess spent nuclear fuel; we have recently discovered two secret Iranian nuclear complexes.

We are in a race against time. Once such hostile states establish arsenals, we become self-deterred and they become invulnerable. North Korea may already have crossed that threshold.

There is a real question whether we can win the race. Year One of the new era, 2002, passed rather peaceably. Year Two will not: 2003 could be as cataclysmic as 1914 or 1939.

Carl Sagan invented a famous formula for calculating the probability of intelligent life in the universe. Estimate the number of planets in the universe and calculate the tiny fraction that might support life and that have had enough evolution to produce intelligence. He prudently added one other factor, however: the odds of extinction. The existence of intelligent life depends not just on creation, but on continuity. What is the probability that a civilization will not destroy itself once its very intelligence grants it the means of self-destruction?

This planet has been around for 4 billion years, intelligent life for perhaps 200,000, weapons of mass destruction for less than 100. A hundred--in the eye of the universe, less than a blink. And yet we already find ourselves on the brink. What are the odds that our species will manage to contain this awful knowledge without self-destruction--not for a billion years or a million or even a thousand, but just through the lifetime of our children?

Those are the stakes today. Before our eyes, in a flash, politics has gone cosmic. The question before us is very large and very simple: Can--and will--the civilized part of humanity disarm the barbarians who would use the ultimate knowledge for the ultimate destruction? Within months, we will have a good idea whether the answer is yes or no.



©2003 Washington Post Writers Group

Let me tell thee of the lies;

Let me count the ways:



1. The Inspectors were not expelled they were withdrawn on the eve of Bill Clinton’s “Desert Fox” bombing campaign. Krauthammer would know this so this is a knowing lie. (The only Inspectors expelled were those linked to the C.I.A..)

2. One can speculate but Osama would appear to be a creation of the C.I.A. - perhaps Clinton wanted his agent to remain active for whatever reason.

3. Carl Sagan, whom I despise, was an avowed pacifist and staunchly opposed to warfare as a means of settling our disputes. I figure he must be turning at about Mach 5 by now.

4. The question is not should the barbarians be disarmed but how. I would simply point out that a nice “clean” “hit” would be the moral course of action. Not killing thousands of innocents to get one goon.

5. North Korea is a stickier problem in that they already have Nuclear (not Nookyulur) weapons. However, they can be contained and if necessary taken out with such overwhelming force as to make reprisal impossible. Hopefully our diplomats are intelligent enough and skillful enough to avoid that scenario.

6. One must sometimes act to protect others, I am not a pacifist, and sometimes innocents are undesired victims. However, it is incumbent upon a civilized nation to exhaust all other possibilities first.

And to date no clear or convincing case has been presented that Saddam is an immediate threat to anyone other than his own people.

I vote we hire the Mob or the Mossad. It always pays to get the best professionals you can find.

One quick point though - Osama Bin Laden, business partner of George I, was, and is, a construct created to fight the Soviets during the Afghan's war against the Soviets. Whether he has since gone "rogue" or not, or crazier than he was to begin with, is immaterial - we buil him up through arms and financial support.

It's not fair to confuse the rightists with messy and inconvenient things like facts.

"One quick point though - Osama Bin Laden, business partner of George I, was, and is, a construct created to fight the Soviets during the Afghan's war against the Soviets. Whether he has since gone "rogue" or not, or crazier than he was to begin with, is immaterial - we buil him up through arms and financial support."

By God you're right. We did support him against the Soviets and now that he's a monster we'll just have to keep reminding ourselves of that and take our lumps. After all, it would be the utmost in hypocrisy to defend ourselves against ANYONE who we at any time in the past supported. Better to just sit back and die. Well said Dio.