They l-u-r-v-e Colin Powell

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Are we planning a war with Iraq or not? If you parse Pres. Bush's words carefully ("there are no plans on my desk") you're not sure. John Derbyshire of the National Review writes that he is sure: we're not going to war:

I was once in the capital city of a country that was going to war. That was London in 1982, when Margaret Thatcher took her country to war against Argentina. I remember the electric sense of urgency in the air, the fevered preparations: welders working 12-hour shifts to rig helicopter pads on to the decks of requisitioned cruise ships, the lights on all night in the barracks, the seasoned army officer I knew who told me, so grim-faced I believe he really meant it: "I will kill to get a berth on the Task Force." (He didn't get one. Serving officers were clambering over each other, gouging eyes and ripping out hair, to get their names on the Task Force rosters.) ... Do I see these things when I look at Washington DC today? No, I don't. Shall I see them a year from now, when our resolve, our anger, our desire for revenge, have had twelve more months to dribble away like sand between our fingers, and every excuse for inaction (never any shortage of those) has been rehearsed on a thousand TV talk shows by everyone with an interest in making the Bush administration look foolish (definitely no shortage of those)? When 9/11 is a fading memory, washed over with layers of frivolity — the latest celebrity murder, the latest political squabble, the latest judicial outrage, the latest stock market spike? I'm not betting on it.

The reason? Colin Powell. Listen:

Bringing Powell into the cabinet will, I believe, come to be seen as a classic error by George W. Bush ...Powell has a huge constituency, far larger and more committed than the President's own. To be sure, a lot of people don't like him. Blacks don't like him because he's not "authentic" enough ...White liberals don't like him because he escaped from their plantation somehow. White conservatives don't like him because he's squishy on a lot of issues they care about... However, if you add up all [of them] you only have about one-third of the electorate. The other two-thirds l-u-r-v-e Colin Powell. Which means that Powell can't be fired ...Powell has an absolute veto on our foreign policy. This is the Colin Powell who has sold out to the Riyadh-Cairo line on the Middle East, the Colin Powell who lined up in the dove camp with Jim Baker and the striped-pants Neville Chamberlain Appreciation Society from Foggy Bottom when Iraq invaded Kuwait, the Colin Powell who wrote in his autobiography that Saddam was left standing at the end of the 1991 Gulf War because the desire to avoid further slaughter overwhelmed the desire to get rid of the dictator.

Essentially, Derbyshire is saying that Bush is revealed for the crafty politician he is; having chosen Powell, he is going to ride him all the way into a second term, moral clarity be damned. I don't agree with much of what Derbyshire says elsewhere; but I agree with him here. I think the day Powell shook hands with Arafat, the war on terror ended. And we surrendered.