"Good versus evil isn't a strategy"

Madeleine Albright's: headline on the LA Times Op-Ed page really said it all. She always did have a way with words.

[T]he administration must stop playing solitaire while Middle East and Persian Gulf leaders play poker. Bush's "march of freedom" is not the big story in the Muslim world, where Shiite Muslims suddenly have more power than they have had in 1,000 years; it is not the big story in Lebanon, where Iran is filling the vacuum left by Syria; it is not the story among Palestinians, who voted — in Western eyes — freely, and wrongly; it is not even the big story in Iraq, where the top three factions in the recent elections were all supported by decidedly undemocratic militias.

It briefly made me nostalgic for a day when we had a government run by intelligent, liberal grown ups. I wasn't the only one. Shakespeare's Sister:

The whole thing's worth a read, but please be duly warned that you may be left a sobbing mess at the memory of a time when we had an intelligent and thoughtful Secretary of State working in allegiance with a president who knew where Iran was without looking at a map...

But was that really the way it was, back in the day?

Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price--we think the price is worth it.
— 60 Minutes (5/12/96)

Our nostalgia for a day when liberal, intelligent grownups were in power shouldn't blind us to one of the Clinton administration's great failures. Clinton and Albright didn't start the sanctions, but they failed to stop them, through lack of political will and power when faced by a Republican Congress. Had the sanctions been stopped earlier, today's war might never even have happened — though maybe that's wishful thinking, given the gang we've got now. And no, Madeleine, the sanctions weren't "worth it."