Editor’s Page

Did a “new world order” materialize out of communism’s collapse and the Gulf War, only to impose itself now on Iraq? With 9/11 a convenient, mediating excuse? The events of 1989-1991 produced vast change, but I think fluidity resulted-a new world flux, not a global fix. Claims of settled “order” rested on cold war premises. Simplistic conservatives celebrated “Western victory.” Left-wing counterparts reduced the post-communist globe to “American imperialism.” It is easy to take immediate circumstances for a bigger conceptual reality (your own), as Marxists used to point out. Doing so, power or prejudices may be served but not studied engagement with our world. One expects conservatives to resist reordering their thoughts; one wishes the left would be less conservative.

As I followed pre-war political rows, ranging from Testosterone TV (aka Fox News), where swagger substitutes for reflection, to shoddy attempts on the left to prove that Saddam’s crimes were really Washington’s sins, I recalled “Meeting Again,” a pithy story by Bertolt Brecht. In it, Mr. Keuner runs into a fellow he has not seen in some time. “You haven’t changed a bit,” the chap remarks. “Oh!,” says Mr. K., who then “turned pale.” Perhaps some folks-whether right, left, or both at once-will revisit their pre-war exchanges and do likewise. Recall hawks insisting that Iraqi democracy...