In this polished article from The New Republic, Peter Beinart leaves no doubt about his skill as a writer, but my eyes narrowed almost immediately at his use of such terms as "anti-war isolationist" in his opening paragraphs. Can one be anti-war without being an isolationist? I would think so. And I think there is a lot of territory occupied by anti-war Americans which does not fall within the other three or four pigeonholes Mr. B has staked out for them.

Attached to these pigeonholes are the soundbites he assigns to his freshly-minted stereotypes, with the final result that the arguments of the anti-war factions are reduced to what Mr. Beinart says they are, namely:

-the world says no
-would destabilize Mideast
-Iraq hasn't attacked us
-this war is really about oil

I think it's fair to say that some Americans may have other reasons for opposing war with Iraq, and equally fair to say that Mr.Beinart has neatly deployed his strawmen.

Mr. B then zeroes in on his ultimate target, the thesis that "this war is really about oil," as he puts it in one place, or "America shouldn't attack Iraq because American foreign policy shouldn't be dictated by oil." in another, the sound-bite label he assigns to the "anti-war leftists."

In support of his attack on the oilman-strawman, he makes some plausible arguments about the price of oil vis a vis this scenario in Iraq, or that. He may be right, but are all of these fluctuations likely to occur as Mr. B forecasts, or are they simply his own speculations?

It is my impression that predicting the future is an endeavor with almost no record of success by mortals, so it is not unreasonable, I think, to question whether Mr. B's predictions here about the price of oil are any more valuable than yours or mine.

He goes on: "...If the timing of this potential war doesn't fit the oil thesis, neither does the diplomatic maneuvering going on around it. If oil were the Bush administration's top priority, it wouldn't be promising to protect Russia's and France's oil interests in a post-Saddam Iraq in exchange for their votes at the Security Council."

But is this true? Isn't it possible that the Bush administration could "protect Russia's and France's oil interests" and still have "oil interests" of its own, especially if the administration is able to win crucial Security Council support from Russia and France in the bargain?

Mr. B states it again: "If oil was what the Bush team wanted most, it would be encouraging Paris and Moscow to oppose the war, thus clearing the field for U.S. oil companies once Saddam fell."

Here Mr. B may be accurately characterizing the house rules in this game for the French and Russians: Stay out and you'll get nothing, ante up and you'll get your share.

And that certainly sounds like a win-win situation for the oilmen, since poker is their game, so to speak.

So I don't know if Mr. Beinart has made his case here. I think his speculations about the price of oil going up or down are little more than educated guesswork, although I'm willing to concede that he probably knows a lot more about the oil business than I do. However, I don't think it has been established that possible fluctuations in the price of oil, one way or the other, would be decisive, one way or the other, in the decisions of any oil-based conspiracy.

As far as the diplomatic maneuvering goes, I think it's important to bear in mind that public posturing by diplomats does not always give a true picture of what is going on behind the scenes. The ultimate outcome of those negotiations might be as Mr. Beinart interprets, and it might not.

In closing, I want to quickly revist those other strawmen which Mr. Beinart didn't address in this piece, but which he cleverly left deployed. These may have now lodged themselves in the minds of the unwary, so I would like to close with the reminder that there may be other, very good reasons for Americans to oppose war with Iraq beyond what Mr. Beinart has mentioned here.

It is a good idea to keep pigeonholes under surveillance, for they are often the origin of strawmen - little more than clay pigeons for such skillful writers as Peter Beinart.

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