How big a war? More on the Wolfowitz/Powell schism. I thought Powell’s restraint in not wanting to march on Baghdad during Desert Storm was a soldier’s conceit about getting done just the job he was sent to do. According to this essay, however, he was more the diplomat even then, concerned for the fragility of the alliance the U.S. had forged.

During the Gulf War, then-President Bush sided with Powell, rejecting calls from Gen.

Norman Schwarzkopf and others to continue on to Baghdad. Bush’s background as a

legislator and, like Powell, a diplomat made him sensitive to Powell’s concerns about

undermining the tenuous coalition that was assembled during the Gulf War.

But the current President Bush does not have the foreign policy experience of his father, and

so the question of who has his ear on key foreign policy decisions has been the topic of

much speculation. During the presidential campaign, Bush tried to temper concerns about his

lack of foreign policy experience and knowledge by pointing to the seasoned foreign policy

hands surrounding him. But those advisors have real ideological divides over a number of

issues, and so far Bush has not sided clearly with one side or the other. Salon