The “phantom antihawk” is not a new video game or Ben Affleck blockbuster. It’s a nickname for George Bush, America’s 41st President and father of George W. And, according to Elizabeth Bumiller, writing in the New York Times, “as the conflict has unfolded, the father has become the ghost at his son’s White House war council.” Interviews with dozens of Bush 41’s former associates “do nothing to dispel the view of him as an internationalist worried about the influence of the go-it-alone hawks in his son’s administration.” In certain circles, Bush 41 “is even seen as the third member, with Mr. Powell and Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain” of what some in DC are calling “the axis of virtue.” I’ve never associated virtue with any of these men, but Papa Bush apparently has enough common sense to know that his son’s hawks , now controlling America’s national security, are not true conservatives but radical extremists.

This sense is clearly shared by Brent Scowcroft, Bush’s national security adviser during the 1991 Gulf war. In a speech to the Norwegian Nobel Institute on April 8th, Scowcroft urged the US to let the United Nations organize the postwar administration of Iraq and warned that a quick push for democratic transformation could explode into sectarian violence or civil war. And he argued–as he did last August–that preemptive war against Iraq was an unwarranted and divisive distraction from the fight against global terrorism. Scowcroft also lamented that the UN Security Council and other “structures we’ve built to handle our security are under significant stress and may not survive to serve us in the future.”