Notes On A Clueless Scion

John Lahr is a thoughtful writer and theatre critic. But there's no denying sometimes his politics gets the best of him. For example, his first reaction to 9/11 was the U.S. had planned it.

In his New Yorker review of David Hare's Stuff Happens , a play about the lead-up to the Iraq war, Lahr ponders:

What is the story behind Bush and the war? The oil thing? The Oedipal thing? The imperial thing? The reëlection thing?

Is anything missing from this list? Perhaps Lahr could have mentioned, merely as a possibility mind you, that Bush saw Iraq as a pro-terrorist threat whose leader was a bellicose, unstable tyrant.

PS A friend notes I'm misreading the review--that Lahr is listing the reasons playwright Hare gives for the war. Read it yourself and decide. But someone left something out.