Completely fatuous. Answer 1: 1. Everyone who ...

2004-09-29T17:22:00.000-04:00

Completely fatuous.

Answer 1:
1. Everyone who buys gasoline is providing material support for Mideast terrorists. (Your move from Palestinian suicide bombers who only want to kill people in Israel to "global terrorists" is similarly unwarranted, but that's neither here nor there.) Connections are not absolute---there are close connections and distant ones. The question to be answered is at what point being "impossible to separate ... from ... terror," as is my Chevy-driving grandmother, is sufficiently linked to justify a war that has cost, at last count, $200B, 1K American lives, 7K American limbs. Care to try again?
2. The Iraqi military was laughably impotent, and transparently so. US & UK pilots in the no-fly zone in the 1990s were infinitely safer than those troops on the ground today. Again, not actually an argument.
3. We also know that he was completely incapable of taking material steps towards restarting his program. And as for violation of UN resolutions as a justification for being invaded---as a Zionist and a Jew, I'd like to know whether you would think Syria would be justified in invading Israel the next time they violate a UN Res.?
4. ... despite there being no evidence of any connection? When someone trods in mud, they tend to leave footprints on the carpet. No footprints in the dining room tends to mean that someone wasn't there. That's not "the height of naivete"---it's just ordinary rationality.

Answer 2:

"You're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't" isn't usually what we'd think of as a commendation of the situation you've found yourself in, love.

Answer 3:

True, the Iraqi government is no longer making payments to anyone, like the Palestinians. Or the police, firefighters, the water utilities... but again, neither here nor there.

Terrorists are being killed---but there don't seem to be any less of them in total than there were before; as I'm interested in security policy as something more important than running up the score on a real-life Galaga game, the latter index seems more relevant.

True, onto Hussein's lack of _capacity_ to acheive WMD's, we have indeed added a lack of desire. Well done.

The rape rooms are closed. Until they're opened again. By us. But I'm a moralist, so perhaps not everyone else here thinks that's such a bad thing.

Iraqi children are being fed. When they're not being arrested or killed.

The January elections---"a serious if not mortal blow"? It's nice you can believe in fairy tales at your age. Exactly what part of putting Shiite clerics on the ballot and inviting them to pander to a newly enfranchised Islamist electorate is it, you think, that can have "only" a positive effect? Sure, _maybe_ it'll work. Or maybe we'll have a theocracy.

Yeah, terrific impact in Libya. Unfortunately, if anything it's sped up the nuclear program in Iran. You might remember Iran---it's the country around there that actually had given real, non-imaginary cause to be concerned that they were coming up with WMDs. Like the ones they just announced they have now.

Well, if those are your benchmarks for success, perhaps you wouldn't mind one more question:

The progress on which of these, precisely, has been worth one thousand dead Americans?

Very well said. I am more of the promote democrac...

2004-09-28T17:09:00.000-04:00

Very well said.

I am more of the promote democracy in the Middle-East camp but your reasons and arguements are signifigant as well.

That's the one thing I don't understand about anti-war people in this case. If ever there was a country that we had a huge number of reasons for invading Iraq was that country.

Comments on Occams Tweezer: Volokh Blog Challenge

Completely fatuous. Answer 1: 1. Everyone who ...

Very well said. I am more of the promote democrac...