[xm177e2]

Christopher Hitchens will be on C-Span tomorrow morning with Andrew Sullivan from 8-10am Eastern taking your calls. I found this article via AndrewSullivan.com

[Burkeman1]

A rather refreshing honest admission by a hawk on the proposed war with Iraq and it has nothing to do with "weapons of mass destruction" or Iraq as a threat to us at all but about hegemony for the entire region with Iraq as just the first in a long list of wars and interventions.

[monday]

"These "root causes" lay in the political slum that the United States has been running in the region, and in the rotten nexus of client-states from Riyadh to Islamabad. Such causes cannot be publicly admitted, nor can they be addressed all at once. But a slum-clearance program is beginning to form in the political mind. "

This is really the only arguement against interfering in Iraq. Given the State Departments miserable handling of the US's "client" states to date, what has changed to make it reasonable to assume that they will do better in the future?

I have no doubt that the US military can get rid of Saddam. I am not so confident that what follows will be any better.

We seem to have a penchant for helping people over there who a few years down the road turn on us, and become our biggest headaches. Compare this to what is happening in Iran where we have been conspiciously absent for the last 20 years?

[keri]

Hitchens on Iraq ping.

[F-117A]

Bump!

[Cicero]

Exactly. Iraq is the keystone of the arch. If you go in there first, then Iran will probably have a regime change from within, as the Iranians finally overthrow their puritan clerics. Then, once you have a stable grip on Iraq's oil, you can afford to deal with Saudi Arabia. To take on the Saudis without that handle on Iraqi oil reserves would be to risk an international economic catastrophe. Not only that, but the downfall of the Iraqi regime will probably destabilize the Saudi Royal family, giving us a good excuse to go in and straighten things out.

The remaining domino in this picture is Syria, which Hitchens neglects to mention. We will probably need to invade Syria, too, and free Lebanon from the terrorists who infest it. That will likely be the next step right after we finish with Saddam.

[Justin Raimondo]

A Bolshevik makes the case for invading Iraq. How come he sounds like Norman Podhoretz?

[MHGinTN]

Thank you for the heads up, re C-SPAN! Both are formidable thinkers/writers. I shall set my self to arise and watch, maybe even participate with a call in. That will be a delightful two hours.