A Moral Failure - Why did so many on the left march to save Saddam Hussein?

Add that the military's preferred approach would have been to inflict more civilian casualties to save coalistion soldiers' lives.

By this statement it is evident that you are unfamiliar with any notion of military doctrine. The intent of our military is to kill other soldiers, not civilians. To make civilians the target is a violation of the Geneva Conventions.

It is a strategy, of course, to take measures to minimize our own soldiers' deaths.

Therefore, any talk about the humanitarian goal is pure politics on the part of the administration and to be resisted.

It is the administration (the civilians) which establish the goals of war; they may choose to require a war plan which minimizes civilian deaths even at the cost of greater casualties to our own soldiers. Why would a goal of a humanitarian war be merely "politics" as you describe, and not a part of our moral basis for pusuing this war ? If we are to have a chance at rebuilding Iraqi society into one reflecting democratic values and friendly to the US (therefore control of events in the Middle East), why would we opt for a plan involving high civilian casualties? Why must the goal be one (control) or the other (humanitarian) and not both ? More to the point, why the cynicism about President Bush's administration ?

I'll go out on a limb, disagree, and ascribe morals to the marchers; even a self-consistent set at that.

By this statement you imply that morals are relative. They are not, otherwise the author of this article could not use a common base of morality to argue his case. He would just use "leftist" morals to argue to leftists and we Conservatives would not be reading this and applauding his moral lecture to his fellow leftists.

That is precisely how many of those previously on the left - David Horowitz, Dennis Miller - did "get it right" because they did rethink their positions and honestly critqued their own politics.

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That was the exactly the thinking and the spirit of my comment.
BTW, if I were talking to the guy in person, I would not be "snide", to use your term, but I'm pretty sure he won't be reading my comments on FR.

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