[fporretto]

I understand and appreciate your sentiments, and share most of them myself. There's been a lot of very foolish politicking with dictators, these past thirty years, usually under the justification that "he may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch."

Mark Steyn has pointed out that this slogan works better if reversed: "He may be our son of a bitch, but he's still a son of a bitch." Playing footsie with power-mad egotists was always a mistake. It's bitten us on the rump several times. Maybe we've unlearned that particular error; at least, one can hope. But we must also deal with the problems we've created, for ourselves and others, without getting overly hung up on our embarrassment at having created them.

As for "the absurdity of going to war over WMD," I'm afraid we'll have to disagree about that. Saddam, being "rationally evil," might never use WMD outside his borders, but the linkages between his regime and "irrationally evil" groups such as al-Qaeda and the Palestinain irredentist-terrorists are strong, and I fear what they might acquire from him too much to take a relaxed view.

For further thoughts, please see:

Raising A Clenched Fist

Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit The Palace Of Reason: http://palaceofreason.com

[JohnGalt]

I see the WMD rational in the same light as British war hawks who believed in a pre-emptive strike against the Kaiser before he could challenge the supremacy of the British Navy. The assination of Arch-Duke Ferdinand was met with a collective sigh of "at last, we can go to war."

The rational was so abstract and riddled with 'secret' agenda that it slowly declined to simple racist absurdities that the "Huns will eat your babies." Of course, the end result was collective suicide, the rise of Nazism and Communism and the enshrinement of Churhill, who was one of those 19-teen war hawks, as a neo-Con hero.