[facedown]

Excellent post - bump.

[expatpat]

That's a Hobson's choice, which is no choice at all.

A no-brainer, probably, but not a Hobson's choice. If the Democraps had the White House, they would still be chasing AlQ in Afghanistan and letting Sadam do whatever he wanted to (just read the 12 Senators' views on 'neglecting' AlQ).

[Egregious Philbin]

I like the idea of a triple post, yonif, even though it's hard to address all three points at once...

Thoughts on Safire:

We will not whip ourselves into jingoism, or become fascinated by our exercise of ultra-tech superpower or suppress our sadness at the pictures of Iraqi civilians Saddam will thrust into the line of fire as human shields.

I understand what he's trying to say here, but I think the last bit is a little disingenuous. It's jingoism to say that all civilians who might die from our "ultra-tech superpower" were "thrust into the line of fire as human shields," neatly avoiding the issue of the inevitable deaths of innocents that occur from a bombing campaign. Still, that doesn't destroy his argument - the innocents killed in bombing could be far less than those killed when WMDs are used.

It is futile to try to reason with passionate marchers waving signs proclaiming that America's motives are to conquer the world and expend blood for oil.

Absolutely. Some will never be convinced, especially if their opposition rests with a facile and foolish worldview like that, but there are other passionate marchers that need to be convinced, the ones that DO worry about this:

Nor should we indulge in placing second thoughts first: How much will it cost? How many will be killed? How long will it take? Will it kill the snake of terror or only poke it? Will everybody thank us afterward? Where's the guarantee of total success? Too cautious to oppose, these questioners delay action by demanding to know what they know is unknowable.

No, I think some of those second thoughts are valid first thoughts, and they represent my personal opposition to this war: How much will the war cost, both in money and international relations terms? Will it make us safer? Is it even related to "the snake of terror"? Safire would prefer to ignore the second thoughts, all the while indulging in a potential pipe dream that liberation of Iraq will cause other dictatorships to fall like houses of cards or rethink their ways, or that it will solve the Palestinian problem, or trouble with North Korea (another matter some of the "passionate marchers" have facile opinions about).