In keeping with my centerist position on Gulf War, the Sequel, here's an article that I totally agree with, even though I said I would support the war lukewarmly with a highly critical and skeptical eye. This line is particuarly telling:

During the Cold War, liberals were accused of being unpatriotic for objecting to the United States arming human rights violators. Forget about actually killing the human rights violators. We just didn't want the U.S. to be complicit in torture and murder as they were occurring. In the case of Iraq, there isn't even a hint of a genocide underway. There is no current policy of ethnic cleansing being executed by the Iraqi government. But nevermind. Saddam has used torture in the past, and is probably using it now, therefore it is the moral duty of the United States to kill him.

This from the people who opposed saving the Kosovars.

As I remember it, House and Senate Republicans were so nastily partisan due to the Clinton Penis-Lie/Cigar/Oral Sex Scandal, they absolutely refused to go along with it. The Kosovars got saved anyway. I actually was kind of against it, but for different reasons that I'll talk about some other day. These same partisans opposed Desert Fox, if I remember correctly. Just to be partisan and vindictive.

Now they want me to go gung-ho for a war that the world outside of the United States (and i'm talking public opinion, not what governments have decided) does not want.

I believe it's time for Saddam to go, and I think it's best that all possible avenues are exhausted before we commit tens of billions of dollars to disrupt the lives of millions. The idea of Iraq selling weapons (which North Korea probably already does, but we're way too busy avenging the threat on Bush's dad to pay any attention to those Stalinist freaks who want to turn the capital of our ally into a "sea of fire") does concern me. If his government has them, and is planning on using them, then we should stop them. If they've used them while we were enemies with them (since we all know they gleefully used them while we were friends with them), then they should be stopped.



*edited because it made too many tangents.