Anti-Climacus

IRAQ, PT II: I think this highlights what is so off with the administration's Iraq policy-- right premise (Saddam is bad), right conclusion (we have to remove him from power), but all of the middle logical steps get skipped over. If he had come out six months ago and said that the goal of the U.S. was a democratic, pluralistic government in Baghdad, he wouldn't have his hands tied to the UN inspections process. While many would object to military action under those auspices (it'd be imperialist or something), there'd at least be a serious moral argument to fall back on. We'd be liberating the frickin' country. This is all the more painful because of that brief moment when it looked like Bush possessed the moral clarity to undo decades of American hypocricy in foreign policy. Inspections may provide sufficient causus belli, but it strikes me that we had that in the first place. All we've lost in the meantime is the trust of the best allies we have in the country.