Anti-Climacus

LINK: Another column by a liberal coming to terms with the necessity of Iraq. I know what you're thinking: "blah blah blah... who cares?" But they share the common characteristic of being harrowing accounts of intellectuals and activists grappling seriously with the moral and political issues at work. You find this neither on the knee-jerk "anti-war" Left, nor amongst the administration... at least not visibly on the part of the latter. But, good point:

"Nothing will persuade the antiwar Left (or antiwar Buchanan Right) that a campaign to remove Saddam and free the Iraqi people is justified. There will always be an excuse to oppose it. At first, the complaints were that the US intended to strike Iraq unilaterally, that everybody in Europe, Russia, China and the Arab world was against Bush, and that there existed no evidence of Hussein possessing WMDs. Now that those critiques have been answered and Bush has voluntarily (and shrewdly) gone through the United Nations, graciously agreeing to afford Saddam one last chance with inspections, the argument has changed: by attacking Iraq, we are likely to prod Saddam into using his WMDs (the same ones he never had in the first place) against us or Israel. Hitchens calls this game “subject change.” When every other peace marcher was demanding that Bush provide proof of Hussein possessing WMDs, Hitchens wrote, “It is obvious to me that the “antiwar” side would not be convinced even if all the allegations made against Saddam Hussein were proven, and even if the true views of the Iraqi people could be expressed.” And because of this, there is no incentive for anyone in power (or anyone at all) to take the Left seriously."