From the Washington Post:

Very young children who watch television face an increased risk of attention deficit problems by school age, a study has found, suggesting that TV might overstimulate and permanently “rewire” the developing brain.

For every hour of television watched daily, two groups of children — ages 1 and 3 — faced a 10 percent increased risk of having attention problems at age 7.

We haven’t had TV (with brief periods of cable connection) since my oldest son was born. I can’t tell you how much I recommend it.

Littlest Guy just invented a game involving a chessboard, Lego parts, and dice today and taught it to me. That’s what kids do when they aren’t sucking on the glass teat (sorry, Harlan)

It’s going to be a helluva week in Washington.

WASHINGTON, April 4 The leaders of the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks agreed Sunday that evidence gathered by their panel showed the attacks could probably have been prevented.

Their remarks drew sharp disagreement from one of President Bush’s closest political advisers, who insisted that the Bush and Clinton administrations had no opportunity to disrupt the Sept. 11 plot. They also offered a preview of the difficult questions likely to confront Condoleezza Rice when she testifies before the panel at a long-awaited public hearing this week.

…

Also appearing on “Meet the Press,” Karen P. Hughes, one of Mr. Bush’s closest political advisers and an important strategist for his re-election campaign, rejected the suggestion that the attacks could have been prevented.

“I just don’t think, based on everything I know, and I was there, that there was anything that anyone in government could have done to have put together the pieces before the horror of that day,” Ms. Hughes said. “If we could have in either administration, either in the eight years of the Clinton administration or the seven and a half months of the Bush administration, I’m convinced we would have done so.”

While reading that, don’t under any circumstances forget to go check out Phil Carter’s take on Clarke:

As for Mr. Clarke’s argument regarding Iraq, I closed his book without having been persuaded by his argument. He did not marshal enough evidence to persuade me that the Bush Administration had deceived the American public to march towards war, or that it had considered (and disregarded) all of the strategic costs of the war. That’s not to say that these things aren’t true — only that Mr. Clarke’s book didn’t do a good job of making these arguments. Similarly, I was unimpressed by Mr. Clarke’s argument that the war in Iraq has been a distraction from the war on terrorism. With his knowledge of this issue, I expected a detailed breakdown of all the ways that the war in Iraq took away resources, political capital, and focus from the domestic and foreign war on terrorism. I found that argument to be lacking as well. He did not, for example, discuss how intelligence assets devoted to finding Iraqi WMD might have been devoted to finding Al Qaeda personnel and equipment. Nor did look at the resource-allocation problem with his NSC-trained eye, in order to make the argument the billions spent on Iraq might have been otherwise programmed for homeland security.

Damn. Now I have to go read it.

This isn’t remotely the last one, or even the worst that we will face. Resolve and sitzfleisch are what’s called for at this point.

Here’s where it started:

In an ominous development that threatens to widen the rift between Iraq’s Shi’ite majority and the occupation forces, Sadr told his supporters yesterday to “terrorise” the enemy as demonstrations were now pointless.

“There is no use for demonstrations, as your enemy loves to terrify and suppress opinions, and despises people,” Sadr said in a statement distributed by his office in Kufa, south of Baghdad.

But Shi’ite spiritual leader Ali Al Sistani appealed for calm and urged Shi’ite demonstrators to resolve their differences with coalition forces through negotiation.

More as it develops…and my thoughts are with the troops and innocent civilians. May this pass quickly and safely for them.

I have no personal animus toward Markos Zuniga; I don’t know the guy personally, and up until now, my major Post-It abut him was that I thought it was cool that someone was bridging the gap between this amateur political discourse we do in the blogosphere and electoral politics.

He’s always been a bit strident and chest-beating, but I’ve chalked that up to personal style (or, on my more cynical days, the kind of extreme posturing that gets attention).

He crossed a line with his now-infamous comment, and that’s changed my view of him.

Since we don’t know each other, that’s a kind of ‘so what?’ comment. Except for one big and one little thing.
The big thing is simple; in my view, there’s good and bad. Good involves peace, justice, liberty (from exploitation as well as oppression), and the fundamental acceptance of the humanity and value of everyone – and bad involves the opposite. In my view, the constructive dialogs are ones among people who have different views of how to attain Good, and different visions of exactly what it looks like, manifested in the messy world of reality.

Was invading Iraq the best path from here to there? Were there better alternatives? What are the alternatives today, and how do we decide among them? Those are things that I believe people on the side of Good can discuss – even debate heatedly and struggle over politically.

But, in my mind, there’s a pretty clear line between Us and Them. Being with Them is about supporting blowing up busses and pizzerias – not as criminal acts, not as errors of negligence or simple chance, but as core acts; acts that define who you are and what you do. Being with Them is about torturing and murdering captives, not fattening them up and teaching them to snorkel (and yes, I know Guantanamo is worse than that – but it’s better than the fate of the soldiers in the Ramallah police station).

On this blog, one of our co-bloggers crossed that line with a comment extolling the terrorist bombing of the UN headquarters in Iraq. Joe, to his credit, asked Trent to step away from the blog for a while because the sentiments he expressed were so deeply against what Joe and this blog (and by extension, I) stand for that no other reaction was possible. Trent was (and is) a valuable member of this community, as much as he and I may disagree, but with that comment…

And similarly, Kos stepped neatly across the line with his comment, and has only walked further away from it with his actions since (redirecting the link to the comment, pulling the post it was attached to off his blog, his non-apology, and his most recent response, in which he says something stupid and the evil minions of the underworld attack him for it).

Does that mean we’re better than he is?

I’ll step up and say yes.

Look, we all say and do stupid things on occasion (some more than others, of course). But what’s missing in Kos is the notion that what happened to him is anything except a political ambush by his enemies.

And that, in turn matters because Kos is plugged deeply into current Democratic electoral politics, as one of Joe Trippi’s advisors in the Dean campaign, in the Clark campaign, in the Joe (“it’s the Jooos”) MBNA Moran campaign.

I’ve said in the past – and been harshly criticized by people who probably agree with most of my policy beliefs (except Iraq, no doubt) – for criticizing the left for ‘not loving America’. I’ve talked about what a left that does love America might look like – or what it’s philosophical roots might be.

And I’m told, over and over again, that I’m setting up straw men.

No, I’m not.

And that matters, both because many of those I oppose are, I believe, on the wrong side of the divide above – but because they have and will take the left down with them.

Reading the comments on the Kerry blog about the delinking of Kos is informative.

If I were a GOP tactician (and I assume they already are, because they do this for a living) I’d be planting the seeds about the cash Kos had bundled for Kerry, and asking ‘will it be returned?’

And if it is, we’re about to see an internecine battle which will guarantee the White House to Bush.

(it’s late, and I’ll add links in this tomorrow morning)

One of the things I do with my time is to ride motorcycles; not only for transportation here in congested Los Angeles, but for fun as well. I’ve spent some time on racetracks (Willow Springs, Sears Point, and Laguna Seca), and consider myself a good street rider (albeit a worse than mediocre racer), and have some appreciation for what it takes to sit on a vehicle moving pretty fast (in my case about 140).

The grown-up racers, the guys racing at the top of the sport, are running well over 210mph these days. Imagine that I’m tucked in going 140, all full of myself and how fast and daring I am … and then one of them goes by me as though I was standing still on the side of the freeway.

The world champion last year (and the year before, and the year before that, and …) is a young Italian named Valentino Rossi. Rossi is famous for three things:* His incredible skill on a motorcycle;

* His outrageous antics – and I do mean antics. He once won a Grand Prix race, then pulled to the side of the track and ran into a portajohn set up for the track workers, and came out dressed as Robin Hood. He doesn’t seem to take it quite as seriously as him competitors do;

* His general joie de vivre – as opposed to the mechanical seriousness from most professional athletes, he comes across as a guy who just can’t wait to wake up tomorrow and go do it some more. The pressure of a $17 million contract must have some effect, but it isn’t an obvious one.

And this year, he’s done the wildest thing of all.

After winning 125cc and 250cc World Championships for Aprilia, he went to the big leagues for Honda in 2000 – at the age of 21. In 2001, he won the World Championship, as he did in 2002 and 2003, all riding Hondas.

And this year, he changed brands and teams, and will be riding a Yamaha. Yamaha’s best finish last year was, I believe, fourth place. Honda motorcycles dominated the series (with Ducati maintaining some presence, while Yamaha, Suzuki, Aprilia, Kawasaki, and Proton lagged behind).

So he left a team that would have essentially guaranteed him another World Championship for one that had not yet had a competitive motorcycle. An Australian journalist writes:

Why would a man who has just won his third world championship leave the team that had brought him such dominance in favour of an inconsistent, underachieving operation that had not produced a world champion in 11 years?

The most recent time a Yamaha rider had dominated the tracks was back in 1992 (Wayne Rainey), and in the ensuing years, a succession of Hondas, ridden first by Mick Doohan and then Alex Criville, and finally Rossi himself, had taken the championship.

The only interruption to the Honda reign was Kevin Schwantz’s 1993 title and Kenny Roberts jnr’s triumph in 2000, both riding a Suzuki. Roberts’ victory came in the year that a then 20-year-old Rossi was making his debut in the 500cc class, then motorcycling’s top category.

Rossi finished second in the title race that year, but never again was Roberts, or anyone else for that matter, to give him much trouble as he became the last 500cc title winner in 2001 and the first man to take out the new four-stroke 1000cc MotoGP category in 2002 and 2003.

At the time of his departure last year, Rossi simply said he was bored with the domination he had achieved on his Honda, and needed a fresh challenge.

Some believed he was chafing at the demands being made on him by Honda. Others — including his former mentor and boss of Honda Racing Corporation, Doohan — suggest the reportedly $17 million a year pay cheque had prompted his desire to switch camps.

Rossi disagrees. In an interview on his personal website, he said: “There was nothing to prove. It was just that the motivation riding for Honda had finished, we won three world championships in a row, we won at favourite tracks, at my least favourite tracks, and in all conditions, so what was left to do?

Hemingway made a simple distinction between sports and games; a sport can kill you. I have a more than healthy respect for the risks racers like Rossi take; but to me the sportsmanship shown in his latest decision – to walk away from a sure thing and give himself a new challenge – is really far more wonderful than the daring he shows on the track.

Now for the Good News. Last weekend, the teams had a final shakedown before the first race of the season. April 17 in South Africa. On the track at Catalunya, Spain, all the leading teams came out to test their machines and setup.

The final results?

1. Valentino ROSSI, Yamaha, 1:44.571
2. Alex BARROS, Honda, 1:44.631
3. Nicky HAYDEN, Honda, 1:44.634
4. Colin EDWARDS, Honda, 1:44.653
5. Sete GIBERNAU, Honda, 1:44.669

One last point before we switch over to Good News.

Guys like Roger Simon, Michael Totten and I are always being accused of demonizing the left by painting it with the colors of its most extreme members. “That’s not really the antiwar movement. Other than a few extremists…” etc., etc.

It’s hard to be much more mainstream than Markos Moulitsas Zúniga (Kos); he was involved in the Dean and Clark campaigns, and is building a political consultancy that works on national Democratic campaigns.

So, as we were saying…

Kos said something quick and stupid yesterday…

[Update: And has now, in act of true courage, pulled it off his site without explanation. Here’s a screenshot of it, in case you need to be reminded. Which side is it again that’s fighting against Oceania? ]

…and followed it up today with something longer, more honeyed in tone, and saying exactly the same thing.

There’s been much ado about my indifference to the Mercenary deaths in Falluja a couple days ago. I wrote in some diary comments somewhere that “I felt nothing” and “screw them”.

My language was harsh, and, in reality, not true. Fact is, I did feel something. That’s why I was so angry.

Well, it’s good that he did feel something …it’s just not clear he felt anything for the four people killed and brutalized; so from his point of view, the operative point isn’t the “screw them,” it’s the “I felt nothing.” It’s a characteristic of the people I oppose in this whole Bad Philosophy thing that feelings are what matters – that one’s emotional state is all-important; it’s how it makes you feel that matters, and whether your feelings are genuine.

I was angry that five soldiers — the real heroes in my mind — were killed the same day and got far lower billing in the newscasts. I was angry that 51 American soldiers paid the ultimate price for Bush’s folly in Iraq in March alone. I was angry that these mercenaries make more in a day than our brave men and women in uniform make in an entire month. I was angry that the US is funding private armies, paying them $30,000 per soldier, per month, while the Bush administration tries to cut our soldiers’ hazard pay. I was angry that these mercenaries would leave their wives and children behind to enter a war zone on their own violition.

So I struck back.

So by attacking – striking back at – the dead civilians, he somehow felt he could remedy an injustice – the disregard by the media of the soldiers who were killed that day.

Unlike the vast majority of people in this country, I actually grew up in a war zone. I witnessed communist guerillas execute students accused of being government collaborators. I was 8 years old, and I remember stepping over a dead body, warm blood flowing from a fresh wound. Dodging bullets while at market. I lived in the midsts of hate the likes of which most of you will never understand (Clinton and Bush hatred is nothing compared to that generated when people kill each other for politics or race or nationality). There’s no way I could ever describe the ways this experience colors my worldview.

And, by extension, there’s no way any one of us who hasn’t shared his experiences can judge

Here he wraps himself in the accusation-proof flag of victimhood, spins, and bows to the audience.

Back to Iraq, our men and women in uniform are there under orders, trying to make the best of an impossible situation. The war is not their fault, and I will always defend their honor and bravery to the end of my days. But the mercenary is a whole different deal. They willingly enter a war zone, and do so because of the paycheck. They’re not there for humanitarian reasons (I doubt they’d donate half their paycheck to the Red Cross or whatever). They’re there because the money is DAMN good. They answer to no one except their CEO. They are dangerous, hence international efforts (however fruitless they may be) to ban their use.

I’ll skip over the whole “we have a volunteer army” argument as too obvious, and point out that the motivation of the contractors – like the motivation of the soldiers, or the motivation of the private contractors charging hazard pay to work in Iraq – is probably a little more complex than that. And that – as with the overarching importance of his feelings above, the fact that he besmirches the dead by challenging their motivations – rather than their actions – speaks volumes.

So not only was I wrong to say I felt nothing over their deaths, I was lying. I felt way too much. Nobody deserves to die. But in the greater scheme of things, there are a lot of greater tragedies going on in Iraq (51 last month, plus countless civilians and Iraqi police). That those tragedies are essentially ignored these days is, ultimately, the greatest tragedy of all.

It’s funny; many of us are debating the issues around the war and around what to do. I certainly don’t feel that I am ignoring the deaths that happen in Iraq every day (I do, however, believe it is important to put them into context, so that we are able to make intelligent judgments about where we are and what to do).

The reverence for life of the antiwar movement would be funny if it were not so wrapped up in the issues of Bad Philosophy. What matters isn’t whether the world as a whole or even the set of people we’re taking about is better or worse off – what matters is whether you can make sure you are morally isolated from any taint of blame.

I don’t think you can live in the world and be isolated that way. Kos does. And, of course, that attitude helps as he takes money from Jim Moran, friend of the Jews (and MBNA) to help run his campaign.

Here’s the second part of Andrew’s argument, including (about halfway down) his suggestions for what we do now.

Point: The Iraq War caused severe damage to international and domestic institutions, probably on purpose

From my perspective, a consistent and unfortunate habit of the Bush Administration across many issues has been self-confidence and self-righteousness so extreme that all restraints imposed by law or tradition are seen as hindrances. The Executive of the strongest power the planet has ever seen must not be encumbered (at least when the incumbent is a "good man" from the Republican Party).

The archetypical example is related to the War on Terror on its domestic front. In the case of José Padilla, the Bush Administration has torn up literally eight centuries of Anglo-American law that established the right of citizens to trial before a neutral tribunal. The Bush Administration’s position is that American citizens may be detained incommunicado, indefinitely, without any recourse to the courts, entirely at the President’s pleasure. I start with this example because even a number of conservative lawyers [Volokh, link is audio file; Viet Dinh] are opposed, as are some of the pro-war readers of this blog.

The Iraq War is the first implementation of the Bush Doctrine of Pre-emptive War, and Iraq is to the doctrine of casus belli as Padilla is to the Bill of Rights. There have been several blog arguments on whether the Administration claimed that Saddam constituted an "imminent threat". The pro-war position, oddly enough, is in the negative. Now, it’s beyond question that the Administration portrayed Saddam as all manner of terrifying threat: "grave and gathering", "immediate", "mushroom cloud". (Donald Rumsfeld on "Meet the Press" denied ever using "immediate threat" and was then left looking silly when Thomas Friedman read his own words back to him.) Given that we were going to war—war!—with Saddam, what exactly was the problem with calling him an imminent threat? The answer, I believe, is that "imminent threat" is a term-of-art in international law, and acting against such a threat is as justified as self-defense after an attack is already underway. (See in particular, 1967 Israeli attack on the Egypt.) So if we called Saddam an "imminent threat" then there would be nothing novel, no bounds broken, in the Bush Doctrine. The faulty intelligence isn’t the reason Bush avoided this one specific word, because the Iraq we actually invaded was neither imminent, nor grave, nor capable of mushroom clouds, nor very threatening to American security at all.

Bush, in campaign mode, ridicules the idea of multilateralism as holding America‘s security hostage to France. But the interesting thing is, when Al Qaeda attacked us, even though we hardly needed permission from the world to take out the Taliban, not only permission but all sorts of aid were given to us freely. Doesn’t the refusal of so many of our allies to do likewise for Iraq tell us something? (The idea that it tells us they are cowards founders, since they, too, were at little risk from Iraq.) The truth is, this Administration, especially VP Cheney, disdain multilateralism—at least they did until we started to need help extricating ourselves from Iraq. I opposed the Iraq War in part, then, because bad as multilateral institutions are, they are still better than the alternative. I also opposed it because I think that the greatest success of the American Revolution was to give us a government of laws and not of men, which I take to mean that our democratic system succeeded because it is designed to survive times when incompetent (Harding) or even malevolent (Nixon) men are in charge, unlike the rival monarchies which alternated between enlightened princes and despots. I think we should be doing everything possible to replicate this arrangement in the international sphere, and organizations like the UN and the EU must be part of this process. And certainly the Padilla case shows that Bush understands nothing of this dynamic at all.

Point: The Iraq War was sold with falsehoods and lies, and should have been opposed on that basis if no other.

Let’s be blunt: even though I find the humanitarian argument for the Iraq War insufficient, it’s much, much better than the argument by the Administration at the time. That argument was based almost entirely on the putative threat, and on spurious connections between Saddam and the 9/11 attack (largely by VP Cheney), and there can’t be any force to an argument whose premisses are not true. Out of the rival threat assessments available to the Administration before the war, they chose to be deceived utterly by a convicted grifter, Ahmad Chalabi, whom we are still paying hundreds of thousands of dollars monthly. This was no innocent error. Chalabi told the marks what they wanted to hear: not only about WMD, but about his internal resistance movement ready to create a pro-American and pro-Israel (!) Iraq. Better intelligence was available from the United Nations team under Hans Blix, whom we literally chased out of Iraq at the beginning of the invasion. We insulted our allies (but, again, this was seen as a side benefit) with Secy Powell’s Power Point show, not one slide of which has been verified. When the inspectors reported that our Chalabi-based WMD tips, detailed to the level of GPS coordinates, didn’t work out, we didn’t re-evaluate our intelligence. Instead, Cheney announced we would "discredit" the inspectors. It’s safe to assume he hasn’t apologized.

Those of you who don’t think that knowingly false propaganda contributed to public acquiescence in the war: something like half of the country believes that most of the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqi, when of course the correct number is zero. On 9/12, what reason would anyone have for this erroneous belief? None. I suspect at that time those Americans who could answer the question at all would remember that nearly all of the terrorists were Saudi. The error came from frequent and deliberate juxtaposition of Saddam and 9/11 in repeated speeches that (with the exception of an egregious statement by Cheney that Bush was forced to repudiate) were not literally untrue, but which were designed to leave a false impression.

Here I must admit that my pre-existing animus against George W. Bush probably contributed to my belief that most of his WMD allegations weren’t true. Even in my dreams, though, I didn’t guess that they had simply decided on WMD as an expedience because the Administration was divided on other rationales. And those other rationales would never have gotten enough support in the Congress and in the American public to support a war. I don’t think that sending the President (State of the Union), the Vice President, and much of the Cabinet out to snow the American people is healthy for our democratic political system, nor is insulting the intelligence (pun intended) of our allies good for our position in the world, and I think that the war should have been resisted on these grounds alone.

Point: Even before the war, there were reasons to believe we were entering a quagmire.

Here I have to admit, I was one of the war’s opponents who overestimated the difficulty of taking Baghdad. I knew it would happen, but I expected it to take many more months. (I suppose it’s an open question whether the Ba’ath militants conceded the conventional battle more quickly in order to preserve themselves and their ammunition for guerrilla tactics.) Hence, when I criticize the Administration for its dreadful planning for the aftermath, it must be discounted by the fact that they were right and I was not about the conventional battle. However, it appears as if the serious misjudgment of what Iraq would be like the Day After was systemic, originating to a great degree in over-reliance on Chalabi [another link]. Now even proponents of the war are left wondering how we are going to get out of Iraq without a civil war following our departure, and without remaining as sitting ducks. Too late.

Point: What we could do now.

Armed Liberal suggested that besides rehearsing why I opposed the war (which is something of a moot point, except to the extent that I think the Administration responsible for this error should not be returned to office), I mention how I think the situation can be improved.

• Apologize publically to our allies for the falsity of the Powell slide show and for the way we pressured them on the basis of forged and faked "intelligence". We need to restore our working relationship with our allies (we also need their money, cooperation from their police forces, and contributions of troops).
• Have the IRS review Chalabi’s tax returns, and on finding his 1040 omits bribes and kickbacks, bring him back to the USA for trial. First, just as with the death of Saddam, it’s good to punish the wicked. Second, we will be sending a message that we do not wish to set up yet another corrupt and eventually brutal leader who just happens to be better aligned with our geopolitics (see under: Karimov). Third, having fleeced us with tall tales of his connections inside Iraq, Chalabi is now fleecing the Iraqis with tales, not all tall, that he possesses indispensable influence with the American overlords.
• We need Arabic speakers in our armed forces desperately, enough that we can stop discharging the ones who are homosexual. Seriously, we need to increase the existing strategic language initiatives.
• Offer Jordan a Marshall-type Plan for infrastructure development contingent on continued liberalization.
• Sharon, for his own political reasons, seems to have gotten the hint that we won’t tolerate any more settlement expansion. However, he’s gotten into unrelated trouble. If he’s replaced by Benjamin Netanyahu, we make a public insistence that there are no more expropriations of Arab lands in the Territories for eventual Jewish Israeli civilian use. (We back it up with monetary threats.)
• Increase armed presence (not necessarily USA) in Afghanistan with an eye to stopping the deterioration there. All those warlords can change sides back to the Taliban, if it ever seems to be in their best interests.
• Fire anyone who doesn’t perform. Kofi Annan just sacked people he held responsible for not protecting the UN mission in Baghdad. Has Bush ever fired anyone for incompetence, as opposed to leaking uncomfortable but true facts? (Answer: Yes, the former head of the INS. Any others?)

We can’t follow Spain out of Iraq. For them, it was a contribution to America, more than a token gesture, but hardly mission-critical. Also, Spain leaving is their way to repudiate Bush’s policy. Defeating George Bush is itself such a repudiation, so it isn’t necessary for us to withdraw and make matters worse. (Of the Democratic candidates, only Kucinich and perhaps Sharpton called for immediate withdrawal.) Perhaps if we cede control of the reconstruction to the UN, even though our own personnel would be most at risk, we can get Spain and other countries to return or commit new troops. Recall, experts in occupation in the former Yugoslavia say that we have no more than half the necessary number of troops. Do you still think Rummy knows better? I realize if we are unable to negotiate such an arrangement, none of my suggestions outlines any other way we are going to get out of Iraq with our pride and the Iraqi nation intact and not in civil war. If there were some program, any program, to guarantee this, frankly, I think at this point George Bush would implement it, too. As Max Cleland put it, "Welcome to Vietnam, Mr. President. Sorry you didn’t go when you had the chance."

The pictures and story from Falluja are horrible. As we should, we recoil from the rage and inhumanity of the actions that led to them, and try to figure out how to respond. On one of my email lists, the discussion is between those who want to respond with massive destruction and those who – equally hopeless about the future of Iraq – want to simply leave.

I’ll offer the photo linked here (note that it is slightly, but not horribly, graphic) as evidence why we shouldn’t do either.Note the dateline: Marietta, GA, 1915. That’s where Leo Frank was brutally lynched.

In case you think those horrors are in our distant past, I’ll suggest that Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner would probably feel differently – if they were alive.

While some might disagree, I think I can safely say that the American South is, today, civilized.

Andrew Lazarus has been one of the most fervent – and yet thoughtful – opponents of the war in Iraq in our comments, and I thought it would be a good idea to invite him to set out his whole argument in a more expansive format.

By Andrew Lazarus:

Armed Liberal has very generously suggested that I write my reasons for opposing the Iraq War. I appreciate the opportunity, both because the exercise has allowed to determine in my own mind which arguments I feel are most cogent, and because from now on in the comments, I can just incorporate my prior arguments by reference.

Point: The assault on Iraq contributes little, if anything, to the personal security of Americans.
On 9/11, the United States suffered a dastardly attack masterminded by a transnational guerrilla movement with hundreds (perhaps thousands) of members organized into cells in at least half a dozen countries. Their leader was Osama bin Laden, and their headquarters was, roughly speaking, Afghanistan, which they controlled through their allies, the Taliban. This attack followed several other Al Qaeda operations against other American targets. This organization is unquestionably the greatest threat to American lives, and we got off to a great start by attacking it on several fronts. First, we used a combination of our own military, our ally (the Northern Alliance), and a combination of threats and bribes with the various warlords of Afghanistan, to overthrow the Taliban. (We promised the Afghans a better life, which we are delivering very, very fitfully, notwithstanding their splendid new constitution.)

Iraq had nothing to do with the 9/11 attack, and the defeat of the Saddam government does nothing to disrupt Al Qaeda’s command structure, which is elsewhere. It does nothing to seize Al Qaeda’s financial assets, which instead are being located by the much-derided law enforcement methods. It does nothing to deprive Al Qaeda of war materiel. It does nothing to discover the identities of sleeper agents, who were not controlled from Iraqi soil (with the possible exception of Ansar Al-Islam, over which the Saddam government had no control). Iraq was not even a source of Al Qaeda operatives.

Meanwhile, every dollar we spend on the Iraq War is a dollar we don’t spend on finding Osama bin Laden. Every soldier we commit to Iraq is a soldier who is not in Afghanistan, including crack Arabic-, Pashtun- and Dari-speaking special forces whom we redeployed from the Osama search to the Saddam search. What I find most incredible is that the response of the Spaniards to the ability of Al Qaeda to commit a terrorist act in Europe (as well as other acts in Asia and Africa) without any difficulties imposed by the Iraq War is taken as “appeasement”. The theory that Western security can be vouchsafed by attacking a third party (evil as it was) has been tried, and found wanting. The Spanish punished a government that was unable to protect them because it didn’t try.

Faced with the obvious, that none of whatever success we have enjoyed in locating Al Qaeda agents and frustrating their plans is in any way related to anything captured or interdicted in Iraq, proponents of the war propose various grandiose general theories to explain why the Iraq War has made us safer.

The flypaper theory posits that by attracting Islamoterrorists to Iraq, we are first distracting them from conducting further attacks in the United States, and second localizing them where our superior conventional military strength can annihilate them. The first argument is weak. For one thing, on 9/10/2001 we could have made a similar, mistaken, claim about the success of the Clinton and Bush anti-terrorism policies pursued until then. Even more important, this line of reasoning falters on Al Qaeda’s post-Iraq attacks in Europe. The second argument is scarcely any better, for while it might apply to a traditional army being lured to a strongpoint and destroyed, it makes no sense in talking about a fairly small terrorist movement which will not attack in massed formation, and which moreover can abandon Iraq for other countries if the heat is too great.

More realistic than the flypaper theory is the theory that Arab governments everywhere will be so awed by the American military might in Baghdad, and the bases we will establish there with or without the consent of the Iraqi government, that they will cooperate in the fight against terrorism. (Why the fate of the Taliban isn’t sufficient example is unclear to me.) Perhaps it is because, as Rumsfeld said, Iraq has better targets. There is evidence of a weak effect along these lines, although Libya and Syria were both seeing some liberalization before 9/11. Overall, the collapse of the Tunisia meetings and the lack of any forward motion for Bush’s Middle East Initiative suggests that the benefits are limited. Perhaps the anti-American forces inside and outside of these governments have done the addition and decided that we simply have no troops to spare to occupy any more countries. Or perhaps the country most closely linked to Al Qaeda, namely, Saudi Arabia, figures its close personal friendship with the Bush family will continue to exempt it.

And last, and most ridiculous, is the triple-bank-shot theory that we will establish such a wonderful democracy in Iraq (doing what, I ask, with Fallujah?) that flowers begin to bloom over the entire region. Instead, the popularity of the United States is at low ebb both in Europe and the Arab countries. The existing democracy in Spain, much less any democratic states that might arise in the Middle East, has just repudiated our program. It says something about the PR capabilities of people like Richard Perle that they are seen as “realists” with this millennial fantasy, while antiwar liberals seeking to work in the realm of the possible are dismissed as fools.

To follow.

Point: The Iraq War was not worth the damage to international structures. Point: The Iraq War could not be sold to Congress and the American people on the basis of humanitarian arguments (even though these were to some extent valid) and was therefore sold on the basis of exaggerations, unproven assertions, falsehoods, and outright lies, and should have been opposed for the damage it caused to the American political structure.