[RickC]

What if GW is only after the oil - and maybe nursing a grudge to avenge his father?
What if it is unlikely that Saddam will gain nuclear weapons in the 20 or so years naturally left to him on this Earth?

What if all the worst fears of the Liberals (of which I am one) are true?

Like it or not, there are still compelling strategic reasons to create a different sort of Society in the Middle East.

Do you know anything of Senator Vandenberg - yes, the one the base beyond Santa Barbara is named after? Do you know of his great involvement in the pre-WWII Isolationist movement of the Republicans? Do you know how sitting in a basement in England, enduring the Nazi V-1 Buzz Bombs, he realized that with the existence of modern weapons, the security, stability and sanity of your "neighbors" was as important to the safety of one's nation as the fitness of one's own army? That after the war he championed the United Nations and NATO?

Even if those two institutions are now failing us, in the modern era we simply cannot sit by while non-democratic societies inflame their people against us. It is too dangerous.

Is this arrogant?
Yes.
Is it arrogant to believe that that democracy is better than oligarchy?
Yes.
Is it arrogant to suggest that the rights of women and minorities are important?
Yes.
Is it arrogant to suggest that Societies which reinforce the rights of all their citizens are the unstoppable wave of the future, while those which allow their female children to burn alive because their clothing is "incorrect" are headed for the dustbin of history?
Yes.

But all these things are true, whether we like it or not. We can wait for these types of countries to fall of their own weight, or we can give them a little "push."

Which will lead us to a happier future faster? We'll never know, because we have to choose one way and not the other.

War always has risks. Clausewitz's Fog will envelop us all. But it seems in the longest sense that GW's way is the most sensible course, as well as, in some strange sense, the most humane.