[IrishHand]

marbles' post: Been reading a lot of the war arguments, and you make some solid points. Most importantly, I don't believe anyone involved in this mess is telling the whole truth, especially my own government. There's one string of logic I can't get past in the case for war though:

1. Saddam Hussein is a bad dude (I think we're all in agreement here).
2. The world has asked him to disarm (we all know the resolutions).
3. He will not disarm.

So what world do we live in if we collectively ask a bad dude to disarm, he gives the world the finger, and he faces no repurcussions?

Honestly, this is not a flame. I just want to know how you guys resolve that logic string to conclude that no war is still the best approach? If not war, how do you deal with Saddam's insolence?

I'll address your "logic for war" first. Yes, I agree that Hussein is a bad dude and yes, the world (through the UN) has asked him to disarm (of certain types of weapons). Your third statement is pure speculation on your part since you can't prove it one way or another. Futhermore, even if it's true, it doesn't follow from your 3-step logic that war is the next step. For that to be so, you'd basically have to argue that the willful violation of a UN resolution is just cause for war, which is a completely untenable argument. It certainly doesn't follow from your 3-step logic that "war is the best approach" - unless it's the only approach you're willing to consider as a possible solution to whatever problem you've identified.

(1) "He will not disarm." This is a common misconception in this country, and is based almost exclusively on what the administration tells you. I have seen no evidence which proves that Hussein possesses WMD. There is a horde of inspectors scouring his country looking for them, and the US has surely devoted a large portion of it's massive intelligence-gathering apparatus (CIA, military intelligence, sattelites, etc) to this cause. Despite this, no "smoking gun" has been found. The best evidence that our government is currently hanging its hat on are some missiles which go a few miles farther than they're supposed to. As soon as the inspectors tell me they've found a horde of chemical weapons or a nuclear-weapon-making-factory, I'll embrace this "Hussein has refused to disarm" argument. Until then, I will rely on the complete dearth of concrete evidence, combined with the fact find it impossible to believe that a crippled country would be able to hide this apparent mass of WMD from international inspectors and the most powerful nation on earth for months on end.

(2) Assuming arguendo that he has refused to disarm and is thereby "giv[ing] the world the finger", what should we do? Some have suggested that we're already doing enough - that his country grows less impressive militarily by the day and is making a strong effort to be in compliance with the UN resolutions (whether or not it was prior to all this pressure is irrelevant, despite US pleas that this is "too little, too late"). This may be true. Others have suggested exploring alternative non-violent methods of realizing our goals - whatever those may be. This also appears to be a sensible possibility. I think the most important thing is to decide first exactly what we want, and then decide what the best way to achieve it would be. War would certainly remove Hussein and give us access to a lot of oil, but it would be counterproductive in the "war on terror" - which was ostensibly the reason we initially targetted Iraq next from the evil-doer list. A US invasion of Iraq will be boon for Islamic extremists and terrorist factions. (Keep in mind I have a real tough time adopting the image of Hussein that we're fed by our media that he's this insolent Hitlerific disaster waiting to happen - his country has been devastated by sanctions and our military raids on his military apparatus for 10+ years now.)

I suppose the bottom line is that I don't have some great answer because I don't see that there's some great problem. A recent poll in Time's European edition showed that 80%+ of it's 250,000+ respondents felt that the US was a greater threat to world peace than either Iraq or North Korea. That's the sort of thing I consider when I ponder great problems in that part of the world. Why do the vast majority of Europeans, Russians and Asians think the US basically a rogue state? And why is there such a strong (and sometimes violent) anti-American sentiment in the Middle East? To me, those are far more interesting questions than how we should deal with a country that we crippled over 10 years ago and has neither recovered nor demonstrated any interest in attacking the US.

Respectfully,
Irish