Rory was brave enough, the other day, to put in pixels his witty two cents (two pee, I suppose, in the U.K.) about the likely forthcoming hostilities. I use "brave" not in the sense of political courage -- the pressure for a pro-war consensus isn't yet that great even here, and indeed quite the reverse, I gather, where he's writing from.

But I say "brave" simply to indicate the fact that in trying to address what one thinks about War on/in Iraq (to say nothing about how one feels about it, a related but slightly separate question), any thoughtful person courts a number of rhetorical disasters. Being too simplistic. Repeating what others have said, ad nauseam (thus laying oneself open to being Pollacked). Getting lost in the complexity and revealing the insufficiency of one's grasp of everything from the current state of Middle Eastern political opinion to the depths of Western iniquity vis-a-vis installing and supporting Saddam Hussein in the past. Revealing a corrosive cynicism or a hopeless, chumplike innocence.

For crying out loud. I had an easier time summarizing my dissertation topic than I do trying to articulate what I think (at any given, fleeting moment) about the current crisis. Would that one could simply invoke Walt Whitman and, being large, contain multitudes. Whitman won't, much to my chagrin, always come when invoked (or if he does, it often becomes apparent that he's not much help after all). So one is left with a choice: try to lay out your position in words that you won't look back on with a cringe once the bombs start falling; or own up to your inability to wrap an argument around your feelings, and point to some people who seem to have a better handle on this making arguments thing.

Though it's doubtless simply another species of folly, let me try to split the difference, first by pointing to a bunch of people (mostly pointed out to me by others I often link to [see above]) who make at least partial sense to me on the issues. Friedman doesn't make a hawk out of me, but makes some good points about where the Bushies have been going wrong even from a hawk perspective. Dr. Green (who cites TF), challenges the antiwar consensus cogently (scroll down to his March 18 post), and Ian McEwan does some similar work.

These essays all have in common the premise that Hussein's removal is necessary for multiple reasons, and that the left cannot pretend that leaving him in power yet "contained" is a truly good solution. I have always argued that the political origins of the campaign for Gulf War II corrupt the whole enterprise; but I'm swayed by the simple logic that while the Bush administration's motives may not be pure, that alone doesn't invalidate the notion that the international community can intervene in Iraq -- even given past U.S. support of Hussein.

But I come back to a few thoughts, some of which are echoes of the above articles/arguments, and some of which deviate significantly:

1. The manner in which the U.S. government has approached the U.N. and the international community over this seems to have been designed to fail. It looks unlikely that there will be a U.N. Security Council majority to back a resolution unambiguously calling for the invasion of Iraq. Of course there's almost no chance at this point the U.S. will back down, whatever the U.N. does. But whatever good we do in Iraq will be so utterly compromised by the ill will we have/will have generated throughout the world that the damage to our alliances and to international cooperation as a whole could last for a very long period of time. This has to be rebuilt, and American voters have to be made to understand the damage to our nation that's been done.

2. No one in the administration is willing to account for the question of how Iraq might be administered after we have "taken out" Hussein. The left needs to start demanding answers on this.

3. Those things being said, it is too easy to oppose removing Hussein from power just because Bush and Co. want it done. They want it done for the wrong reasons -- I do believe this is fundamentally political. But that doesn't necessarily mean that it shouldn't have been done a long time ago.

But:

4. No one (in the administration) has addressed the most obvious moral question: given that Hussein is (everyone stipulates) unjustly oppressing Iraqis, without their consent; and given that the overriding reason given by the administration for invading are actions undertaken only by the top leadership of the B'aathists -- the weapons of mass destruction, the (supposed) links to Al Qaeda, and the crimes against Iraqis -- given these things, the question is how many ordinary Iraqis is it OK to kill in order to rid the world of Hussein? 1,000? 5,000? 10,000? More? We've made it clear that our quarrel isn't with them -- it's with the butcher who has been oppressing them for years. But they are the ones who will die; and we haven't, to the best of my knowledge, cleared that with them.

5. #4 sticks in my craw as a pretty potent moral objection to letting the dogs out. I have another objection, though, a practical one -- already voiced by a million others. This war will only seem "provoked" by those who can interpret the jousting over inspections and sanctions as Hussein daring the West to fight him. To Muslims all over the world, this looks "unprovoked" and will, I think, cement what is already suspected -- that the U.S. is coming for them next. I am afraid of making that many enemies. In a world of cheap high explosive, I am afraid of instilling that much fear. If that makes me sound like a coward and an appeaser, then there it is.

This is the last I'll write on the subject, at least until the dying starts.