Man Without Qualities

Posted 10:44 AM by Robert

William Safire Gets It Right ...

... in a remarkably clear-headed column:

The strategic reason for crushing Saddam was to reverse the tide of global terror that incubated in the Middle East. Is our pre-emptive policy working? ...

Set aside the tens of thousands of lives saved each year by ending Saddam's sustained murder of Iraqi Shia and Kurds, which is of little concern to human rights inactivists. Consider only self-defense ...

Libya .... Afghanistan ... Syria ... the West Bank ... Iran ...

Iraq, where casualties in Baghdad could be compared to civilian losses to everyday violence in New York and Los Angeles, a rudimentary federal republic is forming itself with all the customary growing pains. After the new Iraq walks by itself, we can expect free Iraqis to throw their crutches at the doctor. But we did not depose Saddam to impose a puppet; we are helping Iraqis defeat the diehards and resist fragmentation to set in place a powerful democratic example ...

North Korea...

[T]aken together, this phased array of fallout to our decision to lead the world's war against terror makes the case that what we have been doing is strategically sound as well as morally right.

And that's just the way it's all going to play in the upcoming campaign.