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Speaking of Noah. Friedman has

Speaking of Noah. Friedman has a good column. Even better, POTUS expresses what the nation is feeling and where it should continue responding.

However, despite the echo chamber’s whining, the NYT editorial page is amazing. The third Op-Ed makes a great point. Dowd delivers a message the President needs to hear:

“If the old Desert Storm warriors want a new desert storm, they should stop condescending to their fellow countrymen, who understand both that Iraq is a threat and that Iraq had nothing to do with the destruction of the World Trade Center.”

The fight may be right, but be honest and clear. Zell Miller, one of the President’s most ardent supporters, made this case the other day. Iraq won’t pull an operation like last years. Having a base to attack changes their strategy. Admitting this doesn’t take away from real reasons to go after him. Unfortunately, the administration is incapable of making this argument to date. Instead, Dick Cheney has decided to freelance and claim all of the problems of the world eminate from Iraq. That argument takes a lot of balls from a man whose company helped rebuild the Iraqi oil fields.

Jeb was always the smart

Jeb was always the smart one according to most of the family biographies done of the Bushs. He was expected to be the one to follow in his father’s footsteps, but while clearly successful in becoming the Governor of Florida, he hasn’t done as well as the dumb brother. Why not? I think this
quote
is instructive:
“Of Ms. Reno’s troubles at her precinct Tuesday morning, Mr. Bush said: “What is it with Democrats having a hard time voting? I don’t know.””

Pissing on the opposition tends to raise turnout of the opposition. And the last thing one wants to do is be encourage turnout of the other side’s base.

The Washington Post has an

The Washington Post has an op-ed by Karen Armstrong. I’ve schlepped for her before and I’ll do it again. Read it and love it. And then be critical of it. I think her writing is some of the best when it comes to religion, but there are two problems with her article.

First, Iraq’s children haven’t been victimized by the embargo. They have been victimized by a fascist dictator who has chosen to spend money on weapons and refused to allow a market economy. I will certainly agree the perception is present that the embargo has killed children in Iraq, but that is a different question than what has caused the actual problem. The Kurdish zone is doing quite well under the same sanction regime. The problem is Saddam Hussein.

The above is not meant to absolve the US of years of backing despots in the region and she is correct in that criticism.

Second, attacking Iraq may be necessary. I would prefer to look at increasing aid to domestic resistance groups, but the current President doesn’t seem to want to even acknowledge the possibility. Hussein has attacked American interests and he will do so again. He is (probably) not responsible in any way for September 11th. However, trying to kill a former President of the United States is an act that should have clued us in to this guy.

It is true that we must deal with the Arab perception of our actions and the way to do that is with UN sanction. However, the President bungled this by allowing the debate to drift while he was on vacation. Going it alone would be disastrous. However, approaching it from a multilateral position focused on previous promises by Hussein gives us the ability to force him out while setting a reasonable precedent for future actions. Her point that we need other nations is essential, but also we must act.

And we must change how we interact with the Arab world. Fundamentalist dictators are never friends of democracy no matter how much oil they have underneath them.