I am glad that Saddam was caught. But the point about his being a non-Islamicist is a good one. Perhaps Wahhabism would not be nearly so much of a threat today if we had let Saddam have Kuwait and threaten Saudi Arabia. Clinton certainly destroyed Bush’s attempt at a new world order that respects the sanctity of borders with his Kosovo adventure.

Yeah and Nazism and Communism are mortal enemies, so surely they’d never sign a pact and agree to fight a common enemy.

“… so surely they’d never sign a pact and agree to fight a common enemy.”

Sure they would, but watch what happens a few years later. How does this relate?

Thrasy wrote,

“Clinton certainly destroyed [the elder] Bush’s attempt at a new world order that respects the sanctity of borders with his Kosovo adventure.”

Why did Bush père insert that comment about “the New World Order” into that speech he made, the speech that introduced that term to the world, and what did he understand by “The New World Order,” exactly?

Thrasymachus seems to want to have it both ways. On one hand, he’s glad Hussein was caught. On the other hand, he suggests we should have let Hussein take over Kuwait and (at the least) Finlandize and dominate Saudi Arabia, which really would have meant letting this murderous tyrant take over the entire Middle East, and thus become a major power in the world.

It seems to me that in the final analysis one must make a choice. It is a choice between rationality, which accepts that real-world decisions often involve tragic consequences, and anti-war escapism, which imagines a non-existent world in which non-action has no costs.

My modest suggestion was that Hussein would and probably did cooperate with Islamists outside of his regime (esp. non-Shia Islamists) in order to fight a common enemy.

Even if he didn’t, the notion that they’re mortal enemies that would never cooperate is stupid.

The US was, is, and will remain the biggest obstacle of both, whereas for Hitler Stalin became such in 1941.

Murderous tyrants in the Middle East are fine by me. We are cooperating with some now, and will in the future. We liked this particular one well enough before the Kuwait incident. What I do not like is buildings getting blown up in America.

Chalk up another one to that petulant little dweeb, Lew Rockwell.

Doesn’t his tone kinda sorta remind you of Howie Dean??

Roach – nice web site by the way, I have linked it from my web log – Saddam was not an enemy of the United States before the first Gulf War. We supported him.

Then Thrasymachus has opted for what I described as anti-war escapism. He actually imagines that it could and should have been acceptable to the United States and the rest of the world to let this expansive cruel tyrant control one of the most sensitive strategic areas in the world.

Thrasy’s position is analogous to Buchanan’s position in A Republic Not an Empire, where Buchanan suggests it would have been fine with him if the Western powers had acceded to Hitler’s vision (as imagined by Buchanan) of a world in which Hitler was “master of Eurasia,” and America the “mistress of the West.”

At the core of the anti-war position is, if it is not simple escapism, a system of values that is utterly foreign to me, and I think utterly foreign to the great majority of Americans.

roach’s comment is understood. I think it’s clear that Saddam would have worked with, (and undoubtedly was working with) Mohammedan terrorists — Abu Nidal is case in point. (Don’t know if he was Shiite or what.)

And the notion that bin-Laden would not have worked with a ‘secular’ Mohammedan like Saddam was always laughable. The same enlightened ones who proffered that nonsense would turn around and remind us that he (willingly) received assistance from the CIA during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, yet found it hard to believe he would receive any assistance from the ‘infidel’ Saddam, who was at least a nominal Mohammedan.

As to Thrasy’s comment, let’s extend roach’s analogy differently. We ‘cooperated’ with Uncle Joe to defeat Hitler, which was sort of necessary. But watch out for the repurcussions.

I don’t like buildings being blown up here either, but it’s not clear what suggestions you have put forth that would prevent it.

World War II is a different subject.

But the argument about letting “this expansive cruel tyrant control one of the most sensitive strategic areas in the world” is a good one, and I guessed that Mr. Auster would bring that up. In other words, we had to fight the first Gulf War because unless the Arabs are kept weak and feuding they will overcharge us for oil. And without cheap oil, the American way of life is unsustainable. I think that is a smart, realist minded way to think about the problem.

But there are problems with the idea of war as the solution in this case. The first problem with the logic for war is that it underestimated the threat of terrorism. The weak are not so weak anymore now that a bomb in a car trunk is the strategic equivalent of a stealth bomber. Another problem with the case for war is that there are other ways of achieving objectives. Perhaps engagement would have been a better solution – as we are trying with China, ruled by another set of murderous dictators who have our neck in a noose due to our dependence on imports. The final point is that rather than enduring the cost of war and stirring up the Arab ant-pile we could have instead tried to make rational choices about energy policy that would free us from much of the dependence on foreign oil. Indeed, the last point is all the stronger because the best estimates indicate peak oil production within 20 years. The end of cheap oil is in sight and we need to deal with that.

Bravo Thrasy! You’ve hit the nail on the head over our dependence on oil. A few individuals on this list, notably Ron, have started to mention the subject more. This is good. Our oil hunger has been the #1 enabling factor of Mohammedan terrorism. Drug trafficking has been another, but there are ways we could put that out of business too.

There’s only one problem, it’s not going to be handled in the foreseeable future. And that’s a BIG problem. But at least you’ve made the right call.

The core of the disagreement is that Thrasy, like other anti-war people, is impervious to the nature of a Hussein and the intolerable danger he represented once he showed himself to be so aggressive as to seek to control the entire Persian Gulf. Either he doesn’t see what I see, or he sees it and he doesn’t care. No logical argument can span the fundamental difference between us, because it is not a difference of logic, but of perception and valuation. In the fall of 1990, when I was debating with myself whether I supported the then President Bush’s war policy or not, I saw that if Hussein was not driven back, then his power would keep expanding, and we would face an infinitely worse crisis in the not distant future. But my having that perception into the future was based on a perception into Hussein’s nature and actions. A person who has not had that perception will continue to dismiss a Hussein as “just another third world dictator.”

The same gap of perception applies to Buchanan’s retroactive acceptance of a world half-ruled by Adolf Hitler. But, once again, I’m putting it generously. Because there’s also the possibility that Buchanan does understand Hitler’s nature, and doesn’t care.

This will be my last comment on this subject, at least for now.

I am a fan of both Lew Rockwell and Lawrence Auster. I suppose Lawrence might not be pleased with the comparison, but in my opinion both Lawrence and lew are engaged in a similar struggle: The attempt to define and support an idealistic American worldview.

If one thing is made clear on VFR, it’s the fact that the left has achieved an almost perfect victory in the areas of politics, law and culture.

Lawrence chooses to battle the left by using traditional political and legal means. Lew chooses to fight this enemy by using a different set of tools such as homespun wisdom, humor, common sense, and whatever else fits the Paleo mold.

Lews opposition to the invasion of Iraq stems (at least partly) from the fact that it is a reflection of a government bureaucracy that has grown far too big, and far too expensive.

Thanks for the link Thrasy. I need to get into my code and link both you and Lawrence.

I am a bit surprised at how often the claim that Saddam Hussein was (once) a friend of the USA is repeated. He was a Soviet client and ally throughout his career, and supplemented his arsenal with French equipment. The United States happened to lean toward the Iraqi side during the Ira-Iraq war because the Iranians were an irreconcilable enemy and it was perceived to be necessary to counter the threat that they would overrun the Gulf.

Mr. Levine wrote (02:28 PM),

“The United States happened to lean toward the Iraqi side during the Iran-Iraq war because the Iranians were an irreconcilable enemy and it was perceived to be necessary to counter the threat that they would overrun the Gulf.”

I remember onlooker Henry Kissinger saying at the time, as part of a comment on the unsavoriness of the people running Iran AND Saddam Hussein, “This is one war which you hope BOTH sides will lose!”