Michele is hosting a debate on the burning issue of the day. No, not whether there’s an uprising in Basra… rather, who’s hotter: NBC’s David Bloom or Fox’s Rick Leventhal? If you’re a Bloomie, he’s losing bad, so you may want to contribute your opinion.

As a practicing heterosexual, I should probably mention my thing for MSNBC’s Chris Jansing. Then again, maybe I shouldn’t…

One major reason I don’t have a lot of time for the conservative movement—“paleo” or “neo”—is the rabidly anti-immigrant character of much of it (yes, John Derbyshire, I’m talking about you). The story of Marine Lance Cpl. Jose Gutierrez, who was among the first casulaties of the war, ought to give them pause. Gutierrez, like most immigrants, came here to build a better life for himself, but, also like most immigrants, ended up building a better life for all of us. That a man who wasn’t even a citizen would put his life on the line for America not only reflects highly on him, it demonstrates the greatness of our country.

Found via Matt Welch and OxBlog.

More pessimism from the Beeb’s warblog in the past 24 hours. At 2252 GMT on Monday, David Willis helpfully comments on the status of the campaign:

It seems the army and militia men may well have set out from southern Baghdad with the intention of ambushing the convoys as they approach Baghdad and engage them in urban-style guerrilla warfare—the last thing the British and American forces wanted so early in the campaign.

The last thing? The BBC’s obsession with the alleged nightmare scenario is becoming preposterous, particularly since the worst-case is always what’s happening now. If on Thursday the Iraqis had strung up Saddam, Qusay and Uday with piano wire, the Beeb probably would have called that a nightmare scenario too.

Meanwhile, in today’s news, Jonathan Marcus (1045 GMT) tells us what’s going on in Basra—except, he’s in Qatar:

I think British forces are very reluctant to move into Basra, after all this is a largely Shia city they believed they would be welcomed in.

I’m not even certain that sentence parses. In the absence of any statement why the “British forces are very reluctant to move” in, it’s a complete non-sequitor that only makes sense if you live with Jonathan Marcus’s worldview. My response: “I think Jonathan Marcus is eminently qualified to tell us what’s going on in Basra, after all he’s sitting in Doha with the rest of the international press corps asking stupid questions at press conferences.”

Adrian Mynott (0845 GMT), who actually is where he’s talking about, thinks he has spotted why Umm Qasr is no longer giving the coalition fits:

The Americans tended to be much more confrontational. If they saw problems they tended to retreat and open fire if necessary. Whereas the British approach certainly has been to move in with a small squad, surround the area, and detain a few people. It seems to be working on the face of it.

Moving in, surrounding the area, and detaining a few people sounds pretty confrontational to me. But then again, I’m just a simplisme American.

Rageh Omarr (1310 GMT) fancies himself an expert on military hardware:

From my hotel room which is on the banks of the Tigris River, I can’t see across to the other side of the river bank. It’s an absolutely blinding sandstorm, and I would have thought it would be almost impossible for helicopters to be flying in this weather.

However it hasn’t stopped the bombardments of positions on the outskirts of the city. I’ve been hearing deep explosions and rumbles coming from the south, which must be very very heavy bombs because you can hear them in the here [sic] centre of the city from 20 km away.

That’s right, he apparently thinks we’re dropping precision-guided bombs on Baghdad and its outskirts with helicopters.

On the lighter side, Andrew Gilligan (0635 GMT) is putting his MI5 training to work:

We’ve seen no fewer than six ministers in the last three days. They’re travelling around incognito.

They lock you in the press conference so you can’t see where they’re going, but I sneaked out through the kitchens and saw them making off in a taxi. So they are actually still in Baghdad and still very defiant.

The name’s Gilligan. Andrew Gilligan.

Arthur Silber notes that someone else has gotten in on the war action—our friends at Focus on the Family:

“As soon as the dust settles after the conflict, (USAID will) be sending in the condom pushers and the sex educators,” Mosher said. “There is the view at USAID that we need to remake these societies in the image of Hollywood or in the image of Manhattan. (That) we need to attack the patriarchal family.”

USAID told Family News in Focus that their priority will be to provide basic health services to the Iraqi people, and those services will not include condom distribution. However, the fact that USAID has pushed its pro-condom and pro-abortion views in other countries has many conservative pro-family organizations thinking Iraq will be the next victim.

That’s right: of all the things they possibly could care about, they’re worried that the Iraqis might (gasp) get rubbers from American aid. I’m speechless.

Via Radley Balko.

Andrew Sullivan frequently carries items on the leftist slant of the BBC, Britain’s state-funded (out of a per-household tax on television possession) media outlet. He notes that the Beeb’s bias is finally being discovered on this side of the pond:

I’m somewhat thrilled my little obsession of the past couple months has begun to find new converts. Not exactly my persuasive powers. More due to the fact that suddenly the BBC is being broadcast live to Americans. That funny, subtle sound you hear is of a few thousand jaws dropping. The Mickster suddenly sees what I’ve been going on about. Here’s Rand Simberg too.

People not familiar with the Beeb, or not familiar with how Britons normally speak, may miss some of the subtleties. One that may be of particular interest to my fellow Americans: listen closely, and you’ll find that there are not one, but two BBC pronunciations of “American”: one form is the descriptive, and one form is the “sneer.” The version with the i pronounced as a long “e” is the sneer; the version with the i prounounced as a ə (schwa), as most Americans would pronounce it, is the descriptive.

However, this is a largely subjective approach. Another way to discover BBC bias is to read their reporters’ largely unfiltered weblog entries. For example, Andrew North writes (emphasis mine):

The commanders of this US marine unit here have admitted that they were surprised by just how hard and how determined the Iraqis fought yesterday.

Now, admitted is a pretty loaded word. Rene J. Cappon, in The Word (now retitled as The Associated Press Guide to Newswriting), explicitly warns against using it:

Admit, as in admitting a crime, implies yielding reluctantly under pressure. The company chairman admitted that interest rates had not been factored into production estimates suggests that he came clean after an astute reporter put the thumbscrews to him. In fact, he volunteered the information. Use said or acknowledged.

Peter Hunt, however, won’t be outdone by Andy:

It is the very worst possible news for the British military. They have suffered a series of setbacks and now this—two servicemen missing in southern Iraq.

The very worst possible news? No, I think the very worst possible news would be that Saddam had flattened a Kuwaiti airstrip with a tactical nuke, killing thousands of British and allied servicemen. While the loss of two servicemen is sad, Peter really needs to get some perspective.

Let’s examine some of yesterday’s coverage while we’re at it. Ian Pannell writes:

One expects within 24hrs the pictures of the captured servicemen will be shown on American TV networks.

I don’t think it will change people’s minds about the war because they are rallying behind the troops. But after the war it may raise problems for the president.

Perhaps Ian could enlighten the rest of us as to what problems he expects might come of this, because I’m completely at a loss. Meanwhile, Andrew Gilligan blogs from Baghdad, noting the Iraqis’ “search and rescue” techniques, which Lt. Gen. John Abizad rightly derided in todays’ press conference as leaving “a lot to be desired”:

They combed the banks of the Tigris just opposite the hotel and for a second time today they were burning the shrubbery to flush out any downed enemy pilot.

Odd that Andy would forget to mention the Iraqis that decided to fire their Kalashnikovs into the Tigris, which I suspect was the most vivid memory anyone took from the video footage of the “search.” Fellow BBC reporter Adrian Mynott, somewhere near Umm Qasr, has some issues of his own:

The suggestion that was being made in the planning of this operation—that this may take a day or a few hours to sort our [sic] have proved to be very wrong—this is proving to be a major thorn in the coalition’s side and indeed something of an embarrassment.

Yeah, it was pretty embarrassing to the Allies when they landed in Normandy and they hadn’t captured Paris by the end of the day, too. What is this guy smoking? Adrian’s confusing an optimistic estimate with the benchmark the operation’s supposed to be held to.

Finally, Steve Kingstone takes the biscuit for the most idiotic statement:

As the Pentagon and any US official you speak to sees it, there is confusion in the control and command structure of the Iraqi regime.

We have no way of knowing if that is true but it seems they think the more they say it, it will filter through.

Great mind-reading, Steve. Alternate thesis: perhaps they keep saying it because they believe it to be true.

Now, I won’t go out on a limb and say the Beeb is “pro-Saddam,” or even leftist. I don’t know how many leftists there are in Broadcasting House. At the very least, I think the BBC takes its “mission statement” too seriously, in the sense that they are excessively critical of British government policy, and confusing opposition with objectivity; an instructive comparison is to the U.S.-funded Voice of America, which manages to critically examine the U.S. and allied governments without the exaggeration that characterizes the BBC. However, that does not explain, in and of itself, the BBC’s criticism of America, which suggests a far more sinister explanation: that the BBC sees its mission as transformational rather than informational. If so, a lot of British taxpayers should quite rightly object.

Andrew has some more reader mail today on the topic.

Incidentally, I distinctly remember another, heavily biased entry that alleged that the bombings in Baghdad were deliberately targeted in a line so the international media would see them. It apparently has been deleted since.

That’s what Robyn is now advocating (in comments at Michele’s place) in response to the treatment of U.S. POWs by Iraq. Ian Pannell in the BBC’s warblog is both right and wrong:

One expects within 24hrs the pictures of the captured servicemen will be shown on American TV networks.

I don’t think it will change people’s minds about the war because they are rallying behind the troops. But after the war it may raise problems for the president.

There has been a great deal of anger.

There has been a great deal of anger. But it will only “raise problems for the president” if those responsible, including the Iraqi information minister, aren’t either killed in action or put on trial after the war. The evidence of executions of prisoners of war, if borne out by further investigation, will result in rage against Saddam Hussein and his henchmen. The words of Gen. Wesley Clark in Monday’s Times of London are particularly prescient:

The scenes of those American soldiers held captive and, possibly, executed, will inflame US public opinion; opinion that is already 75 per cent in favor of this operation. Those who are demonstrating against the operation will have to contend with even stronger public sympathies for the troops. This may well strengthen support for the policies that took us to war. As for the leaders of the coalition, President Bush and Tony Blair, there is no turning back. They, of all people, understand clearly that they must press ahead with even more determination.

The Iraqi regime, or what is left of it, has grossly miscalculated if they believe we will have a Mogadishu Moment in response. And when they’re sitting in front of a war crimes trial in Baghdad or Basra in a few months, perhaps those of Saddam’s minions responsible will ponder why they traded their chance at a new life in post-Saddam Iraq for a firing squad.

Now, Jacques, this would qualify. As the old phrase goes, the Palestinians never seem to miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. First 1991 (which got all of the Palestinians thrown out of Kuwait), then the intifada, then rejecting Oslo, then the 9/11 celebrations (which cost the Palis whatever goodwill they had in America), and now Iraq. You think they'd learn eventually.

Link via Glenn Reynolds.

Well, the so-called “shock and awe” hasn’t been particularly shocking or awesome (although see Michele’s parody thereof), but there’s still some fascinating stuff going on.

• The live footage via satellite phone on the networks is simply stunning, even if it looks like RealVideo circa 1998. Other TV coverage has been hit-or-miss; the BBC (via BBC America) in particular seems to be spending a lot of time in the studio, as is the CBC (via Newsworld International), while the US-based networks seem to have a lot more field reporting.

• Some of the live blogging is great; Sean-Paul Kelley has been running continuous updates, while the Command Post has lots of contributors keeping things up-to-date as well. Particularly interesting is the BBC’s weblog (URL changes daily), which has frequent updates from reporters from the field, while Salam Pax has semi-regular updates from Baghdad (at least until the power goes out).

• Chuck Watson continues to have great satellite images of southern Iraq; he reports that he’s averaging 1000 pageviews/hour.

• The U.S. peace protests have evaporated and the anarchists and vandals have taken over, from everything I can tell. I can’t say I’m particularly surprised.

• The Iraqi regime seems to be falling apart as we speak. Good riddance.

It appears that the battle for Basra is imminent, assuming that the Marines are still tasked for that region. We may yet see some shock and awe before the night is through.

Chuck Watson of Shoutin’ Across the Pacific has been assembling NOAA weather satellite imagery of the Iraq region for the past few months. Today, he notes the sudden appearance of new smoke plumes near Basra in southeastern Iraq, near the Kuwaiti border.

Also of interest may be the continuous updates on Sean-Paul Kelley’s website (which I inadvertently omitted from my previous post).

CNN is reporting at 10:00 CST that the Pentagon has verified that there are two oil wells on fire in southern Iraq. Advantage: Chuck!

Dima (now safely ensconsed in his new, Movable Type-powered digs) is having trouble deciding how best to cover the war in his blog. I think, for the most part, blogging won’t be all that important in the early stages, unless there are any “embedded bloggers” out there (ground-pounders like LT Smash are in a good position to report, but they have more important jobs to do), although a bit of live blogging of key events may be useful. It seems to me that analysis is probably the best approach, for two reasons:

1. Traffic: Most blogs don’t draw enough traffic for “quickie” updates to be all that useful to readers. While you might be able to build traffic by focusing on updates, I’m not sure there’s that big an unsatiated demand out there for it. If there is such demand, I think VodkaPundit and Glenn Reynolds already have it covered.

2. Perspective: Especially during the early days of the war, Fox News, CNN, the BBC, the major networks, and even the newspapers are likely to be giving very superficial, “what’s happening this instant” coverage. Bloggers may be able to take a step back and give some more thoughtful commentary, or tie some disparate threads together.

But, of course, I could be completely wrong. (Just now, for example, I’m resisting the urge to liveblog Captain Combover’s remarks.)

Patrick Carver has kindly laid down a Fisking of this rather idiotic column in Tuesday’s Daily Mississippian.

Ari Fleischer has just announced that W is addressing the nation at 9:15 CST, approximately 10 minutes from now. It’s on.

Bjørn Stærk today traces overwhelming opposition to war in Norway back to the lack of genuine debate:

[M]uch of the underlying American reasoning behind this war has not actually been presented to the Norwegian people, and when it is, only by those who oppose it. Many remain ignorant about the nature of the fundamental change of perspective that September 11 inflicted on American opinion, believing that the Americans are simply angry and vengeful, that they are gut-level patriots in need of an enemy image. That there might actually be some amount of intellectual activity going on behind the scenes of the Bush administration, activity that is motivated by any higher principles than winning the next election and gaining control of Iraq's oil, would be an utter surprise to many Norwegians - for the simple reason that we haven't been told that any such intellectual activity exists.

Every possible reason for being against this war has, on the other hand, been explored thoroughly and with eagerness. The result has been a debate without meaning, between an articulate anti-war movement and flagwaving strawmen. The peace movement has lost on this, intellectually, as has the war movement. It's an axiom of political debate that there are always intelligent, well-informed people who disagree with you. It's another axiom that the intellectual level of a debate sinks to the level of its dumbest participant, and there are few things dumber than opponents made out of straw.

I suspect that much is the same in most other non-English-speaking countries.

The VodkaMan will have live coverage of Bush's address. I'm a few minutes behind live TV on TiVo; I honestly don't expect anything new from this speech, though, and I don't expect the green light to be given tonight. But we shall see...

Dad and I drove down to Mount Dora and the Lakeridge Winery today. On the way back, we passed three people by the side of the road (in southeast Marion County along CR 42 east of Weirsdale, for all zero people who read this blog from Ocala) waving American flags and with a spraypainted sign that read “Iraq then France.” I guess the meme is spreading...

Tom Friedman was on the CNBC Tim Russert show, not to be confused with Meet The Press, this evening. I was only paying half-attention (I was fighting with the modem on my laptop, which seems to not like this hotel's phone line), but it was quite an interesting interview. At points, Friedman sounded like Steven Den Beste, for example when he described the existing regimes in the region as “failures.”

However, Friedman was critical of the administration for failing to make the case for war, and described the upcoming conflict as “the most elite-driven war in American history.” On that point, I'm not sure any war in American history hasn't been driven by elites, with the possible exception of the Indian wars of the 19th century. Absent a direct threat to America's borders, I'm not sure a war driven by mass opinion is likely.

Having said that, I do think the Iraq war is probably about the hardest war to explain to the American public; the underlying theory — using Iraq as a waypoint to establishing a stable order in the Middle East — doesn't collapse to a nice soundbite, and the surface justifications (the tenuous links from Saddam Hussein to terror, the human rights situation within Iraq, the need for WMD disarmament, Iraq's pattern of evasion with the U.N.) don't make a clear-cut case for going to war. On the other hand, Kosovo exhibited many of the same characteristics, but it too was very elite-driven.

David Adesnik is pissed off at the New York Times. And, frankly, I'd be too, if my nation was just described as part of a “motley ad hoc coalition.” If I were Howell Raines, I'd steer clear of Poland for the next, um, rest of my life. Then again, if I were Howell Raines I'd have a lot more problems than the Poles to deal with.

The ongoing lack of Clue™ of the “let inspections work” crowd, and their enablers at the Times, is simply mindboggling. Here's the Franco-Prussian solution to the Iraq crisis, in a nutshell:

1. Continue inspections.

2. Continue sanctions.

That's it. Never mind that the Franco-Prussian alliance has been trying for the past five years to evade and dismantle the sanctions regime. Never mind that for inspections to continue to “work,” in the limp sense that they do so, someone has to have 250,000 troops poised to invade Iraq indefinitely — and I don't see the freaking French or Germans volunteering to do that. So, the sum of Franco-Prussian foreign policy is to impose their idea of how to deal with Iraq by using the money and soldiers of Great Britain and the United States, which might be a good deal for Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schröder, but is a thorougly rotten one for Tony Blair and George Bush, not to mention U.S. and U.K. taxpayers.

The entire point of collective security is for countries to work together to contain threats to the international system — not for some countries to freeload off the efforts of others while having the gall to tell the countries actually doing the work how they should do it.

Meanwhile, Eugene Volokh has some words for those who think Iraq and North Korea are interchangeable.

Matthew Yglesias comments on a proposal by Michael Walzer, which would have been a good idea a few months ago — and which would largely have obviated the need for the above rant. However, given France's withdrawal from enforcement of the “no-fly zones” in the late 1990s and their diplomatic efforts to undercut the sanctions regime, I'm not sure how Bush and Blair would have sold Chirac on the plan. If Chirac had gone along with a similar plan, though, France's credibility on Iraq would be much less questionable.

You can tell you're a complete idiot when even the freaking Iraqi government won't put up with your dumb ass anymore:

[Senior Iraqi official Abdul-Razzaq al-Hashimi] said the five who had been told to leave had set themselves up as representatives of the group and had been "holding unnecessary meetings, wasting time, knocking on doors at midnight...(and) asking stupid questions".

Meanwhile, Salam Pax isn't any happier with them than he was before:

"Basically, they said we are not going to feed you any longer," said John Ross, an American who has been active in radical causes since he tore up his draft card in 1964.

Excuse while I wipe the tears from my eyes. Outoutout. He could have at least say something more in line with his “radical cause”. This is a bit insulting actually for some reason I feel offended. FEED YOU? Why does the Iraqi government have to friggin’ feed you, you have volunteered to “help” in country which can’t feed its own population properly (well it could if it spent a bit less on itself and on people like you).

Meanwhile, the numb-nuts who transported many of the idiots to Baghdad has run into some trouble of his own, in that lovely vacation spot known as Beirut:

Two red double decker buses and a white London taxi that ferried anti-war activists to Baghdad to serve as "human shields" are stranded in Beirut with their owner short of the $5,500 it costs to ship them home.

The buses and taxi, dusty after a six-week overland journey that began at London's Tower Bridge, were plastered with signs saying "No to a war on Iraq" and "No to war, Yes to peace".

Apparently it hasn't occurred to this maroon that he could sell the buses and taxi in the Middle East, and buy replacements when he gets back to Britain. With “friends” like this, Saddam and the gang don't need enemies.

Glenn Reynolds has a roundup of reaction to the press conference; I listened to it on the radio (well, technically the XM Radio simulcast of Fox News Channel, so it was TV without the pictures), and I think it came off about as well as a Bush speech ever seems to, which is to say that the ideas were solid and the tone was right (as in the State of the Union), but W will never go down in history as a great public speaker.

Then again, I'm not sure that many politicians these days are. Clinton was a decent public speaker (at least by comparison to the Bushes, Ross Perot, and Bob Dole), and Reagan of course was a master; on the other side of the pond, Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher have it, but John Major decidedly didn't. And, for all the talk of congressional oratory, most of the representatives and senators I hear these days can't talk their ways out of paper bags, although I recently had a chance to hear John Spratt (D-S.C.) in person, and he did a fairly good job. Clearly being a good speaker is not a requirement for political success — although sometimes it can help.

I do wonder at some level who the speech was really aimed at. Several of the comments at Glenn's suggest that it was primarily for foreign consumption, while some of the commentary I heard on FNC suggested it was more pointedly aimed at the U.N. My gut feeling is that the place it will have the most effect is in Britain: the nuance won't get lost in translation, so there's a limited opportunity for spin, particularly if it doesn't get sound-bited to death.

I'm not sure that in the end it much matters, though; Blix will give a report that everyone can take something away from, some sort of resolution will be presented in the form of an ultimatum which will probably pass, and there will either be an internal putsch or a war. In six weeks, Chirac and Putin will be scrambling to make sure they are on good terms with a new Iraqi government, while Schröder will be preoccupied with domestic concerns, namely trying desperately to keep the Greens in government.

Greg Wythe links to this Washington Times piece by R. Emmett Tyrell making a very pertinent point:

The steady drift of Democratic activists away from war with Iraq, despite the president's every effort to accommodate their concerns, is another demonstration of a phenomenon of American politics that I only became aware of in the Clinton years. The phenomenon is this: A sizable proportion of the politically committed in America today are not propelled by principle or by fact but by the deep emotional satisfaction, indeed the peace of mind, that they derive from beating hell out of an opponent. To be sure, it is commonly heard that the politicians, at least those of the finest flower, long to put partisanship aside; but the truth is that without partisanship politics would lose much of its attraction for many politically active souls. Frankly, many of them are itching for a fight and grateful for every perceived enemy.

I think this trend is as present in the Blogosphere as anywhere else — there are clearly some very unreasonable voices that nonetheless gain a wide audience, at all extremes of the political spectrum.

Check out Michele's new TroopTrax project for a good way to support the U.S. servicemen and women who are putting their lives on the line for us and the Iraqi people. It'll do more good than hecking anti-war protestors, and it's good for the soul too. (The downside is that those asshats* at the RIAA will end up getting some of the money. Ah well, the universe ain't perfect.)

* Yes, that's not a nice word on my first official day as a candidate for public office, but if I can't call the RIAA asshats, what is the universe coming to?

Steven Den Beste has been one of the more strident pro-war voices in recent months. Today he (along with Josh Chafetz at OxBlog) thinks the administration has finally revealed the true motivation behind the Iraqi phase of the War on Terror:

The answer is that I do believe they were thinking along these lines [using Iraq to prod along regional regime change] all along, but that for them to go public with it back then would have led to serious grief by making clear to such stalwarts as Saudi Arabia just what we really intended. I'm happy, therefore, that we've reached the point where we no longer think we require the good wishes of the Sauds, and thus Bush has indeed publicly stated the real goal for this war, and the only way in the long run we can really win it: liberalization of the Arabs. And, as mentioned above, Iraq will be used to create an example in the [M]iddle East of how it's done, and most of that process will be financed by sales of Iraq's oil.

Is this a realistic hope? Perhaps. Among Middle Eastern states, there are basically four major candidate states for democratization:

• Egypt: Like Iraq, it has a large middle class. Unlike Iraq, Hosni Mubarak isn't a murderous dictator, even though the state security services do have their ruthless streak. Egypt also has a more radicalized Islamic population than Iraq.

• Iran: Unlike Egypt and Iraq, Iran is governed by a quasi-democratic theocracy rather than a dictator.

• Iraq

• Pakistan: Somewhere on the borders of democracy, dictatorship and anarchy. Unlike the three other states, has at least some experience with democratic institutions, and some of those institutions persist under the Musharraf regime.

In all the cases except Iraq, there is a realistic possibility of further democratization from within. The problem of succession in Egypt may lead Mubarak to liberalize the political system. The Iranian government is generally believed to be on the verge of collapse, with many clerics becoming tired of the secular job of running the country; the collapse of the Iraqi regime may be the triggering event for regime change in Iran too. As for Pakistan, it is unclear how sincere the Musharraf regime is about a return to democracy, but the persistence of independent institutions (such as the judiciary) is encouraging.

So, if the goal is to precipitate a democratic revolution in the Middle East, Iraq is probably the most suitable target. Of course, this leads to some legitimate questions:

1. Is precipitating regime change a legitimate end of U.S. foreign policy? Probably, if there is no reasonable prospect of internal reform or change. Unlike the communist dictatorships of central and eastern Europe, there is no external actor directly propping up the Iraqi regime; thus we cannot expect a homegrown democratic revolution. In the particular case of Iraq, one can make a legitimate argument that we owe the Iraqi people for the West's role supporting the Ba'athist regime (including our own role prior to the first Gulf War).

2. Can regime change in Iraq lead to change elsewhere? Many political leaders in the Middle East (and some scholars in the western world) believe that Muslims are incapable of operating a democratic regime. While Turkey and Bangladesh are useful counterexamples, neither of these states are Arab. A successful democracy in Iraq may lead citizens other states (including the Palestinians) to reconsider why their countries are not democratic.

3. Are there any better options? At this point, probably not. In 1991, perhaps we could have “marched on Baghdad,” but such an attack probably would have led to the collapse of the coalition and would have been about as popular worldwide as the current plans for war. In 1998, we may have had an opportunity to walk away from the sanctions regime; however, that would have consolidated Saddam's power and freed him even more to develop weapons of mass destruction. Today, we have few choices: back down (and destroy our own credibility and that of the United Nations), commit ourselves to stationing a large permanent force in the region (which would be required by any plan to continue inspections), or go to war now. Realistically, those are the only three options for the foreseeable future, barring an unexpected event like the whole Hussein family being killed in some accident, along with the rest of the senior Ba'ath Party leadership.

4. Is this approach likely to succeed? It largely depends on the long-term commitment of the United States and its allies. The international community is going to have to devote several years to reconstruction (in the Civil War sense) in Iraq before full sovereignty can be restored, although some degree of “home rule” will be essential from the start. A half-hearted commitment, or a withdrawal of U.S. support by the next administration if Bush loses in 2004, is likely to lead to disaster.

At this point, it is almost certain that there will be war (barring a successful Iraqi coup in the next week). We can only hope the war will be brief and that few will die. But if the war leads to a free and democratic Iraq it will have been a worthy and just war.

Bill Hobbs has some similar thoughts (which I only just noticed).

As I read more about the so-called “human shields” going to Iraq, I have to say I'm becoming even less impressed with them. As Daniel Drezner suggests today, the human shields aren't risking their lives; Tim Blair's conclusion over the weekend was similar, and Virginia Postrel pointed out yesterday that many of them don't seem to be playing with a full deck:

Clue for the clueless: Orphanages already have human shields. They're called "orphans."

It's like their thought process goes something like this:

• Dubya wants to bomb Iraq.

• Dubya hates brown people.

• Iraq is full of brown people.

• I'm white.

• If I go to Iraq there will be white people there.

• Dubya won't bomb Iraq if whitey's there.

To which there are a number of responses:

• The "Dubya hates brown people" premise is intensely stupid and demonstrably untrue, if you've noticed (a) his cabinet and (b) his family.

• Even assuming that the premises are accurate (which they're not), Dubya still gets to kill lots of brown people, even if your stupid white ass is in the way.

• You're a potential Democratic voter in 2004. The Iraqis aren't. Dubya actually has more incentive to attack Iraq after you go there, because not only does he get to shore up his support with the bloodthirsty hawk warmongers, he also gets to reduce the number of people who might vote for his opponent in 2004. Same goes for Tony Blair and John Howard.

• The only place Noam Chomsky's belief system is valid is within his thick skull. Try thinking for yourself for a change.

Perhaps Salam Pax was right when he called them War Tourists. Even that might be too charitable... at this rate, they'll be seeing less action than a hooker at a Promise Keepers' convention.

Steven Den Beste has taken a valium since yesterday. Porphyrogenitus has a lengthy analysis of what the proposed UNSC resolution actually says. Conrad is reminded of The Prince — not the one from Minneapolis, by the way. And, for the completists out there, you can read all 18 UNSC resolutions dealing with Iraq since it invaded Kuwait in 1990.

Me? I like HappyFunPundit's resolution. Strangely enough, it's like the U.S.-British-Spanish proposal, but translated by Subliminal Man.

I discovered L.T. Smash today in my browsings; it's the weblog of a U.S. Army reserve officer at a very insecure undisclosed location surrounded by lots and lots of sand. Betweem L.T. and Salam Pax in Baghdad, it looks like we've got Iraq covered. Now if we could just get a North Korean blogger to explain what the heck Kim Jong Il is up to…