1) Pa Annoyed, a word of methodology. If there is basically the same amount of soldiers for the war as against it, are you really bolstering your point about the anti-war people being fronts for some international movement? You only reinforce that this war does not have enough support by either the troops or the citizenry to be sustained.
2) Nukes in Iraq: Pa, can you cite something or is this classified? George Bush has said we did not find WMD.
3) Pa, if Iraq was a threat to America aside from the false claim about mushroom clouds, why has this not been talked about all these years? Saddam was not a threat to us, the UK, or the EU, or anyone in NATO. What other threats could you be alluding to?
4) The manliness of combat. Did you see who I was quoting? Have you ever read M. du Toit? Go ahead and repeat your point that this discussion has no place in this elevated forum.
5) VR tells us that everybody wants to be an exception to the anti-war movement. Is that because it gets caricatured on this and many other outlets? It is intellectually dishonest to be pro-war just because you dislike people who hold anti-war views.

Iran’s rulers don’t want war, since they seem to be able to achieve anything they want without it. There used to be times, though, when attacking another country’s ship and taking 15 of their soldiers as prisoners would be the clearest indication to the contrary. Times change.

Indeed. Remember the vigorous response to an embassy being raided and its entire staff being kidnapped?

Oh, wait…[1]

Would there be any benefit to revoking the diplomatic immunity of an entire Iranian embassy somewhere, and arresting the occupants? We couldn’t do it here, unless we grabbed up Iran’s UN mission. (If they behave like the other UN reps, there will no doubt be plenty of perfectly legitimate reasons, stuff that any New Yorker without immunity would have been jailed for.)

[1] At least Carter did SOMETHING. Blair’s as worthless as the breasts on a boar hog and will probably sit on his hands until Cameron takes over the doing-nothing-of-value.

The key point is the difference between being opposed to a paticular war (or even war in general) and being part of the “movement”.

In the 1960′s some libertarians said to themselves (and to others) “I am against American involvement in the war in Vietnam, therefore I should cooperate with other people who are opposed to it”.

It was at the “therefore” point that they made total fools of themselves. By “cooperating” (going on demonstrations and so on) they gave aid and comfort to the movement – i.e. the people who were not “anti war” but were just in favour of the other side winning (they were and are motivated by a fanatical hatred of the “capitalist West” in general and the United States in particular). An example, of a member of the movement back in the 1960′s who is now a leader is the present (since 1992) publisher of the New York Times.

Cooperating with such a person (on any matter at all) is unwise (to say the least).

Of course the present alliance of the left with radical Islam (both Sunni and Shia) is odd, but the left seems to have decided that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” and acts accordingly.

Some leftists (such as Christopher Hitchins in the United States, and Nick Cohen in the United Kingdom) reject this reasoning – but they now find themselves de facto out of the movement.

As for the hostages:

The G.P.S. reading (confirmed by the Iranians themselves – before they changed their story) shows them to have been in the waters of Iraq.

By the way – the posting here is a good one.

As the thread seems to have moved away from the original posting (as threads often do) I thought it correct to add that.

It is suspect in both population and methodology.

Every anti-war person I have ever challenged immediately claims to be an exception to the “anti-war movement”, and claims further that their support for that movement doesn’t mean anything. It is not a position that an intellectually honest person would take.

I haven’t gone into the poll’s methodology in any detail, but a quick glance shows that on the should they have gone to war question, the figures were 41.3% yes, 37.6% no, 9.5% no opinion, and 11.5% declined to answer. If 41% is bad, then surely 37% is worse? What if the headline had been “only 37% of the military think Iraq should not have been liberated”? Do you think it gives the same impression?

But I think the real question is why so many think that – is it for the reasons you suggest, or could it be because they think we shouldn’t have gone in if it was going to be half-assed and hog-tied by political timidity, media-opposition, and ROEs that might as well have been written by the terrorists?

On your other points:
A) Chemical weapons have been found; about 500 so far. They also flew out 1.7 tons of enriched uranium, the UN complained about all the nuke-making machine tools they’d left Saddam with that had gone missing and blamed the US for losing them, and there was a bunch of other stuff reported like barrels full of cyclosarin that kept setting their CW detectors off (and put several people in hospital) but which for some reason they decided was pesticide. And rumours of more stuff having been flown out to Syria.

But all of that is irrelevant, since the UN resolutions did not speak of WMD, but of WMD capability. What is the point of disposing of a stockpile if it can be regenerated in a couple of months the moment the UN’s back is turned and the sanctions are off? The point was to dismantle the military capability to manufacture and deliver it. For that reason, the UN resolutions were far wider, and the evidence that Saddam had been violating all of that was found in spades.

But because that doesn’t fit the agenda, the media concentrate solely on the WMD stockpiles, as if their absence was some sort of relevant and telling point.

And who is to say that the media hype about WMD might not have been true at the time, but that the stockpile had been moved or hidden between then and the war starting? Or since the search for them was not very thorough – for all we know, they may even still be there.

B) There are other possibilities for threats to national security apart from military invasion.

C) Clausewitz made that particular statement to set out a particular position before arguing against it. His thesis was that war was a crude brawl fought on a larger scale, the antithesis was that it was politics continued by other means, and the synthesis was that it was an unstable mixture of aggressive national passion, policy and politics, and the chaotic chances won and lost on the battlefield. He explains when and why politics is sometimes an important and necessary part of war, and how anyone who tries to claim it should be otherwise is speaking in defiance of centuries of military history.
Incidentally, he says that a war is necessarily more political when it is unpopular at home. People who think the politicians ought to stay out of the fight should know who to blame.

And you misjudge us on this site if you think we’re in favour out of manliness or as a rite of passage. (And yes, we’ve heard of Ypres – although we wonder if the anti-war crowd have, given that this war has been a fantastically successful victory compared to the one we won there. Do you have any idea how the death rates compare?) I personally am in favour out of sympathy for a nation that has suffered tyranny, in support of the spread of liberty, out of fear of the long term consequences of continuing to appease or ignore the major security issue the Middle East and Islamism generally now poses, and over concern that international law has become a paper tiger, now of use only to the evil for tying the hands of the good. Under the UN charter it was legally obligatory to take military action against Saddam; arguably it should have been years ago. The hard lessons learned in WWII and before are in serious danger of being lost, if they have not been lost already.

I am glad we can agree on there being a difference between the anti-war movement and the average American against the war. Perhaps we shall have to agree to disagree that Chuck Hagel, the average American, and what appears to be the average soldier, are stooges of the currently non-existent International Communist Movement.

Second, why does the poll conducted by the Military Times, as I cited, lack validity? Is it the methodology? Looking at their website, it appears they are willing to call a spade a shovel. For instance, they were reporting quite different percentages of service member support before 2006′s end. That is why they thought their latest study was news–the declining support for the war is the trend. I am willing to look at the website you mention, but I am not sure why the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps Times are now suspect in a discussion of what service men think. Please tell me why.

Third, which I guess bears repeating: “Affiliation” is in the eye of the beholder. For instance, Adolf Hitler purportedly designed a Volkswagen. VW has now capitalized on the homosexual demographic in America by showing men riding around San Francisco looking for furniture. Perhaps we can say that VW is extremely glad homosexuals buy its cars. Are we stating that Eva Braun was actually a dude? Are the Beetles in the parking lots of softball fields all over America driven by tools of National Socialism? Those false connections and affiliations are of the same caliber as the argument that everybody against the war is affiliated with or led by the fringe left.

Lastly, here are some reasons to be against this war that do not channel the Comintern:
A) The stated causus belli does not hold up under scrutiny. To send Americans off to die for a lie is a grave crime. If it is not a lie, where are those WMD?
B) We should not be dying in a country that means almost zilch to our world here in North America or the British Isles. How many divisions did Saddam land on US beaches? How many Scuds blitzed London? How many NATO member states were under the Baathist jackboot? Jack shit is a nice round figure.
C) This war is, in many, many ways really about US domestic politics. I guess we are all surprised that Clausewitz’s centuries old dictum still obtains. But that is not quite accurate. There is still a large percentage of people on this very website who deny that war is simply a continuation of political intercourse, with the addition of other means. To them, modern combat is a sacred rite, a tribute to manliness. Perhaps they have not heard of the Somme, or Ypres, where many westerners learned that getting machinegunned is not quite a sporting way to pass early adulthood. Or, perhaps, they are using the war to flog their personal hobby horses–everybody who disagrees with them is a traitor “There’s no wondering involved. They ARE on the other side.”

If you and your Aunt Tilly oppose this war, some other war, or all wars in general, that fact alone doesn’t put you in that group.

If, however, you can always find the time to march against the US, but never against any other violent state, then it may just be the case that your motives are not so noble and transcendental as you would like to believe, but rather more politically partisan.

If it makes you uncomfortable to find yourself in the same room as the Socialist Workers and International Answer crowd, leave the room. I don’t care what you personally support or oppose, but I do object to the company you and so many of your friends keep.

Look, there were anti-war people called Copperheads during the Civil War whose motives were all pure as the driven snow, or so they said, but the fact is that if they had prevailed, the Union would have split, and a slave based CSA staggered into the latter part of the 19th century.

Opposing war, this war or any war, is not some automatic grant of moral validity. And pacifism is not a guarantee that lives will be saved, just ask Ghandi about the partition of India and the millions who died.

Personally, I think our involvement in WW1 was stupid, and the isolationist sentiment that it engendered severely hampered us in the period leading up to our entry into WW2.

The international left opposed everything we did post-WW2, and gave a pass to our enemies. They were abysmally wrong. It is that intellectual and (a)moral tradition that I am referring to, and to which the original post was also objecting.

If that makes you uncomfortable, then maybe the company you are keeping, and the protests you do not make, are more the problem than any comment of mine.

[editor's note: not to worry as I am sure we'll eventually get over the trauma caused by your continued absence]

There’s no wondering involved. They ARE on the other side.

Are you really saying that one is either
1) A war supporter, specifically of the current war
or
2) A leftest enemy of America, or at least a supporter of said leftest enemy of America?

I find this dichotomy disturbing. Especially from my favorite Samizdata commenter… (ever since Toolkien seems to have fled the scene.)

I respect your opinions and views and really want some clarification on this one. I get your point, but there has to be another position where one can be against *this* particular war?

Does anti-war in this context mean the current war in Iraq? Or just war in general?

Duncan

Don’t be idiotic, surely you can understand this concept. Please tell me you can??

Attempting to muddle the issue and claim anti war proponents are pro Iran is blatantly dishonest and is often the point of attack used by the ra ra USA USA crowd. Sick.