What Bush Isn't Saying About Iraq
Michael Kinsley raises an interesting point about two reasons for war which have been entirely left out of the Iraq debate: Israel and Oil. Speaking of which, those are the two main reasons to be worried about Iraq, especially a nuclear armed Iraq, in additition to the humanitarian aspect (which is very important to a liberal interventionist like myself). I figure that if Iraq gets the bomb, it'll be even more aggressive in its attempts to destabalize (and eventually) Israel with strong support for the Intifada madness, a much more practical approach than direct confrontation. Saddam would probably move to gain control over a significant portion of the world's oil supply, not through invasion, but via proxy, vichy-style slave states. I wouldn't doubt for a second that the Saudi or Kuwaiti royal families would become the puppets of a nuclear armed Iraq if they still got to drive around in cadillacs. These possibilities are both very bad things and ought to be avoided and it is unfortunate that they are absent from the current discussion about Iraq.