Wriggling on the hook

http://www.reason.com/news/show/123195.html

What does an honest lefty anti-imperialist do when America wins a war?

'Anti-warriors are sometimes accused of wanting the U.S. to lose in Iraq, just so they can be right. Not so. But they do want America to stop waging unnecessary wars.'

And strangely enough, they always know which ones are necessary and which aren't.

' The question preceding any decision to go to war shouldn’t be as simple as: “Might some long-term good occur out of this?” '

Thats right. The enormously subversive idea might flourish that warfare and violence can actually have positive effects, sometimes world-changingly positive effects. And we wouldn't want that. What would we do with all those bumper-stickers and t-shirts?

'The real question before a war needs to be: “is this absolutely necessary given a fair consideration of the horrors and unpredictability of war and the purpose of the U.S. military?” '

Thankfully, lefty nitwits writing on the web know all the relevant information about whether something is absolutely necessary or not. They have access to all the nasty, grubby intelligence about what the evil people in the world are getting up to: how many ostensibly clean politicians have been paid off by the evil people, how big and sophisticated the networks of the evil people have become, what extraordinarily disgusting things are being done by the evil people, etc. Fortunately, they know more about that than the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain. Obviously.

So what about Rwanda? What about DR Congo? What about Bosnia? And East Timor? And Chechnya? And Burma? Sitting around on your arse, drinking your martini and glorying your immense power and wealth while people around the world are being shot and chopped to bits when you COULD DO SOMETHING is morally disgusting. George W Bush believes that, Tony Blair believes that. I believe that.