The middle part of the country—the great red zone that voted for Bush—is clearly ready for war. The decadent left in its enclaves on the coasts is not dead—and may well mount a fifth column.

In case we didn’t get the message, he said it again:

we might as well be aware of the enemy within the West itself – a paralyzing, pseudo-clever, morally nihilist fifth column that will surely ramp up its hatred in the days and months ahead

Consequently there are two possibilies:
1. Bush argued that Iraq indeed was an imminent threat,
or
2. Bush argued that Iraq wasn’t an imminent threat and that nevertheless the US should attack Iraq thus committing an international crime.

I don’t remember him ever suggesting that he intended to break the international law.

However, I do remember him and his minions suggesting on multiple occasions that Iraq is a grave threat (and, IIRC, the word ‘imminent’ was too mentioned or confirmed by his spokesman).

I think the conclusion is quite obvious.

takes a different take on this general theme, as to why some people may deserve some things.

The “living Constitution” has metastasized into “living” State of the Union speeches, too, it appears. A President can state that we should attack a nation even though the threat isn’t “imminent”, and that gets interpreted as declaring the threat to BE imminent, to the point where he’s later declared a liar when it turns out it wasn’t.

Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) repeated his call for a withdrawal of troops while Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld warned that words “have effects” on both U.S. troops and the enemy.

…

[Rumsfeld said] “Put yourself in the shoes of the enemy. The enemy hears a big debate in the United States, and they have to wonder maybe all we have to do is wait and we’ll win. We can’t win militarily. They know that. The battle is here in the United States.”

‘Hence, the fact that almost the entire world thought Jews to be morally depraved monsters for much of their history was—in my view, quite rightly—discounted.’

Actually, this is false and very obviously false. Most of the world (the Chinese, Japanese etc., all the various people of the Indian sub-continent, most people in South America (not least the indigenous inhabitants), almost all the population of Africa, not to mention almost all ‘indigenous’ peoples over the world) have, throughout the vast majority of their existence on earth, never even HEARD of the Jews, let alone known enough to ‘hate’ them. ((Let’s not forget, that the European invasion of the Americas didn’t even begin until 1492, by which time European Christians had been killing Jews for over a millemium. Africans were unable to taste the wonderful benefits of Christian civilisation until the Europeans started to slaughter them in the 18th and 19th centuries). The fact is, rather than being some weird irrational virus of ‘anti-semitism’ which swept the world for no reason, extreme hatred of Jews was located almost entirely to Western Europe, and was confined almost exclusively to Christians. Again, this was not for some irrational reason but had its roots in the anti-semitism of the New Testament, and was kept alive by the various ideological battles that monotheistic religions tend to fight, and for political reasons (i.e. to have a scapegoat). It’s true that Islam did not have a terribly progressive view of Judaism (as the Koran shows) but it was (until very recently) infinitely more ‘Jew friendly’ than Christianity.

So the analogy breaks down because it is not in fact true that the ‘whole world’ hated the Jews. Dan labours under the misapprehension, widely held amongst his ideological brethren, that the ‘whole world’ consists entirely of white Christian Europeans, Americans and Australians.

Incidentally: ‘To a Jew, for example, the billions of people who use Christian teachings or Koranic wisdom as their moral guide are simply not relevant when approaching moral questions. ’ is, again, self-evidently false as many (perhaps most, for a religious person) moral issues concern how to deal with people from a different moral/religious world, and so, in practice, Christian and Koranic teaching is highly relevant when approaching (some) moral teachings. This was particularly true of the Jews who, for most of their existence, did not have a homeland and so were dealing with non-Jews every minute of every day.

I did check before writing that the same accusations had also been made in the US debate.

I disagree completely. How a nation deals with other nations is as much a moral question as how it conducts its internal affairs. Why would the consensus view of another nation whose moral views have already discounted for one reason or another, suddenly become relevant when a third nation is involved?

It seems to me that there is a fair degree of consensus (or there would be if it actually came up) between non-believers on moral methodology.

Perhaps the problem is in fact the religiousness of America, which causes the lack of humility. I’ve a distaste for both, so its all moot.

However, I don’t think this is the place for a debate on religion and ethics of this scale, so I think we’re going to have to agree to disagree here.

The foreign policy/interreligious affairs are, of course, a totally different matter.

The same applies even more strongly to moral judgments, for which there is no consensus even on the correct method to use. To a Jew, for example, the billions of people who use Christian teachings or Koranic wisdom as their moral guide are simply not relevant when approaching moral questions. Hence, the fact that almost the entire world thought Jews to be morally depraved monsters for much of their history was—in my view, quite rightly—discounted.

Likewise, Americans are entitled to discount the views of large numbers of other nations when considering the morality of their own foreign policy. Which particular nations to discount will, of course, be a matter of debate, but if America’s moral approach is sufficiently unique—and perhaps it is—then discounting all of them is not necessarily foolish at all.

Uncle Kvetch: North Korea is a poor example—its policies are determined by its dictator, not by its people. As I explained, nations and individuals are not analogous with respect to this issue.

Brendan: You’d already made a fool of yourself by inventing an elaborate misinterpretation of my comments out of whole cloth, and proceeding to berate me for it without pausing to consider that you had no clue what I (let alone you) might have been talking about. I’d have thought you might have been a little more circumspect about misinterpreting my comments a second time….

Rollo: Would you care to explain just how or why a massive American military campaign would be “in some part undertaken to bolster the security of Israel”? I find that claim to be at least somewhat counterintuitive.