The weblogger Rebecca Blood has summarized my thoughts on the coming war more eloquently than I would have:
…Saddam is a monster. But the United States adopts a policy of preemptive attack against its real or perceived enemies at its peril.
Whatever moral authority we may have to allow or disallow other nations to possess weapons of mass destruction rests on our inviolate commitment to use our weapons only in self-defense. Whatever safety we have in this world derives not from our military might, but from whatever good will and trust we have earned from other nations and their people. If, by our actions, we sanction a policy of attacking whomever we deem to be dangerous, we open ourselves to the same. Our nation will be less safe if we attack any other sovereign nation, except in response to a direct attack.
Even the Bush Administration, in its unending attempts to link Saddam with al Qaeda, recognizes this most basic principle: that it is wrong to kill others, except in self-defense. The American government, the one I grew up believing in—the one I believe in still—does not attack other countries except in self-defense, or in the defense of its allies. I know it’s more complicated than that, but at the bottom, that’s the principle.
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