Amazing Powers

In the comments at Classical Values in my piece War Is Not A Physics Problem commenter Giuseppe Blow questions our need for the Iraq adventure. He believes the Iraq War (really a battle in a war) was completely unnecessary. My answer:

If you think Iraq is optional you do not understand the problem.

The problem is the coming economic collapse of the Middle East. Look at what A. Jacksonian (in the comments) has to say.

Political democracy and capitalism are the answer to that question. There is no way such a system would happen on its own. A seed needed to be planted. What better place to plant it than Iraq, a country we have been at war with since 1991 and the broken cease fire agreement?

Oil socialism is a failed experiment.

Bush has done well to not just see the problem quite ahead of the curve, but also to act on it. Islam is dying. As is the oil socialism of the Middle East. What we are seeing are just the early twitches. Iraq is of course centrally located in the middle of the mess. A good place to be if we are going to contain and possibly reverse it.

I think, Giuseppe, that it is you who do not see the wickedness of the problem. The looming mass starvation in the Arab world and the destabilization that will cause, due to the shift of oil production from oil well countries to oil shale countries.

Thank the Maker for Bush, who may yet (despite his detractors) be the rescuer of the people of the Middle East. I know that such a rescue is a fairly liberal position. So be it.

I never understood why liberalism is so weak in some liberals that Bush could turn those liberals into reactionaries. The man does have amazing powers.

Cross Posted at Classical Values