The Liberal Moral Imperative: They were out marching in the town square where I live this weekend - they being the anti-war left. At the risk of sounding platitudinous, war is an issue reasonable people can disagree on. But nobody I've seen marching around is being reasonable. The civil rights movement (i.e., the last time the liberal cause had the moral high ground) has become the paradigm of modern sloganeering. Several good folks out there have been over this a number of times, so I won't belabor it, but what about Serbia? The UN, of course, condemned the NATO campaign (since nobody was bombing Israel, they had to condemn it) to "save the Kosovo Albanians" from Slobbo (to crib from the NY Post). I don't remember any marchers then. Well, except me. I didn't actually march (I had a job), but I thought there was no reason to violate the sovereignty of Serbia. Milosevic had no serious weapons; his "ethnic cleansing" turned out to be minor when compared to Saddam's awful pogroms against the Kurdish minority; there was little chance of the conflict moving outside a limited territory -- yet Milosevic was a war criminal who was unfit to rule his country. With Saddam, that all turns around. Yes, he does have a history of weapons acquisition; yes, he did lead brutal campaigns against the Kurds; and yes, he is horsing around in The Big Powder Keg area of the world. But ... what?

Reasonable people can disagree, but hypocrites don't count.