When the Left is Right

Maureen Dowd, who is slightly to the left of Mao Tse-Tung, is right. And the right should admit it. The selective hearing, the intelligence manipulation, and the mendacious presentation of data by the Bush administration during the run-up to the Iraq War will never be justified by its outcome.

What Bush could have and should have done in 2002 and 2003 is make a case for the removal of Saddam Hussein based on his repressiveness and the general wet blanket of ineffective government that is smothering the Arab world. He should have brought the Arab Human Development Report to the podium with him and thumped it like a Bible. He should have quoted some dead white males about "making the world safe for democracy". He should have said up front that we had unfinished business there, and that this was needed to protect America's credibility.

If Bush had said those things, I would still not have supported the war. After all, my convictions were based on an understanding of Arab feeling toward the U.S., not on any prescient knowledge about the nonexistence of WMD's. However, it would have been a polite, above-board policy disagreement. Instead, we have a president who took our country to war based on a lie. Bush reminds me more and more of John F. Kennedy. Yikes.