Thanks to everyone who has responded to my call for people from Ann Coulter’s America who oppose an attack on Iraq. Be sure to read through the comments, there’s some good stuff in there. Meantime, I’d like to expand on this a bit.
First, I suppose I should state my own position. Basically, I’m still wrestling with it. I find the case for attacking Iraq that Josh Marshall has made here and here to be fairly compelling. If I heard more of this kind of talk coming from Team Bush, I’d be a lot more reluctant to lob spitballs at them over this issue.
On the other hand, I mentioned Jim Henley for a reason, and that reason is that he’s easily the most articulate and convincing spokesperson for the anti-attack side. Hawks and libertarians really ought to read Jim’s open letter to Perry de Havilland as well as these two posts in which he lays out his case against Gulf War II in more detail. Jim and I do not sit in the same pew at the church of politics, but I find myself admiring some of the hymns he sings.
Cutting to the chase: I don’t oppose attacking Iraq on principle, but if I were in Congress and I were asked for a straight up-or-down vote right this very minute, I’d vote No. Josh Marshall may have reluctantly come to see the hawks’ point of view on Iraq, but his more recent writing about whether Team Bush is right for the job shows that the question is more complicated than that. It’s easy to talk about kicking Saddam’s ass. But where do we go from there? In the absence of a well-defined plan for a post-Saddam Iraq, my vote will remain No.