Yesterday Steven den Beste was quibbling about the meaning of “unconditional”. Today, he’s proposing an all-out war against the entire Arab culture, noting “I am forthrightly proposing what some might call cultural genocide”.

Leaving aside the scary implications of all this (as his critic Hesiod
notes, try reading the post with “Jew” substituted for “Arab” at every occurrence, and some corresponding changes of cultural stereotype), this kind of wild mood swing is a caricature of the Bush administration’s stance on Iraq.

The result is that we know Bush wants war, but is it to:
(i) stop terrorism,
(ii) remove an evil dictator,
(iii) get rid of WMDs,
(iv) enforce UN resolutions,
(v) forcibly convert the Arabs
(vi) democratise the Middle East
(vii) secure a free flow of oil
(viii) stimulate the US economy
or
(ix)settle an old family feud?

All but (ix) have been seriously put forward by advocates of war within or close to the Bush Administration, and plenty of people outside the Administration suspect (ix) is the truth. If all these objectives could be pursued at once, there would be no problem, but there’s clearly a lot of conflict between them.