Until now, most of the big questions in the debate about Iraq have remained unanswered. The decision to go to war has answered a few, and I’ve been proved wrong on at least one. I thought Blair would refuse to go without at least majority support from the UNSC, and was wrong. The next big question relates to the main casus belli for the war, that Saddam’s “weapons of mass destruction” represent a threat justifying war. Unless Saddam accepts Bush’s demand that he go into exile, he will, if the argument for war is valid, certainly attempt to use his weapons, either against the invading armies or against Israel. The question of whether he is “deterrable” is now moot, since by staying on he is accepting almost certain death.

It follows that, if no WMDs are used during the war, but such weapons are “discovered” afterwards, the discovery must be presumed fraudulent. Frequent commentator, Derrida Derider, has been predicting such a discovery for some time.

In terms of hoping for the best, namely a short war with as few casualties as possible, I obviously hope no WMDs will be used.

Update A pro-war Op-Ed piece is of interest. Writing in the NYT, the unfortunately-named Anne-Marie Slaughter says

Soldiers would go into Iraq. They would find irrefutable evidence that Saddam Hussein’s regime possesses weapons of mass destruction. Even without such evidence, the United States and its allies can justify their intervention if the Iraqi people welcome their coming and if they turn immediately back to the United Nations to help rebuild the country (emphasis added).

As I’ve already pointed out, the second part of this is complete nonsense. Saddam has shown his ability to turn out cheering crowds, and so will the practitioners of “shock and awe”. In the absence of free and fair elections (clearly not contemplated for the foreseeable future) the views of the Iraqi people will be a matter of conjecture. And despite what was said (obviously to keep Blair on-side) in the Azores, the idea of “turning immediately back to the UN” is equally nonsensical. Does anybody suppose that the victorious Americans are going to let someone of Kofi Annan’s choosing administer Iraq? If not, why should anyone outside the “coalition of the willing” do Bush’s dirty work for him?

Further update 19/3 On the WMDs, the analysis in today’s Fin points out that, in military terms’, the “best” time for Saddam to use them is before the US attack commences, which means almost immediately. This is obvious enough – as Ken Parish points out, a massive US attack in the opening days will greatly reduce Saddam’s capacity for counterattack. And I’ll restate the basic point. If, in the face of an invasion aimed at killing him or seizing him for a war crimes trial, Saddam still refrains from using WMDs, only two conclusions are possible:
(a) there were no weapons; or
(b) they were not, even in the most drastic circumstances, a threat to the US

On the capacity to turn out cheering crowds, I’ve pointed out in the comments thread that Bush’s PR teams are capable of spinning an upsurge of grassroots support out of nothing in domestic US politics – it’s called Astroturf. With vastly greater resources at their disposal, they won’t need threats of terror to do the same thing in Baghdad. If the supporters of war believe their own case, why aren’t they advocating an Iraqi provisional government and free and fair elections?

Last week, I noted the mysterious absence of Jason Soon from Catallaxy. Now he has returned from a two-week unannounced hiatus, with a post that only deepens the mystery, hinting as it does at blog-related romance. Maybe it was that photo!

Anyway, welcome back, Jason!

Since war now appears inevitable, we can only hope that it’s short and relatively bloodless, and hence must hope that the US military planners have got it right. The only way this can be true, it seems to me, is if the much-leaked “shock and awe” strategy, involving the largest bombardment in history, directed in Baghdad in the opening days of war, turns out to be one of those pieces of misinformation of which military planners are so fond. Such a strategy must surely cause massive casualties, both among civilians and among the Iraqi conscripts who are just as much victims of Saddam as anybody else.

Of course, if this strategy is adopted, we’ll probably never know. Saddam’s government will claim massive civilian casualties, the US will deny it, and when they reach Baghdad they’ll conduct an inquiry which will report that Saddam was lying. Unless there’s a repeat of the incident last time, when hundreds of people were killed in an air-raid shelter, it will be impossible to determine who, if anyone, was telling the truth.

But regardless of the number of casualties, the ‘shock and awe’ approach seems guaranteed to lead to disaster in the long run. The idea that, entering Baghdad after a bombardment of this kind, the US (or perhaps Anglo Alliance would be a better term) troops will be greeted as liberators seems nonsensical to me. I’m not saying they can’t arrange crowds with flowers – Saddam has no trouble doing this and neither will an occupying army – but the chance of any real popular support will be lost on the first day.

As The Age reports, Sharon has wasted no time in dumping the ‘roadmap’ for peace in Israel-Palestine, and explicitly rejecting the idea of an independent Palestinian state. Bush has yet to respond, but from his point of view there’s no need. This was a plan with a 72-hour shelf life – the time it took to get Tony Blair over the line for war with Iraq. Having served its purpose, it’s unlikely to be heard of again.

I recently received an email from John Ray who ( with Peter Cuthbertson)

thought that a blog devoted solely to documenting the many idiocies of political correctness (which generally means Leftist correctness) might be an entertaining site for people to bookmark. So he and I have started up pcwatch. Have a look and see what you think.

I observed in reply

Generally, maybe, but not always. According to CNN, via Ezra Klein, via Calpundit

The cafeteria menus in the three House office buildings will change the name of “french fries” to “freedom fries,” a culinary rebuke of France, stemming from anger over the country’s refusal to support the U.S. position on Iraq. Ditto for “french toast,” which will be known as “freedom toast.”

However, John and Peter chose not to run with the story. It seems that only politically correct examples of political correctness will be reported on this blog. Still, political correctness, regardless of which political pieties are being observed, is often amusing and usually harmless. So John and Peter’s blog should provide some innocent, if one-sided, merriment.

In fact, the 1990s right-wing panic about political correctness was both sillier and more dangerous than absurdities such as the use of “gravitationally challenged” for “fat”. As I said, here, the belief that appropriate use of language will automatically bring about desirable social change diverts attention away from action to bring about such change and focuses it on verbal gymnastics. As I observed, during the PC panic

a handful of leftists playing verbal games were elevated into a tyrannical dictatorship, posing a fundamental threat to freedom of speech.

Glenn Reynolds has complained about political correctness more times than I can count, but when he sees it from his own side, in the Freedom Fries Flap, he gives a qualified defence, seeing it as a harmless way of sending a message even if ‘it does seem kind of silly at first glance’. Much the same could be said about political correctness in general.