Matthew Yglesias didn’t much like yesterday’s G-File. That’s to be expected. How dismaying would it be for everybody if he did?
I will just make two quick points. First, he suggests that the Iraq war was “indiscriminate” and that that’s okay with me. Well, that’s not right on both counts. Rarely has there been a country which met more qualifications for war. Just a few: it violated the ceasefire agreement from the last war, it killed hundreds of thousands of its own people, it violated countless UN resolutions, etc. Saddam virtually hung a “kick our butt” sign around his neck. By what standard was the Iraq war less discriminating than the Kosovo war (which had no UN approval at all)? Now, if Iraq didn’t qualify so completely for war, I would have favored war with somebody, but that doesn’t mean I would have been in favor of war with anybody. It’s not like I would have said, “Let’s get the Yemenis!” In other words, I would discriminate.
Second, I am curious why Yglesias leaves out the fact that Tom Friedman agrees with me on my basic point, including that Afghanistan wasn’t enough.