America's economic and military supremacy. Is this the Slate digest or something? Hitch actually writes: [clip] "Actually, abdication without invasion could be justified on more exalted grounds than that. If Saddam Hussein could be induced to surrender his personal dictatorship and leave his martyred country for a presumably "secure" but this time "disclosed" location, it would demonstrate that the mere threat of force, if convincing enough, could achieve astonishing results. Quite evidently, the Turkish and Saudi Arabian and Egyptian regimes would not be adopting this latest rather noisy form of "quiet" diplomacy if they were not persuaded that the alternative was military intervention. Q.E.D., in a way, for the hawks, with a generously deferential nod to the doves and the allies and the U.N.
However, this happy-seeming outcome would leave two factions with gritted teeth, for different reasons. In the minds of the tougher thinkers at the Defense Department in particular, the whole point of removing Saddam Hussein is to inaugurate a wave of change in neighboring states as well. Thus a victory over Saddamism that skips this critical demonstration is a somewhat hollow one, especially if the "skip" is undertaken at the request of the very regimes—most notably the Saudi—that were the undeclared but definite targets of the demonstration in the first place. [clip] ...The concept of Saddam removing to some sort of exile (which in my memory was first "floated" by the foreign minister of Qatar last September) is not despicable on its face. It would avert the possibility of even the smartest bombs going astray and hitting orphanages, and it would mean that Iraqi soldiers would not be ordered pointlessly to their deaths by a deranged Caligula. It would also remove the chance of some final apocalyptic lunge on Caligula's part.
Moreover, the next Iraqi regime would certainly need a lot of help with security, law and order, civil reconstruction, and food and medical aid. So, the forces of the coalition would most probably be "invited" in to provide some of this support and to secure the oilfields from sabotage or worse, as well as to identify and destroy some conspicuous weapons "sites." It would still count as a great deliverance for the Iraqi people. President Bush would be in an especially strong political position, at home and abroad, for achieving a version of "peace through strength" and for avoiding the charge of "cowboy" tactics. [clip]
I personally never ask myself what would Jesus do, and if I did I hope I would have the self-possession to say that I had no idea. In any case he is a quasi-mythical figure. Saddam Hussein and his gang are corporeal and material in the extreme, and they believe that it takes a regime to protect them from what they have done. If the regime is changed, as it obviously will be soon, one way or another, then life should change abruptly for them, too. The point of the change is to instate some standard, however tenuous and hypocritical, of international law. One can not easily achieve that by exempting its chief violators to begin with. The Kissinger principle—the greater the crime the greater the immunity—would be a shabby reward to those who have borne the heat and burden of the day.