alienation news

Let's ease up on the machismo

The president did an unfortunate disservice to the cause of reasonable debate when he said of the worldwide demonstration against the impending war: "Some in the world don't view Saddam Hussein as a risk to peace. I respectfully disagree."
Painting the anti-war movement as pro-Saddam gets us nowhere. What the Europeans are trying to say is not that they think Saddam is harmless. We've got near-universal agreement -- including, as near as one can tell, from most Iraqis -- that the man is a miserable SOB. The difference is over how to handle him, and the United States has put itself in the unfortunate position of looking as though we'd rather go to war, unprovoked, than work at a way to defang him peacefully.