ANOTHER FAILED ARGUMENT AGAINST THE ADMINISTRATION'S CASE FOR WAR
Here's how Slavoj Zizek dismisses the administration's case for war:

To illustrate the weird logic of dreams, Sigmund Freud used to evoke a story about a borrowed kettle: When a friend accuses you of returning a borrowed kettle broken, your reply is, first, that you never borrowed the kettle; second, that you returned it unbroken; and third, that the kettle was already broken when you borrowed it. Such an enumeration of inconsistent arguments, of course, confirms precisely what it endeavors to deny: that you, in fact, did borrow and break the kettle.

A similar string of inconsistencies characterized the Bush administration's public justifications for the U.S. attack on Iraq in early 2003. First, the administration claimed that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD), which posed a “real and present danger” to his neighbors, to Israel, and to all democratic Western states. So far, no such weapons have been found (after more than 1,000 U.S. specialists have spent months looking for them). Then, the administration argued that even if Saddam does not have any WMD, he was involved with al Qaeda in the September 11 attacks and therefore should be punished and prevented from launching future assaults. But even U.S. President George W. Bush had to concede in September 2003 that the United States “had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September the 11th.” Finally, there was the third level of justification, that even if there was no proof of a link with al Qaeda, Saddam's ruthless dictatorship was a threat to its neighbors and a catastrophe to its own people, and these facts were reason enough to topple it. True, but why topple Iraq and not other evil regimes, starting with Iran and North Korea, the two other members of Bush's infamous “axis of evil”?

So, if these reasons don't hold up to serious scrutiny and merely seem to suggest that the administration was misguided to do what it did, what, then, were the real underlying reasons for the attack? Effectively, there were three: first, a sincere ideological belief that the destiny of the United States is to bring democracy and prosperity to other nations; second, the urge to brutally assert and signal unconditional U.S. hegemony; and third, the need to control Iraqi oil reserves.

All right, my rebuttal: the Saddam-9/11 link is a complete canard, no one ever claimed it was there. But there was the danger that Saddam would cooperate with terrorists, particularly if he had, or acquired later, WMDs. We were wrong about WMDs (probably) but we had very good reasons to think they were there, and everyone else thought so too, and you can never be certain about these things. Our mistake was justified. Anyway, that doesn't affect the legal case for war: Saddam may have been stubborn with the inspectors for no reason, but he still broke his promises to the UN and had it coming to him. Moreover, the means that were (unbeknownst to us) effective in keeping him WMD-free were also disgustingly inhumane, killing hundreds of thousands of children (if you believe what the left was saying, and, in the absence of any counter-evidence, I do). And although Zizek asks "why topple Iraq and not other evil regimes, starting with Iran and North Korea, the two other members of Bush's infamous 'axis of evil'?" as a rhetorical question, it is a serious question with a perfectly good answer: North Korea has nukes and toppling them might have resulted in a nuclear holocaust, while in Iran the regime is a bit more resilient (so regime change would have been more difficult and bloodier) and there is a strong chance there of a "velvet revolution," which is a much better way for the regime to fall. Anyway, even the power of the US is limited. We can't take out all the nasty regimes in the world. One is better than none.

The persistent badness of the arguments against the war can get frustrating. I've found that most antiwar types don't have any very good arguments, so much that it feels almost unfair to argue against them since you're in such an advantageous position. Like playing chess with a child. One exception to this rule is Andrew Beath, who opposes the war because he thinks the ethnic/religious divisions in Iraq are so problematic that we will probably end up with a civil war there. All right, that's a pretty good argument-- unless it gets refuted by a successful and peaceful transition to Iraqi self-rule of some kind (a fortiori if Iraq becomes a democracy). At least Andrew stakes out a position for himself which has some basis in cost-benefit analysis and events. Zizek's flippant dismissal of the administration's case for war without engaging the reality of that case is, unfortunately, more typical.

Christopher Hitchens makes the case for war with brilliant lucidity in his book A Long Short War. I beg the antiwar crowd to read it, and if you still think there are tenable arguments against the war, please, let me know what they are.