VIVA LA REVOLUCION
Aznar is fallen, Bush is trailing, Blair is mistrusted and half-discredited, and the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandals are alienating Europe, report the Christian Science Monitor.

Not that the current US administration was very popular in the first place among European citizens, resentful of what they see as Washington's arrogance in world affairs. A poll published in March by the Pew Foundation found that President Bush's approval ratings were 39 percent in Britain (the highest of the seven countries surveyed), 15 percent in France, and 14 percent in Germany.

The Abu Ghraib photographs also emerged following several difficult weeks for the US-led occupation forces in Iraq, when a lot seemed to be going wrong for them, including a Shiite uprising and sustained resistance in Fallujah. Those events appeared to comfort most Europeans in their conviction that the war was wrong in the first place.

What the heck?! Make up your mind! Do human rights matter, or not? Since the coalition's invasion was the only way Saddam could be overthrown at the time, to say the war was wrong is to say that it would be better if Saddam Hussein were still in power. Write that one hundred times on the blackboard, you "anti-war" (or, to put it more accurately, "pro-Saddam's-continuing-war-against-the-Iraqi-people") crowd. IT WOULD BE BETTER IF SADDAM HUSSEIN WERE STILL IN POWER TODAY. IT WOULD BE BETTER IF SADDAM HUSSEIN WERE STILL IN POWER TODAY. IT WOULD BE BETTER IF SADDAM HUSSEIN WERE STILL IN POWER TODAY. IT WOULD BE BETTER IF SADDAM HUSSEIN WERE STILL IN POWER TODAY. IT WOULD BE BETTER IF SADDAM HUSSEIN WERE STILL IN POWER TODAY. IT WOULD BE BETTER IF SADDAM HUSSEIN WERE STILL IN POWER TODAY. How does that make you feel? Think of the mass graves. Think of the 60,000 children a year murdered by UN sanctions, with UN personnel and Saddam merrily profiteering above them-- "over their dead bodies," so to speak. How does that make you feel? IT WOULD BE BETTER IF SADDAM HUSSEIN WERE STILL IN POWER. IT WOULD BE BETTER IF SADDAM HUSSEIN WOULD STILL BE IN POWER. Keeping writing, little Saddam-lovers who protested against freedom in the streets of London, who scoff and scoff at Bush as a "cowboy," who cling to the heartless ancien regime of "international law," keep writing until you can almost imagine that you've achieved your wish, that Saddam's statue is still standing tall and smiling in every Iraqi square, proud father, owner, possessor, jailor of the Iraqi people, and the torture rooms-- real torture, involving extreme physical pain and not merely the bluff of growling dogs, rape and not just minor pervertedness, and on a massive scale, and forever, and unpublished, and unpunished-- were still operational, and people could not speak their minds even to close friends for fear of informants, and people were cut off from the world, in grinding and deepening poverty... IT WOULD BE BETTER IF SADDAM HUSSEIN WERE STILL IN POWER... Can you do it? Can you keep writing? Does your conscience rebel? Or does it succumb to the ritual of euthanasia?...

And now you're horrified by Abu Ghraib photos and think the war was a mistake? To say this is illogical is not nearly strong enough. This is a declaration of war on logic. This is seizing logic's neck in your bare hands and strangling it with all your might, driving it to its knees, hurling it on the ground, kicking, stabbing, ripping it apart, and burying it-- in a Baathist mass grave, let's say. The US has violated human rights in Iraq, maybe, depending on where you draw the lines. Saddam violated them a thousand times worse, and everybody knows it. And he would still be doing it now were it not for the US occupation. These are stone cold facts. They cannot be doubted.

You may think you are on the brink of triumph. The leaders who adventured into Iraq are being defeated. First Aznar, Poland's Miller, now perhaps Berlusconi, and perhaps Bush's head on a platter come November...

Well, I have news for you: this is not the end. For we, the neocon revolutionistas, hundreds of thousands strong, live on, and we will not forget, we will not back down. We have a dream. We believe, in the president's words, that "the desire to live in freedom" burns in each human soul, even those with a different color of skin. We believe that to whom much is given, much is required, that the wealth and strength of our nation creates an obligation for us to give it back to the oppressed of this earth in the form of "the spread of freedom throughout the world." We do not accept the constraints of an "international law" that legitimizes dictators, or a corrupt UN that condones and profiteers by the misery of their victims.

Know, you friends of the tyrant, that your crimes are great, and you remain unforgiven. We may accept a change of subject in the conversation (politeness too has its demands) but we stand ready, when the opportunity arises, to argue our case, and to argue our case is to win, for justice is on our side as clearly as the day differs from the night. We have no wish to "repair the trans-Atlantic alliance," because Europeans' values are repugnant to us, living in their immigration-restricted fortress, lavishing subsidies on their farmers, and piously mouthing support for such noble principles as human rights and democracy while scorning the nation that is willing to do something about it. Perhaps my threat to win an argument against you does not sound especially ominous. It is so easy to dodge an honest argument, after all: change the subject with impatient disdain, make various irrelevant points, pretend to misunderstand, and after all, most of world opinion is on our side. Ah, but the cognitive dissonance of your position will only increase. IT WOULD HAVE BEEN BETTER IF SADDAM WERE STILL IN POWER. IT WOULD HAVE BEEN BETTER IF SADDAM WERE STILL IN POWER. You have popularity, we have principle, and principle is stronger in the end.

So defeat us in elections if you like, but the movement, the inspiration of Operation Iraqi Freedom will live on.