Iran war could spark Cheney candidacy for 2008

[Beet]

D-man, here's the thing with the Kosovo issue. In early 1999, prior to the beginning of the 78-day airstrike operation, there were increasing reports in the media of an ongoing or imminent genocide against the Kosovars in the province, perhaps not genocide in the sense of a systemic mass extermination, but certainly including selective extermination and mass killings. In light of the costs of the West's belated reaction to the recent genodical violence that had taken place in Bosnia in the mid-1990s, policy makers were under tremendous pressure to respond to this burgeoning humanitarian disaster. I believe the most appropriate comparison would be to Sudan in late 2004. Of course, once the operation started the "liberal" media skewered Clinton for trying to divert attention from the Lewinsky scandal.

Now there's a very important different between that event and Iraq 2002. While any large plethora of justifications had been given for Bush's choice to invade Iraq in 2002, including enforcing UN resolutions, the nature of Hussein's dictatorship, WMDs, parallels with Munich '38, democratic domino theory, and Hussein's past atrocities, one reason that I never heard as a justification, which was the justification for the Kosovo war (and would be for any potential intervention into Sudan or Rwanda) was an ongoing or imminent humanitarian disaster unique to late 2002. This is a critical distinction.

On another note, there seems to be a false assumption on the part of the anti-European right that America's entry into World War II was an act of some kind of cosmic charity, that we willingly gave up the blood of 400,000 of our boys for nothing than a sentimental affection for the freedom of the French. They seem to forget planes flying over Pearl Harbor and Germany and Italy's declaration of war on America, on the threat that would have been posed to American security by Axis victory in Europe and the Pacific. The same goes, by the way, for French assistance to the US in the second half of the American revolutionary war. Sweet feelings aside, I've not seen any convincing reasons that the action was taken out of some sense of charity rather than an appreciation of the ancient realities of realpolitik.