Sites Holmquist trys, and often fails, to go no more than a couple of days without visiting (some of which Holmquist regularly swipes links from without attribution)
In another post Yglesias argues that he believes the "humilating Arabs rational for the U.S. attacking Iraq" makes sense as a "private reason" but not a "public reason" for attacking Iraq. Essentially he is saying that "The idea that strong social systems ought to militarily crush weak ones in order to demonstrate their own superiority is no good as a general principle" but that in this case, with other justifications for attacking Iraq, this principle serves to motivate the U.S. to attack Iraq.
The first thing that needs to be said about this is the idea that the U.S. needs no additional motivation for invading Iraq. The only things that have kept Bush from doing so up to now are logistics and possibly questions about how to best take over the country or even if military action is a good idea.
Secondly, it should be noted that if the goal of "humiliating Arabs" is not sufficient enough in and of itself to take over Iraq then Nick Denton's original argument goes out the window since he doesn't buy any of those other rationales. posted by micah holmquist at 8/06/2002 09:33:00 PM
