23 Reasons for War

OK, not really 23.  But Jonah Goldberg wrote a great column for National Review on October 8, all about the war and the reasons given.  WMDs were not the single justification for war; in fact there were quite a few, he says.  It's ridiculous that the democrats will criticize Bush for going to war only for WMDs, but reverse themselves when it's politically advantageous and bash Bush for offering too many reasons.  Some highlights:

 

But that doesn't mean Bush didn't offer numerous other rationales before and after the war. In major speeches he touted the importance of democratizing the Middle East. Administration officials pointed out that Saddam was the only world leader to applaud 9/11, and that he was a major source of funding for suicide bombers in Israel. They argued that removing Saddam would have a positive impact on the peace process. President Bush made a masterful case to the United Nations that, in the post-9/11 world, the world body could not afford to let a dictator — one who had gassed his own people and invaded a neighbor — flout its countless resolutions with impunity.

These rationales don't add up to 23, but who cares if they do? What important decisions have you ever made in your life that have depended on a single variable. We don't buy cars for a single reason. (Oh, it's blue! I'll take it!) Why should we launch a preemptive war for a single reason?

Of course Bush has emphasized other rationales now that we know there were no WMDs. What else is he going to do? Should he say, "Oops," and leave Iraq to disintegrate into civil war, which will plunge the region into chaos? Or should he emphasize the other — completely legitimate and consistent — rationales for this war? If we had found WMDs, Bush would still be fighting to democratize Iraq. That we haven't found them makes that task all the more important.