We Don't Need No WMDs

Well this just proves not only that the Bush Administration never accepts responsibility for its mistakes, but refuses even to acknowledge when it screws up. Bush, Cheney Concede Saddam Had No WMDs [YahooNews.com]. As I've blogged previously, without weapons of mass destruction, the only reason to go to war in Iraq was to topple Saddam Hussein because he was a tyrant -- to protect the human rights of Iraquis. That's the most liberal rationale for war imaginable, even if the whole notion of "nation building" (which is what the United States is indeed engaged in in Iraq these days) had not been so firmly rejected by George W. before the 2000 elections.

The President likes to say that "9/11 shanged everything." Yes, it did. But one thing it did not change is that using American military power to build democracy in the Third World is both quixotic and short-sighted. Liberty is only gained by revolution. Revolution has to come from within, not abroad. If the American Revolution were to have been imposed by the French -- George Washington's ally during the Reolutionary War -- there would be no America today. One only says "give me liberty or give me death" if one is fighting for one's own liberty. Foreigners cannot create liberty at the point of a gun.

 Posted by glenn