What Is the Alternative?

I came back from holiday vacation today to find a 10-pound box of Sees chocolates from my peacenik friend Betsey out in LA.

The note she sent said, "What I want in the new year is no war and this is a really big box of chocolates, so I should get what I want."

A goodly number of people share Betsey's view and I have one question for all of them: When it comes to Iraq, what is the alternative?

We've had eleven years of no war with Saddam and what's it got us? Did it get us a democratic reformer who is using his oil wealth for the good of his people? No, it got us a belligerent and truculent schemer who probably is up to his chinny-chin-chin in terror and definitely is trying to build the weapons which will make certain no one can ever call him on his plotting and his desire to run the world economy through his oil and pressure on his neighbor Saudi Arabia.

Do the peaceniks think it is better that Iraqis live with their oppressor and the rest of us put up with whatever else he dreams up for us?

If it's not going to be war, what's it going to be? Saddam Hussein gets his way same as Kim Jong Il got his way in North Korea? Negotiations worked great with North Korea, didn't they?

And since Saddam has been every bit as duplicitous as the North Korea guy, I ask again, when it comes to Iraq, if not war then what?

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