Jim Miller posted the following response to A Hypothetical Conversation:
If you want to argue the case, why not take it up with one of the many actual arguments, available everywhere on the net, rather than creating these straw kiddies? Or do you not want to deal with real arguments? I notice nothing in the post about the costs of alternatives. Or about the fact that we are currently at war with him. When he obtains nuclear weapons, what then?
First of all, having listened to more than my share of conservative pundits, I'm quite sensitive to straw man arguments. In reading the conversation over, I stand by it as a reasonable paraphrasing of the arguments we are getting from the right (or the far right, since many of Father Bush's former advisor's are also quite critical of the current administrations posturing).
As to the cost of alternatives, that we are currently at war with him, or what happens when he obtains nukes, here goes.
If we do nothing (which I am not advocating), Hussein could obtain nuclear weapons within a couple of years. Would he use them? Again, every indication is that he is deterrable. He didn't use chemical or biological weapons against US troops when he had the chance because he feared our retaliation. Nothing in that scenario has changed.
But chemical and biological weapons cannot destroy natural resources like the Saudi oil fields. Sure, he probably hates the Saudis because they supported Operation Desert Storm, and nuking their oil fields would devastate their economy and wreak havoc with ours. But he has to know he would not survive our response to that. Again, just as deterrence worked with Stalin, it is and will continue to work with Hussein. But deterrence will fail to work once we box him into a corner and he sees no escape. And this is what our administration is advocating.
Yes, it would be far better to prevent him from obtaining nukes in the first place. But I'm saying we should give weapons inspections an honest chance. If we insist from the outset that we know Hussein will thwart our every attempt, then he has no motivation to comply. He said "unconditional weapons inspections" and the UN should hold him to that. If that fails, then the manner in which it fails should dictate our next step. But an administration that is so obviously hell-bent on a war-only strategy is making a grave mistake. War should be a last resort, not a first option.
As for currently being at war with him, technically, it is the UN whose sanctions he is violating and the UN who is enforcing the no fly zones. Sure, we're a big part of that, but there is a "cease fire" in effect, and escalating beyond that should be an international effort, not a unilateral one. If the case can actually, factually, honestly be made, then that shouldn't be a problem and our allies will hop on board.
9:31:20 PM 
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