Sparrow Hawk, I I have to admit I'm a reluctant hawk, and will label myself the "Sparrow Hawk." Before 9/11 I was a regular reader of LewRockwell.com, but no longer. I still believe that our first inclination as American's should be toward isolationism, for we are the splendid republic and the affairs of the Old World tent to taint the soul. But we were attacked, so those arguments have no appeal for me right now. But ultimately, what makes me amenable to the invasion of Iraq is simply that the same arguments against the Afghan bombing are being trotted out. I listened closely the last time, and was a bit worried. 1) Arab street 2) Weaken our "allies" 3) Mission Creep Of course, Iraq will likely be a bigger undertaking. It seems after the events of today that number 3 still has some validity. But I want to vomit over number 1 & 2. The Arab street can go to hell. If Christian evangelicals are right, they already are (OK, so am I). 1,000 Muslims died in Gujarat in a few weeks-and the Muslim world seemed strangely silent. But there was outrage at American bombing of Afghanistan. In case they didn't pay attention after the fact-the Afghans were cheering in the streets after their liberation from the Arab-radical backed Taliban! Frankly the Arab street didn't give a flying fuck about their fellow Muslim brethren to the east, as they usually don't, unless they're looking for recruits in their jihad against a technically and dare I say morally superior civilization to their west and north [1]. The Arab street supposedly hates America for supporting Israel-well, let's be honest about this, if we didn't support Israel the little Jewish state would no longer have a leash and could pretty well set the terms of debate if it was freed from Western moral constraints. To hell with the Arab street, all we need are Israel and Turkey, these two countries could conquer the Arab world from the Atlantic to the Indian oceans if they had the will. And our "allies." All I need to do is put the quotes there and you can deduce what I was about to say. So I guess I'm aboard for this foreign adventure, but rest assured that I will voice some caution and moderation to temper godless' exuberance. No doubt Joel will weigh in that the Iraq invasion will unfetter intellectual property in that distant land.... [1] When I was kid, one of the most irritating moments during religious services for me was listening to some invited Arab speaker haranguing all of us non-Arabs for not knowing Arabic. This is a mosque that was at least half South Asian, with maybe a quarter at most being Arabs. He spoke perfect English, but he wanted to give his sermon in Arabic, so all the non-Arabic speakers had to wear headsets and listen to a translator. This annoyed the speaker greatly and he let us know about it afterward in the Queen's English. The dude needed to be told that it was the doctors from Pakistan, India and Bangladesh who didn't know Arabic who donated most of the money to build the nice shiny mosque.