Step outside your partisan box for a moment and consider this:

What if the decoding and delivery of the message the Japanese Ambassador was supposed to give to the Secretary of State of the United States had not been delayed on December 6, 1941 (Washington, DC time)?

Would we still call the attack on Pearl Harbor “perfidious” and “evil”? Recall, Japan was engaging in a pre-emptive war because they believed the policies of the United States were resulting in a clear and present danger to the future that Japan had planned out for East Asia for the safety and success of their nation.

The 2003 invasion of Iraq, is it not “perfidious” and “evil” because we gave an ultimatum beforehand, an ultimatum remarkably similar to that the Japanese had intended to hand to the United States in December of 1941?

My thoughts on the 2003 invasion of Iraq have been evolving. I am beginning to believe that in a Machiavellian world, we did need to topple the regime of Saddam Hussein, but I still maintain that we did so with amazing incompetence, alienating allies and simultaneously not providing enough troops to control the nation we toppled (see the recent, belated remarks by Colin Powell for only the most recent validation of my opinion on this matter of troop numbers for the occupation in the wake of the ill-termed “catastrophic success”).

I was taught when I was a child that the attack on Pearl Harbor was evil because it was both a “sneak-attack” (although according to the history of the time, the delayed delivery of the message from the Japanese Ambassador was supposed to provide a butt-blanket to avoid the sneak-attack accusations), but I was also taught that attacking someone who had not directly attacked you first was morally wrong.

Arguments of “freeing the oppressed” in Iraq fail miserably because there are far too many oppressive regimes in the world that we could easily topple and free the same number or even more of people being abused.

Arguments of “spreading democracy” in Iraq fail miserably because there are far too many oppressive regimes in the world that we could easily topple and replace with democratic governments.

The Machiavellian argument is twofold: First - the regime in Iraq was destabilizing in an area of the world that has control over a vitally strategic resource (no, I’m not repeating the canard that the war was all about the oil and making the energy companies rich, but we must be realistic and state that oil is indeed a strategic resource whose supply lines must be protected).

Second - the regime in Iraq was without any doubt hostile to the United States and would finance any terrorist attacks against the United States.

However, the second argument by itself is not sufficient to justify the invasion, otherwise we would have been equally or even more justified to invade many other nations long before Iraq.

An FYI to those apologists for the Bush administration: moral arguments are not good to make because there are many more cases where the moral justification was both more urgent and far more necessary than an intervention in Iraq.

Think about these things, and think about what might have been a better way to accomplish our goals.

Technorati Tags: alternate history, commentary, Gulf War II, Iraq, Iraq War, opinion, Second Gulf War

Astronomers have used the Hubble telescope (along with some serious image processing that took over two years) to make a color map of the surface of Pluto.

Hubble reveals new map of Pluto
By Paul Rincon
BBC News science reporter, Cambridge

Astronomers have produced a new colour map of Pluto, the most distant planet in our Solar System, using images from the Hubble Space Telescope.

The detailed map shows areas likely to be methane frost and a bright spot perhaps made of frozen carbon monoxide.

Go to the BBC site for more detals. The big map can be found at this link (opens in a new window).

Technorati Tags: astronomy, geek cool, science

I suspect most have heard of the orders of the authorities in New Orleans (namely the head of the police department there) to confiscate guns held by citizens remaining in the city.

I have only one thing to say about this: It is not only unconstitutional, it is outright wrong.

I can understand what his line of reasoning is, but that line of reasoning is both fallacious along with being morally wrong as well.

More on this later.

…such as semilunar instead of crescent, would the overly-sensitive right-wing be equally outraged?

From where I stand, Dean Esmay is entirely correct when he writes, “Guys: it’s a curved grove of maple trees for God’s sake. Get over it.”

Perpetual indignance from either wing has gotten beyond old…

Hanlon’s razor comes to mind: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.