In reality, we went N. Africa, Italy, France, Germany, then Japan Yeah, the actual sequence is a lot longer and more complicated but I think I’ve made my point.

What did North Africa ever do to us that it deserved invasion in WW II?

The only sequence that makes sense is Saudi Arabia, then Pakistan. If you want to know who’s funding terrorism, and who’s spreading WMD, that’s the two.

Without the US to defend them until they are strong enough to defend themselves, the democrats of Iraq have no chance. That’s the kind of building that the US can do and I hope that it continues to do it.

Let’s remember that this entire argument is not about whether Iraq should have been invaded but rather about the timing of the campaign. If we would have gone Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria, then Iraq, the same justifications would have been said for the Iraq campaign and they would have been just as true. Saddam was and is perfectly capable of attacking the US and is motivated to do it. Eventually he would have slipped his leash and we would have been in trouble because of it.

A month ago, I wrote about a dilemma facing the Bush administration’s prosecution of the War on Terror. Yesterday, The Agitator got around to addressing the issue and he’s not happy with the idea of anything but full, immediate disclosure….

But I suppose being libertarian today one must be Anti-United States.

The problem is one of foreign policy intersecting with something that is foreign to most modern westerners, a shame culture. One of the central characteristics of a shame culture is that they absolutely will be willing to chop off their nose to spite their face. In dealing with such a culture, if you straight out say that they’re a bunch of screw ups and we’re going to take over a central country, show them how to create a free society, and leverage that working example into a general elimination of governmental lackwitism in the region, you’re going to activate that shame culture in spades.

The negative effects of that are that nobody will help you, everyone will fight you, and it will happen on a level that is much more aggressive than what’s actually been going on in Iraq. That means more casualties, a great deal more, as well as a lower chance for ultimate success.

Now that we’ve established that it’s impossible to tell the bald truth to their faces, the pro-open truth libertarian has to come up with a method to tell the 280+ million US residents the truth without fatally embarrassing the rulers of the Middle East into launching a suicidal assault against the US.

The best that I’ve come up with so far is to hint like mad in ways that bright people in the US will figure out and get the word out through unofficial channels up to and including tiny ones like yours truly.

Is there a better way to do it? I haven’t heard a practical one to date. Solutions that increase casualties and lower the chance of success in draining the terrorist swamp need not apply.

I wish I lived there.

Where I live, all politicians are liars and everybody with any sense knows it. They also know that there are details of reasonable plans that must be kept secret to protect lives and success.