perfidy

"Don't try and frighten us with your sorcerer's ways, Lord Marx. Your sad devotion to that ancient religion has not helped you conjure up the worker's revolution, or given you clairvoyance enough to predict the end of the Bourgeoisie..."

See, the thing about Marxism, is it sounds so darned good on paper. If I may make an unweildy and inappropriate analogy, expecting a revolution of the proletariat is like expecting frogs to grow wings. I'm going to go out on a limb here are argue that there are fundamentally irreducible aspects of human nature.

• People are greedy and self-interested. Examples to the contrary, such as Ghandi, Mother Teresa, and myself, are notable by their rarity.
• People like to have stuff. Not having stuff means that one bad winter could wipe you and your family out.
• Corollary: many people enjoy power, and taking other people's stuff.

Given these factors, and given that, as Mike ably points out, any state which does not wither away is not a Marxist state, Marxism is impossible. It makes unreasonable assumptions about human nature, logistics, and the weight of social tradition, and by its own internal paradoxes makes its own fulfillment impossible. 

Final note: Marxism is indeed like a religion, not least because it provides a higher cause by which people may commit both petty and hideous crimes with a clear conscious.

Nazis and such 

I don't know crap about the recent history of the middle east, so I'm just going to sit back and enjoy the wrasslin' match between youse two. 

On measurement 

Buckethead, One Standard Den Beste is a daily measure! 

On terrorism, WMD's, and other crapola 

Weapons of Mass Destruction, as they undoubtedly exist in Iraq (or hidden in Syria, or whatever), are not of themselves the single justification for the libervasion of Iraq. They are however the political BFG 10K (remember Doom?) that would put egg on the face of naysayers in the international community. That is a secondary goal, but could help in mending fences and rebuilding concensus. This would help the campaign to root out terrorism. Like Mike, I also haven't heard compelling evidence that Iraq was providing systematic support to al Qaeda or other international terrorists. So... is Iraq part of the War on Terror? 

By the way, I understand full well that my position on Iraq requires that I accept some paradoxes of my own. I've been thinking about this for months now and I'm no closer to resolving them. If I may, I would like to make another howlingly bad analogy to describe my sentiments about the US in Iraq, and the War On Terror in general: It's like being in the backseat of a car going 100mph down Storrow Drive (Storrow Motor Speedway) in Boston: Sheer panic punctuated by moments of mortal terror, combined with great exhilaration and a continued sense of wonder that you haven't crashed and burned yet. 

Is Syria next? Well, they are a terrorist-supporting state. QED. Should Syria be next? Hell, I don't know. What do I look like, its biographer? 

Saudi Arabia 

As for Saudi Arabia, I would strongly recommend you both read the cover story in this month's Atlantic Monthly (not online). It describes how the Saudis are doing EXACTLY what the US wants, and paying a hefty fine. That's not to argue that they are angels (quite the contrary), but that by being in the oil business, by being ostentatiously wealthy and western, and by not actually ruling their own country as much as presiding over the oil business alone, they are digging their own graves by alienating ordinary Saudi citizens. The money paid to al Qaeda can best be described as protection money-- $25 million ensures that this year, there will be no assassinations of Saudi royalty by al Qaeda operatives. At the same time, the wealth, ostentation, and Western focus of the royal family rightly earns the enimity of the Saudi on the street, who live under the heel of poverty and harsh clerical oversight in plain sight of their riches. Is it any wonder regular Saudis resent the US's influence when all they can see is our President making good buddies with the same people who keep them miserable? 

Hence, the Saudi royals, who are not generally nice people to begin with, are in an increasingly perilous position. Based on the article, it's pretty much only with our support and our huge oil need that they remain in power. The situation is incredibly convoluted, but it's at least partly of the US's making. 

It's kind of like the Civil War. Slavery was the big issue, along with states' rights (on many tongues, a shibboleth for slavery), as well as lesser and more contested causes such as economic philosophies and cultural differences. These problems needed to be hashed out, and the War Betwixt The States did that. But let's not forget that war over sectional issues, most of them slavery-based, probably would never have come to pass had the seeds of the Civil War not been written into the Constitution as compromises, thereby sweeping the relevant issues under the rug until there was no peacable solution in sight. Perhaps with Saudi Arabia, it's currently 1786, and we can bring these issues into the light of day before resorting to war. Or, perhaps it's 1859. Only time will tell.