So far it seems we’re going down a different path, a better path, than the one threatened. Instead of bombing the crap out of Baghdad, to shock and awe, we seem to be attempting to pressure the outlying Iraqi armies to surrender, and to cut off the fish’s rotting head. So far so good.
But the reasons for opposing the war, I don’t think, have had much to do with whether or not we might win it expeditiously (and that, of course, is far from assured.) At issue is whether or not the world will be a better place for our invasion, and whether our liberties will be increased or decreased.
Kinsley doesn’t get at the broad range of implications of the Bush policy, the way Thomas Friedman (who supports the idea of our active participation in regime change) does, but he perfectly describes the utter breakdown of democractic ideas and ideal that suffuse this administration and the peril that we should all know comes from top down thinking, because our Constitution warns us about it repeatedly.