Housekeeping
The catch-all page of Reason's war coverage (ahem, Reason's award-winning war coverage), is back up to date. Without addressing whether the war in Iraq is part of the war on terror and other hopeless rhetorical stalemates, this page contains just about everything we've done with a vaguely war or foreign policy or Near East theme since 9/11/01.
We also have a grab-bag features page of stuff that doesn't regularly get archived anywhere else. Since this page exists mainly as a place to store thematically unrelated one-offs, it's fairly schizophrenic , featuring everything from Elizabeth Koch's Martha Stewart coverage to Brian Doherty's Cerebus retrospective to Michael Young's Edward Said obit to my own shortlist of Democratic Homeland Security czars. Though I can't figure out where this page belongs on the site, feel free to see if any of our old chestnuts really rock your world.
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What a cornucopia! To lose interest in Reason is to lose interest in thinking. Ok, that's a little over the top but really, only just a little. The truth is that, in ways which none of its peers are; Reason is wonderful sustenance for the mind!
I can't imagine why you'd characterize the question of whether or not the invasion of Iraq can legitimately be considered part of the war on terror as a "hopeless rhetorical stalemate." Isn't that one of the core issues in assessing the war's overall legitimacy? And aren't there relatively objective answers to be had as the facts are assembled? (Where there WMDs? Was Iraq collaborating with Al Qaeda?) In my judgment, the question of whether the war in Iraq is part of the war on terror is both critical and answerable. And the answer is "No."
While I agree, not completely confidently, with your "no," I've seen the entire topic beaten raw and bloody so many times on these very boards-to no clear resolution-that I think "stalemate" is the most accurate word.
'In my judgment, the question of whether the war in Iraq is part of the war on terror is both critical and answerable. And the answer is "No."'
Well, since I know the same things you do, and disagree on the grounds that I think your assumptions are faulty, we are back to stalemate.
The stalemate lies not in the facts but in their interpretation. One man's view of the 9/11 commission reports about Saddam and AQ is that there was 'no connection'. Another man might say, 'AQ was persuing relations with a person who had previously attempted to assassinate a US president. That is bad.'