The Watch
on being “unreasonably” opposed to the war:
I’ve been seeing an increasing number of anti-war arguments that run something like,
“There is a good case to be made for a war with Iraq, but team Bush hasn’t made it.”
This posits that there’s an excellent reason running around out there in the wild blue
yonder, and that if Powell could just nab and harness it for his boss, all objections
would be withdrawn. (Imagine Powell running around with a butterfly net in full dress
uniform. Or don’t.) As if we would all immediately be compelled to say, “Oh, well that’s
alright then,” on pronunciation of the magic words.There are flaws with the underlying logic here, but I think a big one is that simply being
opposed to war for it’s own sake (or because of the participants involved) is considered an
‘unreasonable’ position. We all want to be reasonable, so what could it hurt to imagine some
fictitious scenario and posit that if that condition were satisfied, then yes, war would be okay.