UPDATE to the below post.

Awesome! Although I don't know how I feel about being called an idiot, I love the smart response by the anonymous reader...I wonder how they found this blog, I suspect they googled "Embarrass and Liberal." That's a joke.

Like the Night Fox, I love a good challenge and so here's the retort:

1. Nuremberg. Fair enough about setting legal precedent...but the point of Nuremberg, historically speaking, is not about the legal framework it set up...the point and lesson to be taken from Nuremberg is that it is not morally responsible to follow immoral orders. In Nuremburg, the issue was concentration camps and the execution of Jews and other minorities - and the defense that "we were just following orders" would not save the Nazi officers. Another, lesser known, component of Nuremberg was the charge of waging an aggressive war. Current anti-war folks will jump upon this element of Nurenberg to decry, "see what America is doing now is similar to what the Nazi's did in World War II." They are drastically wrong.

One cannot argue that comparisons between present day Iraq and Nuremberg are simple legal comparisons. When making such a statement the intent is to equate "Bush's" Iraq war with the aggressive Nazi state and to gain an emotion reaction. Nazi comparisons are meant to stimulate emotions, not to engage in intellectual debate. I can go into the litany of intellectual reasons why Iraq war differs from Hitler invading Poland and the rest of Europe, UN Resolution 1441, the fact that Saddam was in continual violation of UN treaties, that in a post-9/11 rouge regimes pose a greater threat to world security because of the proliferation of WMDs...but these arguments fall upon deaf ears to anti-war folks, who at best, cannot get beyond the US-in-Vietnam narrative, and at worst, the US-as-Nazi narrative.

One may not agree with the US war in Iraq. Many in the United States did not agree with the US involvement in WWI or WWII. That does not make the war illegitimate or immoral. There is a major difference between a difference of strategy with respect to the war on terror and making the moral argument that going into Iraq is morally wrong....if one decides to make the moral arugment, one must argue how standing by and doing nothing in the face of Saddam's atrocities over the years is justified. I certainly can't.

2. I certainly agree that writing is a civilized way of fighting and moving the discussion in a certain direction - note this blog. HOWEVER, the argument he is making is not one to change minds and convince - the argument is an active resistance to the Iraq war - encouraging army members to desert their posts. This is not about discussion or about changing minds...it is about resistance. I find this topic interesting, though, and have posted on it before, right here.

3. I agree that I may be an idiot. I think there's at least 75% chance of it being true. But I bet there is an 85-90% chance the writer of the article is a bigger idiot. I'll quote a few sentances, which a smart high schooler could write better:

Quickly now, name a country that harbored the Sept. 11 terrorists! Ah, that was too easy. You got it right away. The answer: the United States of America. That's who sheltered the 19 terrorists before their attacks on Manhattan and Washington. That's where those terrorists worked and played, ate and slept, plotted and rehearsed right up to that tragic day. The U.S. of A.

Perhaps, in our barely civilized world, someone should inform Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld of this travesty.

In the eyes of many, Mr. Bush's war against the people of Iraq is absolutely illegal. When one country attacks another, destroys it, and kills its people, without overt provocation, that constitutes an illegal war.

The Geneva Conventions, of which the United States is a signatory, is absolutely clear on that.

Like I said, he doesn't believe deserters are heroes and the Marines who served in Falluja war criminals. I can't prove it through his prose, but I bet he wouldn't have the balls to say it to a single Marine or single relative of a Marine serving over there. And furthermore, I don't think he would spend a cent of his own money to help encourage young men to desert their posts...nor would he go to jail for encouraging a massive uprising of troops. I bet, if he met a young man who volunteered to go over to Iraq, shared a beer, and talked about the world, he would be both proud and deeply sad...and the last thing he would feel is that this guy is a war criminal.