A B D I C A T I O N

I heard on "Special Report with Brit Hume" tonight that our friend Chirac wants Hans Blix to tell us when (if ever) to go to war with Iraq. Worse yet, Bill Clinton apparently agrees with him.

Can anyone spell A B D I C A T I O N O F M O R A L R E S P O N S I B I L I T Y?

How in the world could it possibly be wrong for a large coalition of (non-weaselish) countries to choose to wage war upon Iraq but right for a single UN bureaucrat to do the same? The mind boggles.

More importantly, this is just the latest of many recent examples of wholly unprincipled and opportunistic arguments against the war. Would Chirac support such a stance if Blix wasn't backpedaling on Iraq's noncompliance? Of course not! It's merely a convenient, momentary delay tactic that shall be abandoned as soon as Blix fails to serve Chirac's purposes. As various bloggers have noted, many anti-war protesters in the US and elsewhere follow the same pattern: their opposition to the war often seems to be more about opposition to Bush than opposition to the war.

Ah, I long for the days of the Boston Tea Party, when at least some Americans understood that once the principle is conceded, all is lost!