The Case For War – The First Time

OK, a blast from the past, but one that still has some timeliness today. I finally got around to digging out a column I wrote in December 1990, back when I was a college sophmore, laying out the case for war with Iraq. The first one, of course. In college, I wrote a weekly op-ed column, mostly politics and campus events (we already had Bill Simmons writing the main sports column).
It’s interesting, of course, to see how much the arguments then echoed the ones those of us who supported the second war made again, especially the bottom-line conclusion: “there is not just one reason to stop Hussein, but every reason to stop him.” You can read the whole thing here.
One major change in my thinking since then, of course, is my attitude towards Israel; until the Gulf War, I had generally fallen into the “Israel as an ally is more trouble than it is worth” camp, and that comes out here.