A FEW ITEMS AGO, I mentioned the curious creatures I’ve deemed “liberal-buts.” Here’s one of the more effective examples of liberal-but forensics I’ve seen lately. Professional gadfly writer Christopher Hitchens has written a pro-war screed for the London Mirror. In UK tabloid fashion, it consists of short paragraphs containing short sentences, and expresses its premise loudly and doubtlessly. Hitchens wants us to view a forced ouster of Saddam as a righteous liberation movement any consistent leftist should applaud, and chastizes anyone who doesn’t agree with him.

I don’t agree with him.

I’d more easily foresee Saddam’s ouster as a costlier, more violent version of Manuel Noriega’s ouster from Panama or Alexander Dubcek’s ouster from Czechoslovakia–the forced retirement of a fomer client-state dictator who’d tried to break off on his own. There’s no guarantee any successor Iraqi regime would be any less cruel to its own people than the regime there now; just that it would be, by design, more amenable to US business interests.