DISAGREEING, WITHOUT BEING DISAGREEABLE. Cold Spring Shops ordinarily leaves the war coverage and commentary to others. The Superintendent recommends, however, three posts touching on different aspects of the buildup to Operation Iraqi Freedom and the aftermath.

First up, Don at Cafe Hayek lays out a libertarian case against the war.

The world is full of evil tyrants. But given the nature of government, it’s not the role of government A to sit in judgment of government B. The most legitimate role for any government is to protect its own people from violence. Whenever Uncle Sam unleashes his mighty military in foreign countries for the purpose of protecting foreign citizens from their own governments, he weakens his ability to protect Americans.

He goes on to note that perhaps Iraq had a dictatorial government for a reason.

Why was Saddam Hussein ruling Iraq? Were Iraqis just incredibly unlucky that such a vile dictator somehow grabbed power and ruled ruthlessly for so long? Or was Hussein’s tyranny at least as much a consequence as a cause of a dysfunctional cultural, political, and economic situation? If so, then removing the dictator does not remove the complex underlying causes that fueled his tyranny.

Removing a dictator is child’s play for a military as awesome as that of the United States. So Hussein is now history. But because the underlying causes that put him in power to begin with are still in place in Iraq, that country likely will soon revert to another dictator – one different in name and different in style, but a brute nevertheless.

Mitch at Shot in the Dark makes an instructive point. Perhaps root causes can be rooted out?

If there was ever a country that seemed less amenable to democracy than the world of extremist Islam, it'd be Japan. Its State Shinto religion was as insane as extreme Wahabbism, and it controlled an entire nation, complete with one of the most modern militaries on earth. It preached suicide bombing and rule by terror as effectively as the worst of Islam. And there was no "moderate shinto" nation to counter it, as with Indonesia or India or Senegal or Mali. And yet our occupation created, in one generation, a democracy from one of the most insular, clannish, warlike, chauvinistic, hive-like societies on earth. Because of occupation, not in spite of it.

That occupation, however, followed a total war brought to an end by a "rain of ruin from the air" with consequences the managers of the current war are attempting to avoid. It's important to spell out your loss function.

Russ at Cafe Hayek is also thinking about the loss function. Go read the whole essay, but note the money quote.

Should Bush have ignored the behavior of Saddam on the grounds that the whole thing was probably a hoax to enhance his self-image? I don't think so. That certainly turned out to be a mistake with Osama. His talk wasn't cheap.

Do your own research. Read the essays, read the comments, follow the trackbacks.