Amidst pointing out why the Soviet Union was deterrable, and Saddam may not be, Eugene Volokh makes an important point this morning on the subject of deterring Iraq.

Finally, we should recognize that while deterrence worked during the Cold War, it was a very high-risk strategy. We relied on deterrence because we had no choice. Right now, it seems like we do have a choice; we can preemptively strike against Iraq much more cheaply than we could have preemptively struck against the USSR. And if we miss this opportunity, we might be placed in a situation where deterrence won’t work nearly as well as it fortunately did work against the Soviets.

I’ve posted before on the problem with the argument that toppling Saddam puts us on a slippery slope (e.g., if Saddam, why not Mugabe, who is apparently as vicious, or Pakistan, which also has nukes), and that the response to this is that a number of factors go into the decision–no single one can justify it.

Professor Volokh points out one more. In addition to all the other reasons, like the dog that licks his own privates, we should take out Saddam because we can.

If we could have defeated the Soviet Union earlier at an acceptable cost and risk to ourselves, the Cold War would, and should, have been a hot one. We lived for over forty years in a very high-risk state (which also prevented us from decisively defending, for example, the people of northern Korea from communism) because we had no other choice, not because we had no cause to defeat the Soviets. Because they had nukes and the ability to deliver them, we could not risk an actual war with them. Had Hitler gotten them, we might very well have ended up with a stalemate in Europe just as long-lasting as the one with the Soviets.

The longer we wait to take out Saddam (and the other toxic governments of the region) the greater the risk that the risk of taking him out will become unacceptable. The notion that we should wait until he is closer to having nuclear weapons, or actually has them, before we respond to him, is simply bizarre.