Amidst all of the lunacy on parade in the streets around the planet this weekend, it’s important to remember that we are not going to war against Iraq, any more than we went to war against Afghanistan (in the sense that we wish to conquer it and kill and/or subjugate its people). In both cases, we are in fact liberating the people from a band of thugs who had brutally taken over their country, and hijacked it for their own odious purposes.

As we go in, some few innocents will die who might have otherwise lived, but in the long run (and long, in this case, probably means mere months, or even weeks), many more innocents will live, and avoid further torture and deprivation, who would have otherwise continued to suffer, because we finally removed the cause of their misery. There are no cost-free actions.

A couple weeks ago, I put together a game theory analysis of the potential costs and benefits to us of taking out Saddam, for various actions under various states of the world. I ignored the costs and benefits to the Iraqi people in that analysis. It might be useful to do a similar one for them. I would be shocked if the right answer isn’t to remove Saddam, as quickly as possible.