"What effect must it have on a nation if it learns no foreign languages? Probably much the same as that which a total withdrawal from society has upon an individual." --G.C. Lichtenberg
In the interest of disentangling the argument against a U.S. military action against Iraq from other, unrelated political issues, I am joining with bloggers on both (all) sides of the political spectrum in participating in NoWarBlog. This blog is an attempt to increase the perceived legitimacy of the anti-war cause by taking away one of the most oft-used of the hawks' specious arguments against it. "Oh, you know those left-wing kooks..."
It's too bad we feel the need to resort to something like this; people should evaluate arguments on their merits, rather than the political leanings of the source, but whattaya gonna do? It's not as though the fact that, even leaving Muslims to one side, nearly every single person in the world outside of the U.S. thinks the idea of an Iraq invasion is illegitimate, short-sighted, and reckless has had much effect on the balance of opinion here. Hearing the same simple, obvious, irrefutable truths from people with profoundly different worldviews and politics may help convince a few more thinking people that war with Iraq is wrong. In the highly polarized arena that is American political discourse, unanimity is the only sure validity.
