The first is one I’m sure you will disagree with which is that I don’t support the premise of “strategy for disarming Iran” which the entire article is based on.

I think the hypocrisy of this entire discourse is that the United States touts the rule of “International Law” at every chance it gets and uses it to further every cause it endorses: Weapons of Mass Destruction, genocide in Darfur, smuggling of weapons across borders into Iraq, Tactics used by militants in warfare, and so forth.

Yet when it is the turn of the United States to follow the rule of International Law, it seems to have problems doing so: Pulling out of the ABM treaty to pursue a defense system, Invading Iraq without a clear UN mandate, Refusal to give basic human rights to those who were held at Guantanamo and were proven at a later point to be innocent, and simply, violating the UN charter in almost every way imaginable.

Now I understand Americans reason that the security and defense of the United States is more important than International Law, and I do agree that the Declaration of Independence and Constitution trump the UN charter, but I do believe that automatically revokes the privilege of waving International Law around when wanting to coerce other nations.

That aside, the more technical problem with your article is the suggestion that we are at war with nations throughout the middle east to prevent the spread of Sharia. To quote you, we invaded Iraq to stop those “Sharia-faithful and those supporting them as our enemies (which clearly included Saddam),” when it clearly did not.

I will make three points to argue the opposite.

First, Saddam Hussein abolished the Sharia legal system in Iraq. Therefore the argument that we invaded Iraq to to stop the sharia faithful or to slow the spread of sharia across the world holds no water. If anything, we should have continued with our support of Saddam Hussein, because “Saddam .. created a Western-style legal system, making Iraq the only country in the Persian Gulf region not ruled according to traditional Islamic law (Sharia). Saddam abolished the Sharia law courts, except for personal injury claims.”
http://www.answers.com/topic/saddam-hussein

Second, Saddam was a dictator of an authoritarian regime. He was not a Cleric of a theocracy. If you recall Saddam’s secular regime went to war against Iran’s sharia dominated theocracy. For Saddam Hussein to promote Sharia, one would have to accept the argument that he would be willing to be subservient to the rule of clerics, which authoritarians, by the very definition of the word, can not be.

Third, Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein weren’t friends by any definition of that word. Prior to the war in which Iraq invaded Kuwait, Osama, who was Saudi, was concerned that Saddam would invade Saudi Arabia and was actively addressing this in Saudi Arabia. Osama even “sent several letters to King Faisal instructing him how to protect the kingdom and offered to help fight the invaders” against Hussein.
http://www.crimelibrary.com/terrorists_spies/terrorists/laden/2.html

To conclude, I would like to say that part of addressing a problem and coming to a constructive end for that problem requires understanding the underlying factors of the problem in a comprehensive manner. From what I have read in your article that is not the case.

Yeah, shame on those Democrats for not wanting US troops to engage in genocide and wanton destruction … err … “total war” against once fellow citizens and fellow human beings who had peacefully and lawfully seceded. Your frequent invocations of Lincoln are quite telling. Per your assessment “Sharia-faithful Muslims” want death for non-Muslim infidels. Well per my assessment Lincoln wanted death to all those infidels who were insufficiently subservient to the modern nation state as he envisioned it. I guess you could call him and his like Hobbes-faithful Statist.

More later. The job calls.