***Dave Does the Blog

How noble. A New Zealand woman has offered herself up for crucifixion to George Bush, if only he’ll call off the Iraq campaign.

“Send your troops home and take me instead, on behalf of everyone in the world who does not want war and oppression,” she wrote.
However, she said she would not make it easy for Bush – he would have to personally hammer in the nails.

Okay, does this person really think, in even the most rosy-hued of worlds, that this sort of grandstanding really makes a difference?

Assuming that Bush really is some sort of wild cowboy ogre, a prophet of “war and oppression” — what makes Ms Grierson think that he’d be at all interested in calling off war with Iraq, just for her singular death?

Or, for that matter, what makes her think that he wouldn’t come down, personally do the deed, laugh maniacally, and then continue on his Hunnish campaign of bloody empire-building?

On the other hand, if Bush is sincere in his belief that this is the proper course of action, and that this is the best course to alleviate the threat to millions of people, why would this change his mind?

Is she making the same offer, one must wonder, to Saddam Hussein? “Crucify me, if you will, if it will lead you to step down so that peace may reign!” No, didn’t hear anything about that. I suppose it’s because she knows it wouldn’t do any good, since Saddam has all the torture victims he needs in his dungeons, thankyouverymuch.

A noble sacrifice, Ms Grierson, is only such if it is an actual sacrifice (it’s actually likely to be made) and if it’s noble (it’s actually meaningful). Otherwise, it’s either grandstanding or stupidity.

If you really have the courage of your convictions, then go be a human shield. Break into an American military base and chain yourself to something. Or take the cue of Buddhist monks in the Viet Nam war and … well, it’s tough to crucify yourself, but choose some other tortuous way of going ahead and killing yourself. It might not make a difference, but it will at least be a sacrifice for your principles.

So here’s my obligatory daily “Hey, I agree with what this guy says about Iraq” article which will make folks who agree with me nod and folks who disagree with me shake their heads.”

So where does anyone get the idea that the already improbable aim of fully disarming Saddam would be the end of the threat? The only possible hope of containing him would be to keep the American military breathing down his neck, send in enough inspectors to monitor every day, in every way, every inch of Saddam-controlled turf–and also close the roads. Forever. Or at least until Saddam and his horrible hand-trained sons and heirs are gone. Which, unless “disarmament” can be expanded to include the bulldozing of Saddam’s internal security apparatus, the Mukhabarat, could take longer than we’ve got.

Perhaps France, Germany, Russia and such pivotal U.N. Security Council members as Guinea and Cameroon would care to shoulder the costs, and risks, of sending their own troops to replace the current U.S. military force in the gulf–that vast military presence being the only true source of all this vaunted pressure on Saddam. Though without President Bush’s credible threat of war, Jacques Chirac, Gerhard Schroeder and Vladimir Putin would soon find themselves wielding all the pressure of a bicycle pump.

The dollar cost is, of course, the least of it. If all we do with Saddam, after his dozen years of gross and threatening infractions, is keep trying to disarm and contain him, then the message to tyrants everywhere is that there is no significant penalty to seeking weapons of mass murder. The only risk is that inspectors might find them, and you might then have to destroy whatever they actually found. The downside is that you might be out the cost of the weapons. The upside, if you succeed, is that you become North Korea–protected by your power to destroy.