Speaking of Upside Down Priorities.

Lileks slams Salaam Pax for his whine about poor service in Post-Saddam Iraq. It seems that America spilled a glass of tomato juice on a dirty carpet and has to clean up the whole thing, or somesuch. Lilek's response is epic:

Hey, Salam? Fuck you. I know you’re the famous giggly blogger who gave us all a riveting view of the inner circle before the war, and thus know more about the situation than I do. Granted. But there’s a picture on the front page of my local paper today: third Minnesotan killed in Iraq. He died doing what you never had the stones to do: pick up a rifle and face the Ba’athists. You owe him.

Let me explain this in simple terms, habibi. You would have spent the rest of your life under Ba’athist rule. You might have gotten some nice architectural commissions to do a house for someone whose aroma was temporarily acceptable to the Tikriti mob. You might have worked your international connections, made it back to Vienna, lived a comfy exile’s life. What’s certain is that none of your pals would ever have gotten rid of that “scary guy without the hideous moustache” (as if his greatest sin was somehow a fashion faux pas) and the Saddam regime would have prospered into the next generation precisely because of people like you.

Update: Bill Cork suggests that my title and Lilek's blast are out of line.

I don't think they are. As I note in the comments, Salaam Pax claims that he lost family and friends who disappeared into the Baathist security apparatus. Given the level of access to information that he claimed during the war and the well-known tradition that totalitarian systems have of compromising their citizens - in an early purge, Saddam had survivors execute the purged for that very reason - I think that there is a fair chance that Salaam was implicitly complicit with the Baathist regime. (And, really, who wouldn't be?) Salaam says he is grateful to America for toppling the Baathist regime.

But he wants to lecture America for not in six months time bringing to Iraq the same level of social, political and technological development enjoyed by Cleveland.

I stand by what I wrote. Salaam doesn't have the moral position to criticize America.

Now, it is true that America wasn't invited into Iraq. Or is that true? Were there no Iraqis who were asking America to do what it did last May? The Kurds, perhaps, who were saved from genocidal annihilation only by continuing American military intervention? Don't they count?

We intervened and it is our tradition to rebuild, but I don't accept the idea that we didn't have a causus belli. Iraq was regularly shooting at our aircraft in the no fly zones. Here is a Reason article from October 21, 2002 referencing the causus belli available to America last year, including the constant pot-shotting of American military planes. And here is the pertinent passage in case anyone has forgotten:

Since then, the coalition (mainly the United States and Britain) has flown more than 250,000 sorties over Iraq. "Iraqi forces have fired on these aircraft thousands of times, and U.S. and coalition pilots have returned fire thousands of times," note Stevens, Wall, and Dinlenc.

This kind of activity has served to justify military action - war - in the past.

Moreover, and more importantly, Iraq clearly was supporting al Quaeda and other groups. It may not fit neatly in Just War Theory, but after September 11 American leaders can no longer allow states with access to biological, chemical and, eventually, nuclear weapons to support, incite or aid non-state terrorist groups. Too much damage can be done to easily for America to accept a rule that we will only retaliate only if we have evidence beyond a reasonable doubt.

Iraq has been benefitted by America's military action. But for that action, Salaam might have been "disappeared" into the maws of the Baathist security apparatus, even if he was a Baathist stooge. The purpose of Terror often requires that fellow-travelers be sent to the mass grave. Thousands of others probably would have been likewise. They live and have the chance to decide their own future. If they refuse to "cowboy up," but instead choose to continue the attitudes of subjects in a totalitarian state, then they will lose the chance we've given them. But it's their decision, not ours.

Call that arrogance if you wish.

Second Update: By the way, and to be clear, I think that Bill Cork and Mark Shea are doing yeoman duty in cautioning against arrogance. This kind of prophetic activity has a grand and proper history. Sic transit gloria munde the slave would whisper to the Roman general during the triumph. Pride goeth, as they say, before the fall. We are Americans and we have a tradition of the common man as soldier. Our soldiers are not conquistadors or jihadistas appropriating personal demesne's for their glory and profit. Hence, referring to Iraqis as "Haji" is clearly wrong and arrogant.

On the other hand, excess must be avoided in all things, including self-abasement. Our soldiers are not the slave soldiers of a tyranny. They are free men and women freely fighting for a free people. Their presence may be just exactly the model of interracial, intertribal, interreligious cooperation that might appeal to the aspiration of umma that the Iraqis need.

Or at least that's my prayer.