Reason: War? What war?

You’d barely know there’s a war on from Reason magazine’s online commentary on the State of the Union speech: only Ron Paul devotes his remarks to foreign policy, and is, as usual, great on the subject. Bob Barr mentions the “war on terrorism” in the context of the regime’s subversion of civil liberties, and the rest of them — a narrow range of neocons and libertarian economists — have nada to say about it, except Michael Young, whose byline is fast becoming a byword for utter cluelessness:

“Will Bush in his second term stiffen his back and again insist on making Iraqi democracy (assuming that phantom comes alive) a linchpin for regional pluralism, helping undermine the Islamist militancy that caused 9/11? One must hope so, since otherwise the Iraqi adventure will have been a spectacular waste of life.”

Yeah, we sure wouldn’t want that to happen, now would we?

All I can say is thank the gods we have “libertarians” like Young around to tell us how and why we ought to expend human lives on foreign adventures. And it’s a good thing we’re “undermining” Islamic militancy by handing Iraq over to the tender graces of the militant Islamic electoral ticket dominated by the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and the fundamentalist Dawa party — both backed by Iran.

Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Max “We Haven’t Suffered Enough Casualties” Boot hails “the edifying spectacle of Iraqis rising up to rule themselves” — a spectacle that becomes even more instructive as they rise up to rule each other.

Boy, I sure hope Bush makes with the democracy-building already — after all, everyone should have the right to vote their society into slavery. Otherwise the whole thing will have been a spectacular waste …

More Sunni boycott threats

Sunnis will boycott drafting of constitution:

The Muslim Scholars Association, the most influential Sunni religious group in Iraq, refused Wednesday to participate in drafting the country’s permanent constitution, a prior task for the National Assembly (NA) elected last Sunday.

“We cannot participate in the formulating of a constitution under the occupation,” Mohammed Bashar Fadhi, the group’s spokesman told a press conference.

“The Americans try to establish sectarianism in the constitution, and the Association would not accept division
according to the sectarian shares,” he stressed.

“We deeply believe that the constitution written under the occupation would be a reflection of the State Administration Law, which we had already totally rejected, and we would not participate in writing the constitution whatever it costs us,” he added.