Steven Den Beste on what might, unfortunately, become the first in a long line of sour grapes arguments from the left in the wake of Saddam's capture:

One of the anti-war arguments that had kind of faded out is now back in its full glory with the capture of Saddam: "America is responsible for Saddam."

...Most of those claims are exaggerated and have been refuted long since, but assume they were true. The response to that is pretty clear: If we are responsible for Saddam being in power, we have an obligation to make up for the sins of our past by removing him. If we made a mistake in the past, should we not correct it now?

Den Beste's conclusion is a disturbing one: the left seeks to strip free nations of their sovereignty by chaining them to guilt for past actions - most of which have occurred in the last two major wars of the last century, the Second World War and the Cold War. America, for one, made choices - and alliances - against what it recognized as the greatest evil. We do the same today, with Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and China against terrorists, for exactly the same reason: cooperation is, in a world only half-free, our best choice. It will not always be. A span of less than one hundred years, the rise of both a modern age and modern democracies, and yet to the left the self-governed have purposely worked with dictatorships from the beginning of time, and out of sheer spite.

Steven asks a few questions - I'll ask my own, which I've asked before. If America and its allies are blamed for not doing more than condemning Hussein for his crimes in years before, why are they criticized now precisely because they've done much more than condemn Hussein for his crimes? (As Steven might wonder, was Hussein really the issue?) And if strategic cooperation with some dictatorships is so deplorable, why wouldn't their gradual elimination - beginning with Afghanistan's Taliban and Iraq's Ba'athists - be an admirable goal?