Glenn Reynolds has an interesting post up in which he looks back on how deeply, deeply wrong most anti-war arguments were. My favorite excerpt:

Judging from his private statements, the single most important element in Saddam's strategic calculus was his faith that France and Russia would prevent an invasion by the United States. According to Aziz, Saddam's confidence was firmly rooted in his belief in the nexus between the economic interests of France and Russia and his own strategic goals: 'France and Russia each secured millions of dollars worth of trade and service contracts in Iraq, with the implied understanding that their political posture with regard to sanctions on Iraq would be pro-Iraqi. In addition, the French wanted sanctions lifted to safeguard their trade and service contracts in Iraq. Moreover, they wanted to prove their importance in the world as members of the Security Council -- that they could use their veto to show they still had power.'"

We were endlessly lectured on how the French and Russian opposition to the war was an example of "moral" leadership. Yet it was easy enough to find out even then that both countries had struck billion- and even trillion-dollar oil deals with Saddam: they were willing to defend a guy who dropped whole families through plastic shredders if it meant a few more euros in their pockets. Disgusting!

Glenn remarks: "Today's antiwar movement: tools of the international oil companies and arms traders. They used to say that kind of thing about war supporters, of course..."

Throughout the cold war, through Vietnam, and even into the 1980s, the political left continually worked in a manner which "objectively" promoted the interests of totalitarian communist regimes. I guess, with those institutional slaughterhouses now shuttered, there's nobody better to serve than drug merchants, arms dealers, petty dictatorships, and big oil.

I'm kidding of course: I don't think the left consciously serves any of these interests. But so many of their spokesmen work so well as "useful idiots."

Go ahead: show me I'm overstating or unfair or wrong. I dare you.