After highlighting how Iraqi women are protesting their current state of affairs and noting how such protests would be impossible in Saddam's Iraq, Abe Greenwald writes:
'But that, in itself, serves as a sterling refutation of the Saddam nostalgiasts. Given the choice between a hopeless dictatorship and a flawed democracy, only moral simpletons would defend the former.'
And he's right! But who's defending Saddam? None of the anti-Iraq-war arguments that I'm aware of (or that I'd endorse) centered around "the Iraqis don't know how good they have it under Saddam's boot." And I don't recall President Bush rallying the American people around the urgent need to sacrifice American blood and treasure so Iraqi women can more publicly protest their plight. One can recognize the gains made by the Iraqi people in the post-Saddam era without believing that those gains somehow justify invading the country.