WOULD INVADING IRAQ DESTABILIZE THE MIDDLE EAST? Maybe, says Steven Den Beste, but “that’s not a bug, that’s a feature.”

Hmm. Well, things are dreadful there now. Stability is the absence of change, meaning that so long as the situation is stable, things will stay dreadful. And we don’t want things to stay dreadful, do we?

Actually, some people do. But that’s because they’re comfortable with the current dreadfulness, since it either doesn’t affect them, or redounds to their benefit. How, exactly, does this justify a pose of moral superiority?