Abraham’s Math
“And Abraham drew near, and said, Wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked? Peradventure there be fifty righteous within the city: wilt thou also destroy and not spare the place for the fifty righteous that are therein? That be far from thee to do after this manner, to slay the righteous with the wicked: and that the righteous should be as the wicked, that be far from thee: Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” (Genesis 18:23-25)

And so it goes, five at a time, down to ten, and even for those ten, God would spare the sinners. Of course, we’re talking Sodom and Gomorrah here, and we know what happens after that. Anyway, what was George W. Bush’s math? Did he reckon the consequences of war in Iraq? Or, as in Paul Savoy’s article, ”The Moral Case Against the Iraq War”, was the formula used like that of Raskolnikov? I don’t buy all of Savoy’s argument, notably in excusing Palestinian suicide murderers as freedom fighters (any more than I did when Reagan said the same about the Contras), and I doubt the political will exists to truly force a public reckoning by the Presidential candidates on the moral use of force, but overall, well, there aren’t enough in the White House to spare the Bush administration from destruction in November, or sooner, if only Congress had the will to call these people to account.