STEVEN DEN BESTE on the reasons for war from an expert:

The second front was about the long-term eradication of the root causes of Al-Qaeda-type terrorism. All the terrorist-wallahs and Arabists the Bush administration tapped said the same thing: the reason educated Arabs sign up with bin Laden is a lack of democracy in their homelands. The antidote: open up the Arab world.

What’s funny is that the Bush Administration has endorsed “root causes” — but in a serious way. “Root causes” was supposed to be a slogan that would justify not acting, not a rationale for action. Dumb cowboys — don’t they understand anything?