Why not kill Saddam and spare Iraq?

There’s something terribly primitive about bombing the hell out of a country simply to get rid of one man (and, perhaps, his small ragbag assortment of grinning, psychopathic sons, obsequious flunkeys and hired assassins).

This is what we’re about to do to Iraq, if I’m not mistaken about the utter futility of this business with the weapons inspectors. We are angry with one evil man and further irritated by his devoted but minuscule coterie. And so we plan to send in the expensive bombers and those weapons of fairly widespread destruction, the missiles; and perhaps thousand upon thousand of ground troops, too, in order to be rid of him and install someone marginally less despotic. It seems an awful lot of effort, just for Saddam. You have to say, we would truly be putting ourselves out. Arguably we were more indulgent even of Hitler.

In a feature film, of course, we wouldn’t bother bombing innocent people just to get one man.