There are real and important differences between the attack on Iraq and NATO's war in Libya: what they have in common is the manipulation used to justify them and demonise critics.

In April, 2003, American troops and Saddam Hussein was forced to flee; six months later, the dictator was captured ("caught like a rat in a hole,") and eventually hanged. 

Each of those incidents caused massive numbers of Iraqis who had suffered under his decades-long rule to celebrate, and justifiably so: Saddam really was a monster who had brutally oppressed millions. 

But what was not justifiable was how those emotions were exploited by American war advocates to delegitimize domestic objections to the war.

Even though opposition to the war had absolutely nothing to do with doubt about whether Saddam could be vanquished by the U.S. military -- of course he could and would be -- the emotions surrounding his defeat were seized upon by Iraq War supporters to boastfully claim full-scale vindication. 

So extreme was this manipulative way of arguing that then-presidential-candidate Howard Dean was mauled by people in both parties when he dared to raise questions about whether Saddam's capture -- being hailed in bipartisan political and media circles as a Great American Achievement -- would actually make things better. 

Dean's obvious point was that Saddam's demise told us very little about the key questions surrounding the war: how many civilians had died and would die in the future?  What would be required to stabilize Iraq?  How much more fighting would be unleashed?  What precedents did the attack set?  What regime would replace Saddam and what type of rule would it impose, and to whom would its leaders be loyal? 

That a dictatorial monster had been vanquished told us nothing about any of those key questions -- the ones in which war opposition had been grounded -- yet war proponents, given pervasive hatred of Saddam, dared anyone to question the war in the wake of those emotional events and risk appearing to oppose Saddam's defeat.  That tactic succeeded in turning war criticism in the immediate aftermath of those events into a taboo.

There are real and important differences between the attack on Iraq and NATO's war in Libya, ones that make the former unjustifiable in ways the latter is not (beginning with at least some form of U.N. approval).  But what they do have in common -- what virtually all wars have in common -- is the rhetorical manipulation used to justify them and demonize critics. 

Just as Iraq War opponents were accused of being "objectively pro-Saddam" and harboring indifference to The Iraqi People, so, too, were opponents of the Libya War repeatedly accused of being on Gadaffi's side (courtesy of Hillary Clinton, an advocate of both wars) and/or exuding indifference to the plight of Libyans.  And now, in the wake of the apparent demise of the Gadaffi regime, we see all sorts of efforts, to exploit the emotions from Gadaffi's fall to shame those who questioned the war.

The towering irrationality of this taunt is manifest.  Of course the U.S. participation in that war is still illegal.  It's illegal because it was waged for months not merely without Congressional approval, but even in the face of a Congressional vote against its authorization.  That NATO succeeded in defeating the Mighty Libyan Army does not have the slightest effect on that question, just as Saddam's capture told us nothing about the legality or wisdom of that war.  What comments like this one are designed to accomplish is to exploit and manipulate the emotions surrounding Gaddafi's fall to shame and demonize war critics and dare them to question the War President now in light of his glorious triumph.

No decent human being would possibly harbor any sympathy for Gadaffi, just as none harbored any for Saddam.  It's impossible not to be moved by the celebration of Libyans over the demise of (for some at least) their hated dictator, just as was the case for the happiness of Kurds and Shiites over Saddam's.  And I've said many times before, there are undoubtedly many Libya war supporters motivated by the magnanimous (though misguided) desire to use the war to prevent mass killings (just as some Iraq War supporters genuinely wanted to liberate Iraqis). 

But the real toll of this war (including the number of civilian deaths that have occurred and will occur) is still almost entirely unknown, and none of the arguments against the war (least of all the legal ones) are remotely resolved by yesterday's events.  Shamelessly exploiting hatred of the latest Evil Villain to irrationally shield all sorts of policies from critical scrutiny -- the everything-is-justified-if-we-get-a-Bad-Guy mentality -- is one of the most common and destructive staples of American political discourse, and it's no better when done here.

This is an edited version. To read the full article, go to Salon...