What is happening on the streets of Beirut is not a result of the invasion of Iraq, nor does it retrospectively justify that invasion. But it does, obviously, have something to do with American policy.

The common complaint of [Jon] Stewart and the anti-hygiene anti-war crowd seems to be that the freedom of Iraqis was an after the fact rationalization for the war. It got me thinking, so I did some heavy research and was quite surprised to learn that the military operation was not named “Operation Iraqi WMD”! Apparently it was called—get this!—Operation Iraqi Freedom.