'BAFFLED' BY POLLITT

Princeton, NJ

A war on Iraq may be a bad idea on balance, but I am baffled by Katha Pollitt's main argument against it ["Subject to Debate," Oct. 14]. Pollitt concedes that Saddam Hussein is a murderous dictator. She then goes on to note that he is not the only murderous dictator in the world, and that some of our so-called allies are almost as bad. Somehow this is supposed to show that we should leave Saddam alone. But to borrow a phrase from an old philosopher, surely this is a non sequitur of numbing grossness. What is Pollitt's principle? If you can't fix everything, fix nothing? If you can't do everything, do nothing? Let he who is without sin cast the first stone? This is a recipe for a familiar brand of liberal purist isolationism. Cleave to the Pollitt doctrine and at least your foreign policy won't be "inconsistent"--as if consistency were the summum bonum. God, will we miss Hitchens.

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