Several people have written to me about my political amnesia post. John F reminds me of this clause from the congressional resolution that authorized the use of military force in Iraq (pdf - also here):
Whereas the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 (Public Law 105-338) expressed the sense of Congress that it should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove from power the current Iraqi regime and promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime...And see, as well, the quotations and links in this post at Punditish.
In one or two messages I've received it's been put to me that my post misses the key point: which is supposed to be that even if democratization may have been a theme in official justifications for the war, it wouldn't have sufficed as a basis for the US and its allies going to war. But I haven't missed that point; it just wasn't my point. I did what I could to make it clear that I hadn't overlooked it by saying that '[f]or Bush and Blair these may have been secondary arguments'. But the context of my post was a set of recent anti-war statements which I linked to, and which do precisely suggest that the democratization justifications were after the event. Since that isn't true, it seems relevant to point out that it isn't true and to deploy the evidence.
An afterthought here. Don't many of the same critics who purvey this after-the-event argument also accuse George Bush of seeing himself heading a crusade on behalf of liberty? Right or wrong, the accusation doesn't sit well beside this charge of post hoccery.