I am curious as to the motivations of those who oppose the US led war in Iraq now underway. I've read press releases, listened to interviews, and have tried to understand the arguments presented by the opposition. I have questions about them, which I will deal with as individual arguments. It has been my experience that, when one enters into a discussion like this, people will move from one argument to another without allowing me to fully dig into any single one (this is also true of arguments I have with creationists). I will take advantage of this forum to try to take one issue at a time:

• "I oppose Saddam and would support the war, if the US had international approval." Is international approval a prerequisite to a position being moral? In a hypothetical situation, if a genocide is occurring that does not occasion international wrath, does that make the genocide any less wrong? Whilst I agree that since failing to get international approval the US has put its neck out, and will put its relations with other nations in jeopardy, that in itself doesn't affect the question of morality. The question then would become: Should a nation act in a moral situation even if it goes against the international order?
• "In previous situations, the US has not opposed the actions of dictators, including the actions of Saddam." and "There are many dictators around the world as bad or worse than Saddam." While I agree with both of these statements, I do not see how either would require a lack of action against Iraq. It is not true that acting badly in one situation means that one must act badly in all situations. Indeed, if the speaker means that it was unjust for the US not to intervene in those situations, it would seem that they should endorse the Iraqi action as an instance of the US "finally getting it right." "I believe there are ulterior motives for US intervention in Iraq - the US is intent on getting control of Iraqi oil." What this argument would seem to justify is opposition to the intended peace, not to the war. If the speaker believes that Saddam is a brutal dictator and that opposition to him is not unjust, one would think that the speaker should not oppose the war, but should participate in demonstrations calling for the creation of a democratic state in Iraq. It puts me in mind of some of the quotes of Iraqi ex-pats who said that, while they appreciate the sentiments of the demonstrators around the world, they fell that the demonstrators do not understand what it is like in Iraq.

  My own feeling is that the actions of Saddam and the Baath government can be morally opposed. In the event that a peaceful resolution of the issue cannot be attained (e.g., asking the Baath party to change, asking Saddam to leave the country), the situation can morally be resolved through the application of force.

Anyone who has browsed through /. posts on evolutionary or medical topics long enough has run into the claim that, via technological innovation, mankind has managed to stop evolving. This claim is based on a misnderstanding of evolution, and can be held as roughly equivilant to saying that inventing the airplane has managed to eliminate gravity.

So long as there is differential survival and reproduction in a genetic system, evolution will occur. Let's distinguish some of the dynamics involved in evolution:

• Natural Selection: This is the Darwinian process by which certain phenotypes, by virtue of their characteristics, are more likely to survive and reproduce.
• Sexual Selection: This is the process (also proposed by Darwin but significantly modified later) by which the choice of mates affects an individual's ability to reproduce.
• Random Drift: This is the process by which, through stochastic action and the so-called sampling error, a population's genetic makeup can change over time. This theory became much more important in the 1970's as a result of Kimura's Neutral Theory.

So, what happens to these dynamics when we make available (for instance) a technology like immunization, or for that matter, corrective lenses? It obviously cannot affect the dynamics of random drift, as drift includes only purely stochastic action. It may have an effect on sexual selection (people with glasses are considered funny looking, or intellectual, and this evaluation may affect their ability to reproduce), but the effect, though impacted, is still there. It most strongly affects natural selection. Individuals with poor eyesight, yours truly among them, would be at a strong disadvantage. Were it not for corrective lenses, I'd barely be able to walk safely down a street, much less drive a car. These people would be unable to work as effectively as individuals with normal eyesight. People with poor eyesight would be stastically less likely, as a result of these survival dynamics, to leave offspring.

What we have in the case of corrective lenses and natural selection, then, is an instance of the reduction of selective pressure on an individual pheotype. It doesn't remove it entirely (there are many situations where I'd be in worse shape than someone who didn't require glasses, most of them involving cases where my glasses would fall off), but it certainly mitigates the effects of the selective dynamic. However, in the absence of the overwhelming pressure of near-blindness, other pressures will make themselves felt. Intelligence, physical aptitude, disease resistance, and the like will continue to play a role. This cascading effect continues - remove the necessity for high resistance to a certain bacterial infection by suppliing an individual with medication, and you just open up an avenue for other selective dynamics.

I'll try to leave it at that, and hope that it will suffice to explain that evolution will not stop because of our ability to cure genetic disorders, subsidize people in poverty, or apply technology in any way that promotes human survival.