Call me old-fashioned, but was not the deliberate use of force by one nation against another nation once labeled as aggression? And was not aggression once seen as a war crime? Certainly a large number of Japanese and German leaders once were hanged for just that kind of behavior. Yet today's U.S. and British leaders seem to have no problem talking freely about an attack on Iraq.

In the old days, simply planning aggression was seen as a war crime punishable by death. Japan's unrealized 1930s plans to attack the Soviet Union are an example. No doubt the Washington people will say that their planned attacks are different, that they seek to stamp out evil. But that is what they all say, including those former Japanese and German leaders.

In those days communism, rather than terrorism, was the alleged evil. Unlike today's labored efforts to prove that Iraq is a terrorist nation, no one then could deny that the Soviet Union was a communist nation. The Nationalist government in China was also seen as guilty because of its post-1936 agreement with the Red Army to fight against Japan. But that did not save those Japanese and German leaders from a highly ignominious fate at the Tokyo and Nuremberg tribunals. (Nor, incidentally, did it prevent Western leaders from smoothly inheriting the same belligerent anticommunism sentiment, a very sore point with Japanese rightwingers upset about those tribunals.)