If you haven't seen MoveOn's anti-war ad, take a look at their homepage, here. Apparently the ad has gotten a good bit of air time on the networks. Frankly, I think that the ad does not select the best case from the arsenal of anti-war arguments; rather, it seeks to raise fears about possible consequences of war, including a nuclear detonation somewhere. Where the hypothetical bomb is supposed to go off is not clear. The lack of specificity is regrettable, I think, but it is a consequence of MoveOn's strategy in the ad: fearmonger first, answer questions later.

The scenario the ad seems to envision is the following: war in Iraq provokes extremist, anti-American reactions in Pakistan or Iran. These extremists take over the government and distribute nuclear weapons to terrorists to use -- or, perhaps, the extremist coup leaders use them on their own account against the U.S. or Israel.

The problem with the ad's approach is that it relies on the same logic the Bush administration has been proffering as a reason for its own threats to use force, if necessary, to eliminate the risk that Saddam Hussein will obtain nuclear weapons (or, on a smaller scale, stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons). Proliferation is bad, especially in the context of international terrorist groups. Now those threats are seen as being more dangerous than the proliferation threat itself, because, in the end, of the threat of proliferation? My head is spinning.

Note that I'm not saying that Bush has proven, definitively, links between Saddam Hussein's regime and al-Qaeda. I don't think this is really necessary to make Bush's case: what's critical, from the standpoint of the argument, is the threat of proliferation. And I'm also not saying that there aren't other motives for the administration's military buildup in the region. All I'm saying is that MoveOn takes Bush's argument and attempts, oddly, to turn it into an anti-war message.

The ad is high-profile, but still regrettable because of its strange message. More effective, probably, was the electronic, pro-inspection petition that the group circulated and sent to Congress. The petition garnered 300,000 signatures, which seems pretty impressive to me.