War & Peace Quote by Peter DeFazio

DeFazio’s line is built to deny his opponents an easy smear. He starts by stipulating the obvious moral baseline: Saddam was “a brutal tyrant,” and a trial for “crimes against humanity” is welcome. That opening isn’t throat-clearing; it’s a shield. By granting the strongest emotional premise for war, he blocks the familiar move of equating skepticism about military action with sympathy for the dictator.

The pivot word is “But,” and it does nearly all the work. DeFazio reframes the argument from moral disgust to democratic responsibility: the question isn’t whether Saddam deserves condemnation, but whether the United States has met a higher threshold before risking American lives. The phrase “not the measure I use” signals a standards-based worldview, a legislator insisting on criteria beyond outrage or revenge: imminence of threat, clarity of objectives, legality, coalition support, and the long tail of occupation and aftermath. In other words, he’s contesting the administration’s implied equation that “bad man exists” equals “war is justified.”

The most loaded clause is “our men and women in uniform off to war and possible death.” It’s deliberately plain, almost parental, meant to puncture the abstraction that policy debates can become. Subtext: politicians can’t launder moral certainty into body bags without a credible strategy and mandate.

Contextually, this reads as an anti-Iraq War argument designed for a post-9/11 audience primed for decisive action. DeFazio isn’t defending Saddam; he’s defending the idea that war requires more than righteousness. It requires proof, limits, and accountability.