Hundreds of thousands of people gathered in Florence, Italy today to protest against invading Iraq (and globalization, Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, and other stuff). I’m definitely not sold on going to war with Iraq, but this protest has the feel of reflexiveness to me. How many of those people are against it because the United States is behind it? And I wonder how they recommend we treat Saddam instead? Surely none of those people think that Saddam Hussein should simply be left to his own devices, to make all the weapons he wants and continue to brutally oppress his miserable subjects. Protesting is all well and good, but there’s more to the world than just opposing the dominant agenda. That’s the problem that the Democrats ran into earlier this week. We need something more than “Bush is wrong” to carry us forward.