Reason for my extensive quoting of George Weigel's "Idealism Without Illusions" -- I found this to be an interesting read because, composed in 1994, the latter half of the book contained the initial formulations of his thought on "just war and the Gulf War", the limits of national sovereignty with relation to pre-emptive strikes against despotic and aggressive regimes; justification for and reasonable constraints on U.S. "humanitarian intervention"; the necessity of understanding Islam and taking the threat of militant Islam seriously (the chapter "Terrorism and America" was inspired by the first Twin Towers Attack on March 17, 1993).
Many of these issues which would be later "fleshed out" in the debate over the current engagement in Iraq. (Likewise, Weigel's thoughts on the Just War Tradition are layed out extensively in the much longer and more substantial Tranquillitas Ordinis: The Present Failure and Future Promise of American Catholic Thought on War and Peace (Oxford UP).
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