Sweden's pacifist defense minister.

Mikael Tolgfors, Sweden's new defense minister refused to bear arms when drafted in the 1980s. Later, while working for the Red Cross, a Kurd showed him a picture of Saddam Hussein's massacre at Halabja – which picture did the trick and persuaded him that the use of military force can be oh so legit after all.

The death toll at the sad place is thought to have been 5,000. Why Halabja would cause the scales to fall from Mr. Tolgfors's eyes and, say, the crushing of National Socialism with its attendant death toll in the tens of millions evidently did not is a mystery. A mystery, in fact, that to us is right up there with gravity.

Still, you've got to appreciate the irony of a defense minister of Sweden who was a former pacifist and only became a former pacifist upon the discovery of some minor catastrophe (by 20th century standards) that provides, in fact, no lesson whatsoever about the salutary use of force either to prevent or avenge a great wrong.

We always like to allow for people to have a genuine change of heart. As Marcus Aurelius wrote, "Within ten days thou wilt seem a god to those to whom thou art now a beast and an ape, if thou wilt return to thy principles and the worship of reason." Meditations, Book IV.

Still, this is not a case of someone returning to a previously abandoned position of some rationality. And, bottom line, it's a bit like Sweden appointing someone like Jimmy Carter and expecting him to lie awake at night thinking up better and more devious ways to kick the ass of Sweden's enemies. Granted converts can be more zealous than people who've been on board all along. But, in the absence of reassuring noises along the lines of what an absolute fire breather this guy is, don't you think that a rational government, a non-pussified government, would choose someone with some real steam in his boiler all his life about military matters?

Martha Stewart might abandon as we speak a lifetime interest in matters domestic and develop a passionate interest in special operations but would she necessarily be the right person to put in charge of SOCOM?

We're just asking, is all.

"National Defense Through Insanity." By ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ at Fighting in the Shade™, 9/16/07.