In San Francisco and Berkeley, California, we had some conversations with Californians who hold some sincere but misguided beliefs of the antiwar left. We reprint a few of the arguments we heard, along with some thoughts of our own:

It’s obvious — peace is better than war.

It’s wasn’t obvious to Patrick Henry and isn’t to the people of New Hampshire. Sometimes, as for the people of Iraq, war is better. In any event, as of September 11, we are already in a war. We were attacked. The question is whether we are going to fight back and win or strike a passive stance and let ourselves be defeated.

But Iraq didn’t attack us, bin Laden did.

Iraq and Al Qaeda are part of the same Axis of Evil. Iraq helps shelter and train al Qaeda operatives.

Well, America shelters Al Qaeda operatives.

But we don’t do it intentionally.

Well, Syria and Iran also help al Qaeda. Why are we attacking Iraq and not them?

Well, we’ll eventually need to help free Syria and Iran, too. But Iraq, because it has so openly broken U.N. resolutions and because it has such a well-developed democratic opposition, makes good sense as an early battle.

Well, I just think we should give the inspectors more time to work.

The inspectors have had a decade to work. And even if they did work, a Saddam disarmed of unconventional weapons would still be a tyrant, his people deprived of freedom and democracy.

But there are plenty of countries out there that lack freedom and democracy. Why are we picking on Iraq and not Saudi Arabia or Pakistan or Communist China, which aren’t exactly paragons of freedom or democracy?

A lot of the proponents of war against Iraq aren’t exactly big fans of the current regimes in Saudi Arabia or Pakistan or China. But you’ve got to start somewhere. The fall of the Soviet Union began one East Bloc country at a time. Once one tyranny tumbles, the others often follow.

Well, America and Israel have a lot of the weapons that America now wants to take away from Iraq. Isn’t that hypocritical?

America and Israel are free democracies. Iraq is not.

The idea of regime change in Iraq is not something that started in the brain of President George W. Bush, incidentally. It became a formal, binding, legal part of American policy when Congress, in 1998, passed, by wide margins in both houses, the Iraq Liberation Act, which was signed by a Democratic president, Bill Clinton.

Well, what about North Korea?

We’re all for helping to free North Korea.

You want to get us into a world war?

We’re already in a world war. The question is whether the good guys are going to win, and how soon.

What about the lesson of Vietnam, that American public opinion must be solidly behind a war if it is to be a success?

The notion that Americans weren’t behind the Vietnam war at its outset is part of the big lie. The authority to fight that war was voted overwhelmingly in the Congress and endorsed even by the so-called progressive papers. Check it out. But there is another lesson, too, and it has so far gone unremarked. America’s withdrawal, defeat, default — call it what you will — in Vietnam consigned the 95 million people of Indochina to decades of darkness and suffering under a communist tyranny. To this day, according to the most recent State Department human rights report, the Vietnamese communist government “prohibits independent political, labor, and social organizations; such organizations exist only under government control.” The government “restricts freedom of religion and bans the operation of religious organizations other than those approved by the state,” the State Department says. The Vietnamese have suffered the economic consequences of communism as well; the country’s Gross Domestic Product was a paltry $402 a person, according to the State Department. This is one lesson of Vietnam that the Vietnamese people have learned the hard way. If America stands steady this time around, the Iraqi people may be more fortunate.