Sunday, April 02, 2006
A really good defense of the Iraq war
In sum the Status Quo was too bad to do nothing, so Bush at least did something. We have to win the war there otherwise America might turn issolationist, as the cost of the rest of the world. We have to win otherwise conflict in the Middle East will increase. We have to win otherwise other countries, seeing our weakness, might do something rash. For example China might try to regain Tiawan, which would increase instability and could even touch off a truly great war.
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I (respectfully) disagree with the argument offered in The Economist. I fully and completely supported throwing Afghanistan back to the stone age (sadly, a short throw), but Iraq? Where was the connection with 9/11 or the immediate threat? Sure, it was an unpredictable nation led by a brutal dictator, but so are some of our friends (see Russia's actions in Chechnya, China in Tienneman Square, Turkey's treatment of the Kurds, Saudi Arabia's treatment of its people, Egypt's horrible attempts at democracy, etc.). Furthermore, the evidence was tenuous at best, as the testimony of several intelligence analysts and military officers has demonstrated. Finally, going after Saddam Hussein when we hadn't yet captured Bin Laden or neutralized Al Queda was a horrible decision that shifted our focus from Al Queda to middle east nation-building.
We need to be meaningfully engaged in the Middle East (President Bush has done very little on the Israel-Palestine issue) - but invasion and occupation is not meaningful engagement. I said this three years ago and I say it now - I'll gladly eat my words if we find WMD. But we won't, because this whole war was a farce, a lie, a mistake of gargantuan proportions.
Yet we can't leave - not yet, anyway. We made a mess of Iraq, and now we have to clean it up.
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