First an foremost, my thoughts are with the fallen and their families. May they rest in peace.
Well, in this case it could be argued that the US was at least partially responsible for Saddam’s rise to power. It certainly was responsible for providing him with tons of weaponry, enabling him to become a lot more dangerous than he truly might have been under his own power (which is not to say he wasn’t a madman in his own right: he was).
I’ve always been of two minds on this issue. The reactionary in me thinks “Hey, you guys got the wrong puppet in place, you take him down again, too”. On the other hand, there’s never been a more dangerous time for the US to go to war than now: anti-American sentiments are rampant, and invading Iraq is only going to fuel the flames. Who needs that? As much as I might dislike the current administration, the US is still a country I love, and many of its citizens I consider my friends. That, and they’re an ally - and they’re liberators, and always will be, to my nation.
So, with that in mind, I thought a UN mission was preferable. Obviously, history has shown that GWB et al didn’t have the same amount of patience. We’ll never know whether they made the right call, here. The cynic in me thinks Iraq was an easy target in order to divert media attention away from that other war: the war on terror. Where’s Bin Laden? Where’s the man that brought down the Twin Towers?
If I had a son in Iraq, I’d be marching in front of the White House demanding that GWB pulls out of Iraq in favour of a UN task force, and focus on the real issues the US faces.
Of course, GWB won’t do this. Not until the pie called Iraq has been sliced up and divided among various American companies.
Liberation, my ass.
Anyways. As for the US going after every dictator in the world, I’d have to agree with Boo Boo Foo here. Screwed if you do, screwed if you don’t. With great power comes great responsibility, and showing that responsibility is quite a task. It’s obviously too much of a task for the current administration.
Even with an army as big as the US, taking on all dictatorships simultaneously, or even in rapid succession, is impossible. One could argue whether the US should focus on real threats, like North Korea with its nuclear weapons aspirations, rather than an already crippled desert country with little defense.
I’m not suggesting the US should have attacked North Korea: that may indeed have been too dangerous, and not just for the US. But the fact remains that the threat Iraq poses was vastly exaggerated (either intentionally or not), and as a result, many young men and women are dying in a war that should not have taken place, at least not like this.