I think the way we got into this was utterly inept, and caused far more rancor and chaos than was needed. However, that may have been intentional, not inept as it seems. I don’t know which is worse (or, if intentional, if ultimately it really is worse: the case is still open)
But then, on the other hand, I don’t know that we would have gotten into this war if not for this President and this administration. And this has been the right war for decades now.
However, there are many many more things to consider than simply Iraq in this major, world-order changing move: many more lives in balance all over the world than just Iraqis. I don’t think people appreciate this enough: I don’t think the administration really appreciates it enough, other than a single triumphalist story. If we’re really weighing lives in the balance, we have to consider all these other implications as well.
For one thing, there are many more right wars out there. This war could make them not only more possible in the world political scene, but easier to win: when dictators see how quickly we can attain victory, how quickly their own people will turn on them and curse their names, and how utterly ineffectual and ridiculous their own resistence and grand statements will look… they may well crumble or at least bend far easier than Saddam did (with the notable exception of Kim Il Jung. Saddam was meglomaniacal and murderous, but he at least seemed somewhat sane in a crafty, Stalinist way: Kim is just bat-shit nuts: just read about some of the things he does, like separating triplets, kidnapping movie producers to film Godzilla movies for himself, etc.) In other words, this could be the world’s ticket to everything LIBERALISM WAS SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT. Only Nixon could go to China, and maybe only Bush can free Tibet. I don’t know if that’s really the case. I do know that if that IS the case, and so-called liberals refuse to accept it simply because they hate Bush, they are denying their very roots at least on a pragmatic scale: letting their hate for imperialism dwarf their supposed hate for facism.
On the other hand, it still remains to be seen how the Arab world will respond. Even a few crazies motivated by this could cause untold damage. Likewise, the concept of a meaningful international law is likely to be dead and dying for quite awhile, both because of the U.N. and in spite of it. When the U.N. is reduced to a glorified UPS aid delivery service, it’s failed its basic purpose. No doubt something will replace it eventually, but for now, the needle is closer to Pax Americana, and that is not likely to work too well for some people: not all of them bad guys either. America can still be Ugly America, very easily, particularly with a President that spent the last two years pissing off the rest of the world for no particular reason I can discern other than simple disdain.
The point is, this war is much much bigger than Iraq. However, as I hope I’ve briefly outlined, it could be bigger in lots of different ways, some of them unbelievably good, some bad. We can’t predict events on such a large scale. We can predict, however, that people liberated from a tyrant (yes, a tyrant we delivered unto them, and a tyrant we helped trapped them in with, and all that: which is, however, now in the past, not the future) are going to be a lot better off, and they’re generally going to understand that we didn’t come to kill them. Whatever our motives really are, the fact remains that the Iraqi people will now be world’s better off, and in the long run, the killing is being stopped, not stepped up. The U.S. would have to kill Iraqi civilians at a phenomenal rate to even begin to catch up to Saddam.
However, against the OP, I should point out two things. First of all, the OPs take on this:
seems over-the-top, especially when its claimed to be an “argument against the war” which there is no OP evidence of. There are plenty of real, live peace activists that say silly things like “but this war kills children, it must be stopped!” that are at least complete thoughts: there’s no need to beat the snot out of this particular random woman, fantasize floridly about her loved ones raped and tortured… all on a bunch of overheated and questionable assumptions about what she does or does not otherwise know or think about Saddam’s regime. Mind-reading and motive-interpreting on this scale, especially when their purpose is to aid a vicious personal attack, is… not so nice to see.
Second of all, it is perfectly legitimate to criticize excess and bad policy WITHIN a war. We cannot allow people to parade around unfalsiable positions in which every civilian death, every accident, is all Saddam’s fault, and our side can do no wrong whatsoever: any state of conflict is equally good. We cannot allow people to make “first, shoot the hostages, they’ll never expect that!” a reasonable knee-jerk strategy for hostage negotiation, no matter how bad we want to nail the hostage takers. There are many legitimate positions on the wisdom of particular strategies, and many legitimate criticisms of people who act without regard for human life, even if their purpose is good. (However, that said, I think you’d have a hard time finding a military conflict in which one side, especially one side ONLY, displayed such a careful attitude towards civilians. So while some criticisms in specific places may well be valid, a grand sweeping case is very hard to make in this situation)
Saddam’s demise would in no way translate to an end to the brutalisation the Ba’ath party has wrought on the Iraqi population thus far. In case it escaped your attention, his sons aren’t exactly peaceniks. Had the status quo been preserved then power would have passed to his second son Qusay
