CB,
"The question to keep asking, in my opinion, is whether they are better off now than they were before. I think yes..."
Is there anything that would make you think "No" as the answer to that question? Or has Saddam become associated with "Hitler" or "Stalin" in your mind that there would never be a "No"? Is this a judgement that you (that is, we, as Americans) are actually entitled to make?
As Aristotle, Machiavelli, Locke, Hamilton, Madison, Jefferson and any number of other political thinkers repeatedly wrote, "No man is a good judge in his own cause." I'm afraid we've lost as much sight of that as the British and French did in their colonial heyday. Suppose a a simultaneous war of liberation and civil war breaks out in Iraq over the next couple of years; will "they" still be "better off" than if we hadn't invaded, if we had merely kept inspectors in, kept tightening the noose, and actually mobilized world opinion to oppose Saddam instead of Bush?
Just asking. I'm sure we will disagree. Just want to know if there is anything at all that would lead you or any of the other supporters of this ... action... to say, well it was indeed a mistake, the place is too much of tinderbox, when GB and France broke up the Ottoman Empire, they created a political monster, as promised by the xxx Commission (I forget offhand the name of the commission that predicted decades of chaos if the Empire were broken up, and was promptly ignored by the pompous politicos in Britain who had wartime friends to reward with "countries"). |
