Knowing what you know now, would you have supported this war back then?
Yes.
We had to get rid of Saddam before he bought WMD on the black market thereby giving him the potential to change the face of the ME in a radical way, before it became impossible to contain him, before he died and his even more horrible and more unstable sons took over, and before he forged some sort of alliance with AQ.
You'll notice that these all of these factors do not depend on whether Saddam had WMD now. The failure to find them is not good, but it also does not destroy the other justifications, which I find compelling.
The lack of a 9/11 connection does not bother me--it was, by the way, never used as a justification for the war by the Bush Administration, the Lying Left Media's attempts to reconstruct history notwithstanding.
Going to war sooner rather than later minimized the risks of doing so later.
To use crude comparisons, does a homeowner repair a foundation when he first sees the problems or when it has failed? When are the expense and the problems less? Do you go to a dentist when you first notice the problems or when the only remedy is a denture?
Doing what needed to be done in Iraq in advance of things going badly is tough, seems unnecessary in terms of the present realities, but undoubtedly saved a ton of problems later. I don't ever want to say "coulda, woulda, shoulda" on this issue.
The postwar was horrible, poorly planned and poorly executed. Awful April was horrid. But we are getting on track as it appears that the insurgents are slowly losing. Zarqawis recent plea to OBL had the ring of truth to it--he essentially admitted that the insurgency is getting slowly crushed.
Iraqis will turn against the insurgents as the carnage they cause causes more and more death and destruction. Like anyone else, they want a return to normalcy. We are offering peace and a reconstruction, the insurgents are simply offering Iraqis a religious dictatorship instead of Saddam's secular one. |
