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Originally Posted by Herodotus
Putting aside for a moment that the administration built its entire case with the international community for invasion on the premise that Iraq had these WMD, there are still problems with the invasion. The absence of WMD renders Saddam's alleged terrorist ties moot. Without the potential of use of WMD, terrorism becomes not a threat, but rather a bothersome annoyance.
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For the purpose of disussion, I am not basing my view on whether Saddam had or had not WMD nor whether he had or had not any ties with terrorist groups. As I said, it would have been better for our image if he had. The underlying purpose of going into Iraq was not to punish Saddam, but to confront the whole terrorist phenomenon in the region where it it is based and draws its strength. If it was not operating specifically in Iraq at that time, it was all around Iraq. If the objective is to get close so you confront terrorism, you pick a point of entry that is politically and militarily vulnerable. Iraq fit the bill. Saddam's record was deplorable; he appeared to still have banned WMD; he gassed his own people; he was responsible for thousands of deaths; he saw to his own pleasures out of the oil for peace program; he had started a war with Iran; invaded Kuwait. In short, there was little sympathy for his continued survival.
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Before 9/11, the largest terrorist attack only killed several hundered people, and after 9/11 the largest terrorist attacks only killed at most, several hundred people. 9/11 was an anomaly, it could not have been repeated even if we did not go after Saddam. Before the invasion Saddam had at best a cursory relationship with an anti-Iranian group (MEK) which the US eventually co-opted, allowed several heads of defunct terrorist organizations sancutary (Abu Nidal, Abu Abbas, etc.) one of whom was killed/died before the invasion, another had renounced terrorism ten years prior to his caputre in Iraq, and periodically gave money to the families of Hamas suicide bombers after the fact.
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All very interesting, but irrelavent to the central issue. How does the US protect itself, its allies and trading partners, and its vital interests in the face of escalating terrorism? Modify its ME policy and abandon Israel to suit the terrorists? Once you start doing that, there is no end to it. It invites every group opposed to US policy to blow up American embassies. It inculcates a culture of retreat among your own people. No. Going into Iraq was saying 'enough is enough.'
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... But even in trying to promote democracy in this barren land, the administration has failed. Gone is the middle class, over half have fled, many of the rest have been killed, and with it any chance of a viable democracy. In its place arose the Shiite rabble (orgainized by former terrorist groups sponsored in whole by Iran), susceptible to the honeyed words of demagogues, and instrumental in converting Iraq (once a bastion of secularism in the Moslem world) into a theocracy in many places.
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Failure comes at the end. Until then, there is struggle. Struggle has its good days and bad. I know people opposed to the war who say they'd be ok with it if it had been a slam dunk as advertized. It's a subtle contradiction: this idea that victory is ok, but fighting for it is not.
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So low are expectations now, that we are merely left to fighting the remanants of a terrorist organization that did not exist prior to the invasion, and our "victory" will be defined on if we can beat it or not. How anyone can look at Iraq and not see a classic strategic error is beyond me.
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First of all, most observers don't agree that expectations are as low as they were. Second, the so-called "remnants" of a terrorist organization is exactly what I was referring to earlier. Iraq sits in the middle of a region where the terrorists are recruited for Iraq and before that for 9/11, Bali, USS Cole, our embassies in Africa, etc. Don't think for a minute that our being in Iraq caused them to organize against us. They merely moved to a place where we were a handier target, and likewise they became targets.