I think that ultimately what we did could be good thing, but ONLY if we do not now allow corporate nepotism and greed rule Iraq instead of the Iraqi
people.. Oh sorry, Haliburton and Bechtel already have huge contracts to "rebuild" Iraq so that has already happened. Let's just hope it does not
get worse.
I am curious, however, the how the ultra hawks justify the war. First it was links to terrorism, and I am certain that there are terrorists in that
country, but is that alone enough grounds for war? Britian just had one their own (legally their own anyway) blow up a cafe in Israel, does that give
us the right to bomb London? After all they were harboring a terrorist, whether they know it or not. In fact, let's bomb NY state, Northern KY,
California and Washington State, after all there were suspected terrorists there. I know I am being sarcastic here but I feel that this reasoning
alone cannot justify a war.
Next, WMD. The war is barely over, and we have yet to really investigate unimpeded, but if we do not find a HUGE cache of weapons the
US/UK/Australian alliance will look like complete fools. On this, only time will tell.
Lastly, I read here and elsewhere that we liberated the Iraqi people from a brutal dictator. I even relied on that argument here, when I posted a
lengthy note about how a liberal like myself can justify the war. However, I wonder more and more, if the liberation of these poor souls was so
incredibly important why did we wait for 30 years to do free them? If we knew Hussein was such a brutal and evil man from the beginning of his regime
(which we did) why did we let him stay in power? The answer to that is a combination of the Zero Sum game of Realpolitik the US played with the USSR
allowed us to turn a blind eye to tyrants so long as Washington held sway over them and not the Kremlin and our reliance on easy access to Arabian
oil. Alexander Haig once said "We know he (Hussein) is a Son of a B@*tch, but he's OUR SOB." (Tarock, The Superpowers Involvement in the Iran Iraq
War, 1998) During the GW1 we had the opprotunity to liberate the Iraqi people but were forced to pull back by the international community. The US
then let the regime viciously repress any opposition for 12 years. Because of these issues I think the "liberation" theory falls short of the mark.
If 9/11 had never happened the Bush admin, I don't think, would have ever thought about a pre-emptive strike. But 9/11 did happen and Bush managed
to send so many mixed messages about why we were going into Iraq that the majority of us just simply said "OK, just do this fast so you can focus on
the horrid economy."
Alright! Let the flaming begin!