Would of, could of, should of -- IMO we should have dealt with Saddam when he was rising to power per advise of CIA operatives at that time. I, like many feel we could have removed Saddam during the Gulf War with more support from the world. Certainly far more than with Dubya's misleading and mishandling. But more importantly was as you state, the hope that Saddam would lose power--enough that new leadership might rise from within. If we had removed him ourselves, what would result? Probably a lot of what we are dealing with now.
Probably. And ineed, now is unpleasant, and costly, and hard, and difficult, and gut wrenching. Unavoidable.
Now is, for the first time in a long time, finally, staying and passing judgement on what we believe is right, and what we believe is wrong, and choosing. And, in so choosing, backing up our choice if and when that is necessary. We either fight for our view of justice, or we succumb to the vision of those who will fight for theirs.
There used to be an endless argument whose primary purpose was to endlessly deny the need to ever choose; that path is vacuous, and wrong, and in the long run, much more costly than simply choosing.
It's not that hard to know what to choose; it's just that in the short term, it is harder to act than to not act. In the long term, our decades of putting off these hard choices have left a huge bill to pay.
It was wrong to leave Iraq in the hands of murdering thugs. It's wrong to let the future of Iraq be determined by kidnapping, murdering, terroristic thugs. It's right to back a peaceful, orderly process of assuming power in Iraq. The fact that there are a minority of ****fighters throwing gut wrenching ****, including, sending a hardly can be expected to be 'informed' six of seven year old girl out into the street to hurl explosives at a convoy, does not negate any of that. It merely makes it difficult and hard and costly and unpleasant and gut wrenching to stay and face the thugs that would do such things, in the name of anything on earth.
And, how telling that they chose a girl-child to dispose of in this fashion. That was not a 50-50 happenstance, not in that radical fundamentalist subset of that culture. I have no qualms at all about pointing at that aspect of that culture, as one example of many, and claiming, that is wrong, it is not an innocent matter of Vanilla/Chocolate/cultural diversity in the great rainbow of people making random choices, and it should not stand, even if force is required to squash it..
Oh, but we can't fix every wrong in the world, therefore... that is our license to endelssly fix none. That used to be the argument. That still is the argument. It is the argument that says, we should never fix any wrong in the world, ever, because ... we can't fix every one.
Or, there are "worse problems," and we are not fixing those, therefore, we should not fix these, or any.
Seriously, where is the holy consensus to fix those worse wrongs? Where was the holy consensus, prior to 9/11, that would have allowed us to eject the Taliban from control of Afghanistan? It is not funny, but it would be laughable to claim that, prior to 9/11, the world would have supported an effective war to remove the Taliban from running Club Terrorist in Afghanistan. It barely held its tongue when we did just that in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. The entire premise of the western world has been to project merely the appearance of doing something, as opposed to actually doing something, because projecting appearances is much less costly in terms of lives, in terms of resources, and in terms of votes...in the short term. In the long term, "gesture politics" is a disaster.
The generation before us did not send The Blue Man Group to perform street theatre to confront Hitler. Today's Jew haters cannot be confronted with painless gestures of condemnation.
How could one generation act with such clarity, and their children be infected with such total puddingheadedness?
There is not one answer. But, here is part of it; a lie that has been spoon fed to us since birth. "Violence is never the answer."
The source of that lie is a movement to render us unable to defend ourselves, and as well, to destroy ourselves. Our schools have been surrendered to that lie, our streets are bieng surrendered to that lie, and now the entire world is being surrendered to that lie. For a people that believe that 'violence is never the answer,' we have not made any inroads at all in reducing the amount of it raging around the world.
If there is one Iraqi left, pressing for a peaceful non-violent Iraq, ruled by law and not murdering thugs sending 7 year old girls out to hurl explosives at convoys, then even if 25 million Iraqis minus one are dancing in the street, cheering on the bloodshed, kidnapping Japenses woman and threatening to burn them alive, dragging corpses throught the sreets, lining up behind whatever Shiite cleric drew the knife across the throat first, then shame on us for leaving that one human being to be overrun by thug/animals.
I would make that argument all the way until that last one. But in fact, I don't think we're close to that situation in Iraq. In fact, I think we're much closer to the following:
A tiny minority of ****fighters moved to extreme violence in a country of 25 million who have been ruled by fear and violence and murder and mass graves and Saddam's Goon Guard for three decades, nervously whatching the CNN/ABC/NBC/CBS led cheerleaders for 'cut and run again' on their heretofore illegal satellite dishes, wondering if America is once again going to leave the Kurds and Shia swinging in the wind like we did as recently as 1996, complete with No FLy Zones to watch but don't touch.
We have no credibility with those 25 million; why on Earth should we? They've seen us cut and run and leave Iraq to thugs before. They've seen us covertly egging them on, just to have us watch safely from 15,000 feet while knives were dragged across throats.
It is as if the combined media resources of the balance of the civilized world were focused on only one goal; a campaign to boost the morale of the ****fighters in Iraq, to cheer them on as they murder and kidnap and torture and send out 7 year old girls to hurl bombs at convoys. Hold on, we've almost convinced our leaders to cut and run again, if you just ramp up the ****fight just a little bit, you could yet turn this around and ... we'll cut and run again.
In the interest of 'peace,' where are the peace marchers condeming the ****fighters in Iraq? Where are the heartfelt calls to 'end the violence?' It is glaringly missing; the so called 'peace movement' is not about peace at all; it is about defeat of the US by those who believe they have to destroy the USA in order to save it. Cute line, indeed, our own religious fanatics live by this, fervently.
Press Kerrey on his disclosures of US covert activity in Iraq since 1991, the slaughter by Saddam in 1996 of the last of the Kurd and SHia still struggling to stand up to him at our urging, while we did nothing from 15,000 ft, the request in 1998 for additional covert action in Iraq, the price demanded by Kerrey and others, the public Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, declaring that it was official US policy to remove the Saddam regime from Iraq?
Or, does all that not somehow fit into the Center For AMerican Progress talking points, "Bush showed up in January 2001, suddenly intent on having the US oust Sadaam from Iraq come Hell or High Water, Clear Out Of The Blue Based on Lies Lies Lies?"
