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I don’t want to get into a long rehash of it.

I was fine with getting rid of Saddam as a stepping stone to regime change in Iran, based in Iraq and assisting the forces of moderation who hate the mullahs. That apparently, it came out later, was never the plan. It was a stupid plan to topple Saddam and remake Iraq into a western democracy. It was possible, perhaps, but not while fighting a PC, nice guy war, and not with a press that goaded the terrorists into constant attacks and that was actively fomenting opposition within the US.

I thought Bush had a strategic plan to engage islam in this battle of ideas and civilization. He didn’t; he was in bed with the Saudis, didn’t want to extend into Iran and only wanted to get rid of Saddam out of some revenge for an attack on his dad. Even given all that, it would have been ok to take out Saddam if you had a plan to install a pro-western strong man a little less brutal who could take over and keep it together. That was not the plan, and, although Bush was able to keep Iraq somewhat stable until he left, it was very fragile and Obama’s treachery sent it back into chaos. 3000+ lives lost for no strategic gain. Iran now rules Iraq, more or less—the opposite of what I thought we needed to do.

I was a fan of Michael Ledeen, who wrote constantly of Iran from 2002-2006, expecting us to do something there. He ended every column with “Faster.” He, like me, thought we were going to do something eventually.

As I said, the war in Iraq was fought brilliantly. We took the entire nation with fairly low casualties. That’s what I thought was worthy of celebrating on that ship. At that point, we should have left a garrison in a defensible position, and put someone in charge, assuming we weren’t going to follow up in Iran (and Syria). It would have given us a base and a middle east nation that we could get alone with.