That's not entirely true. We could have stopped Iraq from doing anything militarily with just our airpower. Anything even remotely deemed militarily offensive in nature could have been taken out at a moments notice. We could have eliminated Saddam and his two boys without putting one single soldier on the ground in Iraq.
Maybe...but the fact is we have troops on the ground now. You want to pull them out like a bunch of lily-livered Spainards? We need to finish the job this time.
I agree that we shouldnt call mere opposition to Iraq War unAmerican. but ...
"We could have stopped Iraq from doing anything militarily with just our airpower."
How did our airpower stop Saddam from operating his two terrorist training camps (ie Salman Pak)?
How did our airpower stop his $10 billion oil-for-palaces corruption scheme to pay off terrorists and friendly companies and governments?
How did our airpower stop his violations of UN sanctions, his aquisition of banned missiles from RPNK, bio-weapons labs, etc.?
bottom line: Just as airpower doesnt win wars alone, it cant stop terrorist sponsorship and rogue nation's activities by itself.
We took the harder, but more certain and thorough approach to 100% deal with a threat. I'd take that over a 95% approach that still leaves 5% of nagging doubt as to what threat remained.
"We could have eliminated Saddam and his two boys without putting one single soldier on the ground in Iraq."
Possibly, but the Clinton admin made the coup plot of 1995 go FUBAR, and attempts to use missiles in mar 2003 failed, did they not. Saddam was a "hard target", if it was easy, we would have done it sooner.