We could end this war any day we wanted, just as we could have ended Vietnam any day we wanted. Yes we probably can,let me give you two options.
1)We surrender and go home,leaving the Middle East to evolve in whatever way other external forces wish to push it.
2)We blow the whole place to hell,and have to deal with a world which the Chicoms or North Koreans are willing to supply the islamofascist world not located in the Mid East the weapons necessary to balance the scale.
Pick one or provide details on any other alternatives.
Gerard Baker has
an alternative history.
Within months of the avoided showdown, the UN gave Iraq a clean bill of health — there were no stockpiles of weapons at all, it said. The US and the UK were sceptical, insisted that Iraq retained the capability to produce weapons quickly — the real test, they said, of the scale of the threat — and pressed to keep sanctions in place. But it was a losing cause. Saddam invited news organisations to see that the sanctions regime now seemed to be killing even more innocent women and children than it had in the previous ten years And for what? The media hearts bled. Iraq had given up its weapons, had opened its facilities to UN inspectors: why should this punishment go on? The reporters were not allowed to see the stream of foreign companies and officials treading a path to Saddam’s door with gifts, bribes and kickbacks to ensure their share of the wilting Oil-for-Food programme. Nor could they report that Saddam was channelling the money to terrorist groups around the world, as he had before March 2003: only this time, with more money and more international support, the funds got larger, the channels got wider and the terrorists got bolder.
He goes on.
As pressure grew on governments, massive protests in solidarity with the Iraqi people were held around the world. When the US and Britain blocked a Security Council resolution to lift the sanctions, the other UN members simply ignored them. Iraqi oil began to flow again. No one paid much interest when Iraq resumed its interest in uranium purchases from Africa. A. Q. Khan dined expensively in the best Baghdad restaurants, next to Islamist terrorists with suddenly realisable global ambitions. I SUPPOSE in fairness I should say this is not the only alternative history of the past three years. You might prefer to believe another one in which the failure to attack Iraq produces the most benign consequences: perhaps Saddam really gives up his lifelong ambition to be the new Saladin; perhaps Iran meekly agrees under little pressure from the West to end its nuclear programmes; perhaps the tightening repression of the ever-more-restless peoples of the Middle East produces a real peace and stability. Perhaps.
There's more about Iran, Libya, etc but you get the gist. It took about 15yrs to go from The Third Reich to the Federal Republic of Germany. If we date America's own nascent struggles to the Boston Tea Party, it took over 15 years until the adoption of the Bill of Rights. History's judgement awaits, but its retrospectoscope only gets clear after about 20 yrs. Patience, grasshopper.