Replies

#1) We would have been safe from Iraq regardless of those weapons although perhaps Israel and eastern europe may have been at risk. Israel is perfectly capable of handling themselves as they demonstrated again last year with Syria. I might also add that by that logic we should be going to war with Iraq, Syria and N Korea as well.

#2) Invading Iraq in the first place and staying there is just as big of a reason. The rest of the globe, including the middle east, hates us worse now than at any time in probably a 100 years. Europe is far different story than the middle east and you know it. Europeans are a secular group and are capable of rational thinking. The middle east is full of religious nut thugs that have any interest in EVER being peaceful. That region hasn't been stable ever in 600 years

#3)It's pretty simple. We can't trillion dollar deficit spend which would be required to keep our current military activism and a comprehensive energy policy. If we did the latter, the need for the first shrinks as well. It's silly to have a policy that makes us weaker to the terrorist (reliant on foreign oil) and makes them richer as oil continues to go up and up and up. I'd rather pay $15 billion a month for any other form of energy.

I'd also add that officer friends I know in the armed forces say the war was badly mismanaged until Patreaus came along. They're having to give very, very large signing bonuses to keep people on and are having trouble recruiting people. The Iraq war, while well intentioned, has been a complete disaster. Bush said the most the war would cost would be $50 billion. He fired his sec of treasury after he said it could cost $200 billion. Now it's over $700 billion and no end in sight. How much more of my tax dollars are you willing to waste on it?

It's more than a little uncool to suggest that the war in Iraq has been a "total disaster". After all "the surge is working!" (Did I parrot the talking point correctly?)

Here's what Mark Helprin wrote last month (see the rest on Claremon Institue's site:

To begin with, American columns should have cut through Baghdad three days after they began to roll, and exited three weeks later, leaving Saddam dead and the pliant Iraqi strongman who betrayed him—candidates would not have been hard to find—to keep the country harmless to the West or suffer the same quick take-down. Rather than being broken on the wheel of irreconcilable Muslim factions, the supple and intact American power would have shattered the Arabs' elation following September 11th, and by threatening their rule been able to discipline the various police states of the region into eliminating their terrorists. Far more efficient that way, without six and more murderous and unavailing years in which neither a single democracy has appeared, nor will one. (The surge is merely coincident with a change in Sunni strategy. Instead of watching the U.S. and Iran arm the Shia for a major sectarian war that our small force in Iraq cannot prevent, the Sunni choose to avail themselves of American arms while simultaneously removing the lunatic jihadists nipping at their heels.)

1) You place an awful lot of faith in an ocean. One barge with a cargohold full of anthrax floating into New York harbor is going to get a lot of people killed.

One of the reasons 9/11 happened is because our intelligence on militant Islam had collapsed under the Clinton administration. Because of our presence in Asia, we now have excellent intelligence. I have no doubt that a sizable fraction of the Iraq costs are due to the rebuilding of intelligence.

Without our presence in Iraq, our Mideast intelligence would be significantly poorer, and that barge full of anthrax would be far more likely.

2) The rest of the world does not hate us anywhere’s near as much as the liberal press in other countries does. Consider the conservative leadership that the people have installed in France, Germany, Canada, Italy, Poland and the Baltics. Why? To emulate our leadership. And the foreign press didn’t start hating us in March 2003...it started on January 20, 2001...actually in November 2000 during the recount.

3) “It’s silly to have a policy that makes us weaker to the terrorist (reliant on foreign oil) and makes them richer as oil continues to go up and up and up.”

Agreed. But that has nothing to do with the war, it has more to do with rabid environmentalism. Your statement was true back under the Carter administation as well...an administration that refused to fight and thus enabled today’s problems by allowing the United States to appear weak. I believe that this perception has been reversed due to our show of force in Iraq and our subsequent benevolence...which is a significant reason for the lack of domestic attacks since 9/11.