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.
2) Even the conservative leaders in the other countries are anti-Iraq. Just because Europe is slowly starting to realize that socialism doesn't work doesn't mean they all of the sudden believe in nation building
My final point is we could do a lot better bang for the buck than what we got in Iraq. We'd have never done Iraq if even the war was estimated to cost $200 billion initially, much less $1+ trillion. Intel in the middle east is good, but not at the cost of $400 billion a year. We could secure our borders (I mean really secure them) and have a real energy policy for far, far less.