I don't believe President Bush would succumb to hubris and risk American lives unnecessarily or threaten war in the future if one was not necessary, but there was an exceptional amount of braggadocio on threads before the war started.
We are not taking out Saddam because he has no power to hurt us. We are taking out Saddam because he has the power to hurt us, and because has been hurting us and would continue to find ways to hurt us worse if he weren't disposed of.
We are having the war now, not because we thought the casualties would be light, but because we believed they would have been a lot worse if we had waited.
Americans will feel the price of this war. And that is "good" only in the sense that it will mean that we will not commit to war in the near future for reasons of hubris. We will know the price, and judge whether the reason is sufficient to pay the price. And maybe people watching will know that they are not watching a football match or playing a video game, but that real and precious people are dying. And we will come to know that it wasn't just our military might that got us through, but the mercy of God.
I am still praying that the price isn't extraordinarily high, as it still may well be. When WMD are involved, no war can assumed to be a cake walk.
Very good point. Even the name "Shock and Awe", has sounded a little arrogant to me. I have no problem with the practice of it, I just think it would be better to just do it and not brag about it beforehand. It's this kind of thing that makes us appear arrogant to the rest of the world. Like putting up the US flag after we've secured a region.
We need to be more careful. I don't believe most of us are arrogant, but a few can make it seem that way.