I don’t like the UN either, but I still believe (with or without UN approval) we should have gone into Iraq and taken care of Saddam and his regime.
Well we did it with out UN approval, but we asked for it and they said no and we still went in and used there resolutions as justification. We had every right to take out Saddam with out referring to the UN. It was a just war in my book.
Now my biggest concern about Iraq is that we have fallen into the same trap as the Soviets did in Afghanistan. It bankrupted them.
We accomplished the mission of taking care of Saddam and his regime. Now we are fighting a mix of foreigners and iraqis, just like the soviets did in Afghanistan. We can pick them off one by one for the next 20+ years in the same place, they will still keep coming, they will be better armed, trained and funded each year. The Chinese and Russians (I’m sure there are more on this list) are supplying the Iranians and the Iranians are fueling the fire in Iraq. Just like the US, Israel, China, Saudi Arabia and Egypt supplied the Pakistanis to fuel the fire in Afghanistan against the Soviets.
Now we don’t need to stay in Iraq at all. We should have taken this on as nation leveling rather then nation building. We should just plow through Iran, meet up in Afghanistan and go after Osama in Pakistan and if Pakistan gives us any grief we could remove their dictator and nuclear capability pretty darn quick. But I think he will cooperate after he sees what we did to Iran.
It would take 10 months. George Bush could bring the troops home victorious and no one would screw with us.