:lol:
I assume he's advocating liberal militarism.
I think there's a number of factors that need to be considered, and I for one don't sign up for the better to have tried idea, which I think is naive. The country is an artificial creation in the first place that resulted from previous western impositions of convenience. That it brought together 3 distinct groups meant that it was a powder keg waiting to happen, and this was foreseeable. That Bush thought he was going to walk in to a heroes reception was just blind arrogance or ignorance.
Saddam realised the parlous state he had, and not unlike many other leaders whose grip on power was tenuous, he set about putting a repressive apparatus in place, to ensure his survival. How many people he murdered remains debateble, we don't know, but as Downing Street now admits, it's not remotely close to the scale originally claimed. Indeed more Iraqi's would have been killed in a war against a neighbour which we in the West were only too happy to encourage given that it was being waged against a fundamentalist Islamic country.
What you had prior to this ill-conceived war was a repressive regime that was able to impart a degree of internal stability on a secular state, through a brutal iron fist. Had he been left in power (and its not as if the West hasn't been prepared to turn blind eyes to worse offenders in the past, and even fund them from time to time) then there's no reason to believe that Iraq today would be any different to what it was in 2001 say?
What we now have I believe is the following
* A country that hitherto wasn't, now showcasing global Islamic militancy/ terrorism
* In doing so, this country where radical Islam had no foothold, now serves as the best recruiting sergeant AQ could have asked for, even more so given that its a Frankenstein monster of our creation, that AQ couldn't have banked on having at their disposal. In other words a gift wrap conflict in a country where they had no influence, thats sufficiently remote from them so as not to threaten them either.
* Valuable resources in terms of manpower, hardware and finance being directed into solving (or failing to solve something) that never existed in the first place, and thus diverting attention from more legitimate priorities
* Regional threats (ultimately more dangerous ones) being allowed to go comparatively unchecked
* A steady stream of failure helping to undermine the domestic resolve of the West, and sowing deep seeds of dis-trust regarding the integrity of the people and institutions who sold the more gulliable members of their domestic populations a sack of lies to get there in the first place
* A civil war where the body count is seemingly eclipsing what went before it
* The emergence of an apparent home grown threat
* A steady stream of military deaths which is just starting to show the first signs of eating into the collective pysche of the sponsoring western nations (recruitment figures are well down)
I would have expected anyone embarking on such an unnecessary venture to have conducted a thorough risk analysis and options appraisal as a part of a much wider strategic overview. Anyone doing this accurately would have concluded that much of what's happenend was forseeable. Indeed, GH Bush was later to recall that he needed a strongish and stable Iraq to act as a bullwark against Iranian ambitions, and that this was instrumental in his decision "not to go to Baghdad"
On a slightly different issue;
Can any of the longer standign forum members remember whether anyone posted a poll on the subject around Feb 2002?
