I never once said that the Bush Administration was doing a wonderful job in it's execution of the war, which I'll admit, was launched on shaky premises. However, I would say that the effects of the efforts, while certainly accompanied by downsides, has been generally positive. A dictator has fallen, numerous terrorist leaders have been terminated, and a new democracy is to be born in a particularly undemocratic region. It's not easy, and it's not pretty, and certainly not popular. However, just giving up isn't going to make things any better.
I disagree. Hussein was not a nice fellow, and a tyrant to be sure. However, he was not a Islamic radical jihadist. He was relatively secular; his top minister was a Christian. Hussein had never been implicated in a non-war terrorist attack (according to the Bush Dept of State, Iraqis tried to bomb the US embassy in Manila during the first Gulf War; other than that I have aware of no terrorist attack or plot in which Hussein or Iraq was ever implicated), and his connections to terrorist groups were tenuous at best. Hussein maintained stability in Iraq, even with an iron fist, and maintained a check against both Islamic radicalism and Iranian hegemony in the region.
We now have a state of affairs were we have had 30,000 US casualties, scores of thousands of Iraqis dead, 1/2 trillion dollars spent, and an Iraqi state that is in disarray if not chaos. Our intervention displaced the ruling group and has sparked a power struggle between Kurd, Shia and Sunni, the consequences of which are unknown. While the Iraqi "democracy" is much hailed by the neocon/Bush administration, the fact is the government has so little support after 4 years that it cannot stand but for the presence of 175,000 US troops stationed there to maintain it.
Meanwhile, the "mistaken" US attack on Iraq and the incompetent prosecution of the occupation has had damaging international consequences. America had broad international support after 9-11 that has evaporated. The Iraqi occupation is roundly criticized, even by the closest thing we have to an ally in the ME, Saudi Arabia. The indefinite occupation of Iraq has been a magnet for Muslim radicalism. It has served as a tremendous recruitment tool for the anti-American radicals, who can reasonably contend that the US unjustifiably attacked Iraq based upon lies, pretends to be for human liberties when it locks up people without due process and tortures them, kills Muslims daily, and wants to control their oil and destroy their religion. According to reports, there has been an explosion of terrorist groups and activities, and many Muslims view the US occupation of Iraq as an unjustified infidel occupation of their holy lands and that opposistion to that foreign occupation is an act of defense.
The US occupation of Iraq has soured our relations with Muslims in the ME to the point that we could not even send peacekeepers to Lebanon because we are viewed as too biased, and we had to sit on the sidelines like a wallflower at a dance while France took the lead of sending peacekeeping troops there.
The end result is likely to be an Iraq that has a radical Islamic leader that will make us wish for the days we had only Hussein to deal with. Or Iraq may devolve into a state of chaos, actually becoming the terrorist breeding ground that the neocons misrepresented extisted there before the invasion.
The sons and brothers of the people our bombs and war killed in Iraq will be fertile grounds for new anti-American terrorists for a generation to come.
IMO, the Iraq war has been far from positive, and the US would be *much* better off had we not invaded.
