Slate.com has been running a number of articles by intellectuals once supportive of the Iraq war… who now admit (or were gently coerced by Slate) to admit they were wrong. In response, I thought I’d join Christopher Hitchens and come out with a post on why I got Iraq right… and why I still support it. “Why waste your time?“, you ask? Well, I was having dinner with a couple from Europe a few weeks (well, now months) back. Late in the evening, the conversation turned to international politics; U.S. military policy in Iraq came to the forefront of the conversation. I’m not out to make enemies, so after various prevarications, I concluded that although I thought the arguments for war were compelling, I couldn’t stand how expensive the war had become–taking a clearly indifferent middle ground. As I reflected on the conversation, it became clear that as time has passed and circumstances on the ground in Iraq have changed, so my need for more articulable set of policy positions.
In beginning this process, a broad view of the middle east is necessary. The Middle East, specifically Iraq (but by no means limited to Iraq) was (and would still be) in the process of implosion had we done nothing. It was inevitable that Iraq would have collapsed eventually. There was certainly ample indica of this, whether you looked at the chaos Saddam’s sons would have brought after their father’s death, the religious tensions we have unearthed in the absence of a repressive ruler, or simply the deterioration of the country’s infrastructure caused by years of sanctions and Saddam’s indifference toward his own people.
