Ok, I’m going to try and do the impossible: Prove the Iraq war was justified.
This is going to be difficult to do without deteriorating into irrational arguments…but here goes nothing.
Changing into super-neoconservative…
Hold on. I’ve just realized that as a super neo-conservative, if I want I rational argument, I’m going to directly confront the good arguments on the opposing side. Now what?
Sigh. (Everything below is in my pro-Iraq character)
The number one mistake people make when deciding whether or not we should have gone to Iraq is pin the reason we went down to WMD. Now, many people try to claim we went there just for the oil… that’s kind of hard to prove, and I certainly hope Bush is not that crazy. We went there to establish a base in Iraq, a sort of free outpost in a freedom-deprived world. As other countries view Iraq, they can see how much they enjoy their freedom, and perhaps be less hostile to the United States...
You know what? I give up.
The only legitimate reason we went to Iraq was our belief Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Almost any other reason the governement presented--freeing civilians, cheaper oil--was presented to gather support from the people. Though I personally believe that the "base in Iraq" was the real reason we went, (straight out of the report for a New American Century) this idea makes the ends justify the means, where the ends rely on the Reverse Domino Theory (one democracy will create more democracies in the region, or at least support for it; I can't remeber who said that...good idea though) and the means is a war. I can not see where anyone can decide the war would accomplish the greater good with this arguement.
Iraq had no potential for destruction. If Saddam had WMD, he couldn’t have used them, as the UN, having already given Iraq enough mandates, would have taken him out. He could have potentially sold the weapons to terrorists, which would present a dangerous situation for us…but considering there were no WMD, there should be no war. The conditions under which the President received his intelligence makes it all much worse…every single bit of evidence had serious doubters in the CIA, but was forwarded to the President anyway. The CIA was under enormous pressure from Cheney and his friends to dish out something--anything--that would support a war.
Now that we’re in, how long should we stay? Ideally, we should stay the amount of time that minimizes the amount of people dead, on the U.S side and the Iraqi civilian side. Unfortunately we do not know when that might be. It would nice, then, if a third party, the US, and Iraq all form a treaty--the U.S will pull out when the third party determines the Iraqi force is up to par. Better yet, the U.S agrees to pull certain amounts of troops out when the third party determines the Iraqi security force has reached various benchmarks--benchmarks determined by the treaty.
Just an idea.
