I agree that the debates are pointless. I live in communist Northern California where people still rage about Bush “stealing” the 2000 election. They probably also think he stole the 2004 election. Although I’m referring to the EXTREME left-wingers in this area, I think their tenancious grasp of this now highly irrelevant piece of opinion goes to show that opinions aren’t likely to change easily, no matter how pithy the blogger might be.

To be honest, this debate is raging in Canada right now, except it’s over Afganistan instead of Iraq. And I say the same thing about both debates.

They’re useless.

The point is - America is now committed in Iraq. Canada is now committed in Afganistan. And there is no such thing as a quick or easy solution. The only way to achieve peace in these countries is to provide a military presence to democratic governments until they are stable enough to be able to handle it on their own. And you can’t put a timeline on it. After all, the U.S. still has a military presence in Germany and Japan 60 years after World War II. And those countries are now staunch allies. You need to give it enough time for the rising generation to be able to shake off the propaganda and hatred, and to start focusing on building their country to join the global community. It doesn’t happen overnight, and anyone who says that a stable government with a loyal military and policing system can be ready to take over within two years deserves to be laughed at.

We won in Afghanistan. The Soviets failed at that (it’s been called their version of Vietnam). With that success, we went after another threat to our safety. Clinton and his administration also happened. Anybody else remember Clinton bombing Iraq? In 1998, Clinton said:
” [Our] mission is to attack Iraq’s nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs and its military capacity to threaten its neighbors.

Saddam Hussein must not be allowed to threaten his neighbors or the world with nuclear arms, poison gas or biological weapons.

I want to explain why I have decided, with the unanimous recommendation of my national security team, to use force in Iraq; why we have acted now; and what we aim to accomplish…”

“If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program.”
- President Bill Clinton, Feb. 17, 1998

“We must stop Saddam from ever again jeopardizing the stability and security of his neighbors with weapons of mass destruction.”
- Madeline Albright, Feb 1, 1998

Check out these quotes at the following website about the danger Iraq posed (all made by Democrats after 1994 and before 2003): http://www.glennbeck.com/news/01302004.shtml

Here’s Gore (as a Senator) saying that Hussein is, indeed, a terrorist (in 1992):
http://www.breitbart.tv/html/1602.html

So, in summary: Gore said that Hussein was a terrorist and a danger to the world. In 1998, Clinton bombed Iraq. His administration said that Iraq was a threat to the US, and there was danger of them having WMDs. After 9/11, America was ready to fight terrorists and we succeeded, almost easily, what should have been a horrible quagmire (based on what the Soviets went through). With that success, Bush continued to do what he promised: fight threats to the US.

I have no honest opinion of the war. I wasn’t in the US when we invaded, so I have no idea what everyone was told. The country is pretty evenly split about whether we should have gone or not. I think it would be interesting to see if it’s really so simple to say there was no credible evidence that Iraq had WMDs. Clinton and his administration and many democrats seemed to feel that Iraq had a WMD problem. Congress approved the invasion. I distrust anyone who says that there was some consensus that there were no WMDs. It’s a common psychological phenomenon for people to say “Of course I knew that all along” after the fact. We studied it in my social psych class. It most often happens after sporting events when team X wins, you will seldom find anyone who claims to have predicted otherwise (after the fact). I think that’s happening with the WMDs. Since no nuclear weapons were found (although chemical weapons were), nobody is going to say they honestly believed they existed. If they were found, you’d find most of the same people claiming they knew all along there were WMDs. Unless someone can find me documented evidence to show that the majority of the intelligence community agreed to X before the invasion, I think the psychological phenomenon is taking place. Certainly Clinton believed they were in the process of making them in 1998.

As for the war itself, Tim has it right on. Don’t you all remember when after 9/11 Bush was all about tracking Bin Laden to the very ends of the earth? And then after he got his war with Iraq, Afghanistan fell by the wayside and he said that we (America) don’t care about Bin Laden anymore? Doesn’t that tell you anything? I’m a conservative Republican, but that doesn’t make me a knee-jerk, either. If I see hypocracy and stupidity in my party I’m going to point it out, just as I am prone to do with what I’ve seen Bush do with this war. When asked about Hussein, he said that he was the guy who tried to kill his dad (the elder Bush). And then he looked at the cameras, amazed that the audience (and the rest of America) was not nearly as appalled by this as he was. This was why he wanted Hussein dead–because he had the nerve to devise a plot to assassinate his father (not really that unexpected in my mind, either). Off topic, how many times have we tried to assassinate Castro over the years? (A lot. Big deal.)

“The intelligence we had at the time said there were WMDs and that Saddam posed a threat to our country. ” Not so. The majority of the Intelligence Community agreed that no evidence could be found for WMDs in the country. Bush didn’t want to hear that, so he searched until he found someone who would tell him otherwise. It’s never hard to find at least one person who disagrees, and that’s who he found: a guy in the CIA who, despite the warnings from nuclear specialists that he was mislabeling nuclear components and equipment, stubbornly decided that there were in fact WMDs in country and that he had proof, flawed or not. What is the point of having an Intelligence Community if you choose to ignore the knowledgable majority of analysts to only pick and choose among the few dissenters until you hear what you want to hear?