The victory that could have been

Just wanted to share this and see what people thought.

In my view, deposing Saddam was the right thing to do, even if there were no weapons of mass destruction (as I now don't think there were). See my post here for the play by play on Bush's State of the Union address. He was basically lying by omission the whole time he talked about Iraq. If the UN were more effective, though, I think it could get rid of more dictators like Milosevic and Hussein. In that sense, the war was right.

Where Bush went way, way wrong was once the bombs stopped falling. The right thing to do would have been to give up control to the international community, while keeping our troops there as long as the UN needed them. Bush has done the exact opposite. Instead of inviting the UN to take the lead, and showing some humility, Bush has kept tight control, lined up sweetheart deals for US companies, and then demanded the UN simply fall in behind his lead! Bush fails to realize that just like himself, the other world leaders want to save face, too. Both sides have to give something to reach a comprise. Bush refuses to do so.

If our just cause was to liberate Iraq, that just cause does not extend to controlling Iraq after the war. The American people sense this, but it is getting lost in the public debate. The anti-war, pro-war contruct is still being used six months after Baghdad fell. The next layer down, "What about the post-war?" just gets lost in the shuffle. The future of Iraq is for the people of Iraq to decide, but we can not simply "Bring the troops home" and leave the gangsters and criminals to rule Iraq. We need to build a government with credibility, and a US puppet will have none. If we don't give up control to the UN soon, we risk failing what could have been a perfectly righteous cause.

The Iraq war resolution to Congress had no mention of any approval by the United Nations. Grahm knew this and he said it during the debates. If Kerry, Edwards, Liberman (who actually didn't really care about whether UN approval was necessary), Gephardt, really did want UN approval, they should've voted against the resolution.

Honestly, I think they were really worried about their campaigns. For example, Here's Kerry. He's a pretty liberal guy I must say. He opposed the Vietnam war and did some pretty courageous things as a Senator.

However, here's this great presidential canidate and he's walking along, and then he sudenly veers off course? That's how I see it. I think they didn't want to be perceived as weak on defense because it was in the shadow of 9/11. I think the real brave one here is Grahm. Grahm made a really tough decision especially what he was facing, and did it.

I agree with you that if it was under the guise of a UN mandate, then it would have more legitimacy and probably the Arab League would've supported the invasion. But no, it didn't happen. Kerry, Edwards, Liberman, and Gephardt gave Bush the blank check to go to war by not asking serious hard questions about this war. And I totally disagreed with the notion that they needed to support this Congressional resolution so that it would give Bush more leverage with the United Nations. That's like giving in in my dictionary. If Bush wants a Congressional War Resolution, he's going to have to prove it. And it takes a lot of brains I believe to prove a war.

And that's why I'm not voting for Kerry, Lieberman, Gephardt or Edwards, no matter what. Many voted no on the resolution, they could have too, but choose to back *'s illegal invasion. I made a pact in January not to vote for any candidate who supported the Iraq war and I plan on keeping it, even through the general election.

A little off topic, but La_Serpiente, you've got it right in my book.

Getting rid of Hussein was a nice pretext and a handy way to puff up and show those other inferior 96% of the world's inhabitants just who was the real alpha male. It was important to get this oil, inject ourselves in the midst of all this and have ourselves poised on the springboard to stomp any other loser wogs who were camping out on the rest of our oil in places like Saudi Arabia and Iran, and to crush Syria and further secure Israel when it became opportune.

It was nice showmanship to get rid of a bad guy, but that was more revenge for his having the audacity to not knuckle under to our dictates of a decade ago. His ouster wasn't the real point, and anyone who thinks we're leaving without having total control of the oil is just plain wrong. Sure, we'll help them set up a government, but it will be premised upon tolerating our presence to do as we please, and we'll never really leave our new bases until the place is sucked dry.

Maybe we'll cede some bits and pieces of control (read: hard work) to the U.N., but we'll run the show and that's that.

It's exactly what it looks like.