But historians will have little time for the liberal froth over Iraq.

After all, the anti-war "solution" to Iraq's chronic internal hatreds - which of course predated the invasion - was to leave the country's hated and brutal dictator in place. Indefinitely.

"Indefinitely" is the key word here. The liberal opposition seems to have no idea how Saddam's dictatorship might have morphed into a government acceptable to most Iraqis. They just assume that this would have happened, peacefully, had we left well alone.

At least, this is what they seem to assume. The war's opponents have been remarkably unwilling to put any detail into the alternative history they believe would have been so preferable.

But governments never last "indefinitely", especially not uniformed dictatorships, which have been going quickly out of fashion over the past 20 years.

lol. The "frothers" don't have to come up with an alternative plan. Why should they? Iraq is the business of the United Nations. The United States under the Bush leadership decided to disregard the larger global community to act on it's own, in the wrong place, for the wrong reason.

There should never have been a "plan" for Iraq by the United States in the first place. It's like Virginia going to war with California over immigration. Neither state should be telling the other how to implement policy, that is the job of the federal government. The United Nations should have been the "planner", albeit with the advice from its several parts.

I find it amazing that someone is capable of reading so many minds as clearly as you do.

However: you seem to bundle liberals and pacifists in a neat bunch.

Convenient to your argument, I presume, but not very accurate, I dare say.

Perhaps you have not noticed it yet, but it is no longer just the extremists on the left who have lost their taste for useless warmongering.

As you yourself wrote, more and more people are becoming disenchanted with dictatorships.

In and out of uniform.

For the 19,000th time, moron, morphing Saddam's dictatorship into a government acceptable to most Iraqis WASN'T OUR BUSINESS, anymore than invading Canada and "morphing" their government into something that we might prefer would be our business. What don't you get? The facts are clear: Iraq didn't attack the United States; Iraq had no means to attack the United States; Iraq had no WMD; Iraq had no connection to al Qaeda; Iraq was not involved in the 9/11 attacks; Iraq didn't ask us to invade; Iraq didn't ask us to depose its president; Iraq didn't ask us to destroy its infrastructure; Iraq didn't ask us to unleash chaos that has killed roughly 500,000 innocent Iraqis; and Iraq didn't ask us to "spread democracy" to Iraq and the greater Middle East. Furthermore, any violations by Iraq of any post-Gulf War resolutions were explicitly required to be put to a vote in the U.N. Security Council, the results of which would decide which action--military or otherwise--might be taken against Iraq. The United States explicitly BLEW OFF this vote in 2003, because George Bush knew that we wouldn't get the votes we needed to invade. And that means that the United States BROKE INTERNATIONAL LAW when it invaded Iraq. You can trot out any of the "might makes right" or "manifest destiny" or "preemptive war" crap you want (and the last one is especially hilarious, since the Monkey's declaration that the U.S. can wage preemptive war on anyone it wants has obviously opened the door for ANY country to wage preemptive war on the United States), but the truth isn't going away: George Bush is a CRIMINAL MURDERER who should be hanged.

"...historians will say I am a liar. But history is written by those who have hanged such men." ~ from the motion picture Braveheart

Or, something a bit more recent and perhaps more relevant:

"History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it." ~ Sir Winston Churchill

To bad neither of us will live long enough to see who's right.

But you are so wrong,Bush is the worst president in the last 52 years,he has done NOTHING to make this country better and he has put us in a stupid and unending war for nothing.The economy will not recover from his madness for 20 years.

Historians will remember GWB for his truly inspired speech after Sept. 11 White House transcript His failed Social Security plan. The creation of the Dept. of Homeland Security and the Patriot act. His failed attempt at Immigration reform. His two successful political campaigns. His successful coalition of international allies to topple the Taliban in Afghanistan. The further expansion of wealth inequality. NPR Artical But, mostly he will be remembered for the war in Iraq -- from the reasons to go war, to the failure to establish a functioning government, ending with his inability to leave. Oh, and I'm sure there will be whole chapters on his hiring and delegating practices.

Analysis of history always ebbs and flows. Escapades like the Mexican American War, or the Spanish American War were seen as great adventures for a time, only later to be derided as expressions of American empiracle ambitions. We may be glad we have Texas and Puerto Rico, but we acknowledge that those wars were avoidable and barbarous.

As concerns Iraq, no amount of spin will change the fact that the Bush administration told the American people and the world that we need to go to war with Iraq because Iraq's possession of wmd and ties to terrorists made Iraq an "immenent threat." That is a historical fact. That FACT will never change no matter how the venture in Iraq eventually ends.

How we got there will always be derided as the greatest foreign policy mistake to date.

George W. Bush did the worst thing a president can possibly do: he took us to war unnecessarily.

So finally, the answer to what the frothers would have done about Iraq comes shining through here: nothing. It wasn't our business. Leave them to sort out their own problems.

Hell, if the Iraqis wanted to get rid of Saddam and have a civil war, what's that got to do with us?

And if the Iranians and the Saudis want to get involved on either side, so what? And if they start sinking each others' oil tankers, that's no problem. And if that poses problems for the people who buy the oil, who cares?

Really, I've no idea how any of that could effect the US. Dumb of me, really.

GreenwichJ,

Why don't you just go away and come back to visit with us after history arrives.

Oh, I forgot -- you Straussians canceled history a few years back, didn't you? How's that working out for you guys?

<link>

Funny, I'm sure REM stated quite clearly that "night swimming/deserves a quiet night". Perhaps you should respect their request for silence?

If you're calling me out for an ass-whipping, then I may just have to swim the big pond tonight and introduce you to my Weapons of Mass Destruction !!!

;-)

...for systematically dismantling the US Constitution's Bill of rights provisions re: right to due process, freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, right to habeus corpus, etc.

Hmm, a fight with the Democrati-voting REM fan...what would you do, pelt me with hackysacks?

“Hell, if the Iraqis wanted to get rid of Saddam and have a civil war, what's that got to do with us…. Really, I've no idea how any of that could effect the US. Dumb of me, really.”

>>Whether or not that could affect the United States is an entirely separate issue than whether or not the US should have acted to depose the Baathist regime by military force. You’re offering a false dichotomy by suggesting that we had only two alternatives with respect to Iraq: Invade and conquer or sit on our hands and do nothing. There were, of course, other alternatives—chiefly, as others have pointed out, acting in concert with and through the United Nations rather than unilaterally.

I’d say rather than invade we should simply have maintained sanctions in place. They were working: Saddam was contained, much as he desired them lacked access to the resources necessary to develop, produce and stockpile WMD’s, was neither a regional or global threat, had no ties to Al Queda (indeed, al Queda considered Saddam and Iraq an obstacle to achieving their goal of a modern caliphate, as it was a westernized Islamic nation that ruthlessly suppressed Islamic fundamentalist organizations.) At the time that Bush et al elected to invade Iraq posed no greater threat to the US or the World than it had at any time in the preceding decade, and far less of a threat than it had prior to the Invasion of Kuwait.

What has our expenditure, in both lives and resources, bought us in Iraq exactly? How are we as a nation better off today, how are we as a nation more secure today, by virtue of having invaded and deposed Saddam? Be specific.