As the years go by and this presidency begins to end, the factors that led us into war are beginning to surface. In today’s WSJ, former Under Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith, provides us with five factors as to why we are fighting in Iraq today.
1) Saddam was a threat to U.S. interests before 9/11.
2) The threat of renewed aggression by Saddam was more troubling and urgent after 9/11.
3) To contain the threat from Saddam, all reasonable means short of war had been tried unsuccessfully for a dozen years.
4) While there were large risks involved in a war, the risks of leaving Saddam in power were even larger.
5) America after 9/11 had a lower tolerance for such dangers.
Feith does a good job of describing the background and the motivation for the decisions. As well as detailing these factors. For those serious about foreign policy and the dangers inherent in preserving global peace and security, this article is a gold-mine. For those of you who still believe that “Bush lied”, don’t bother reading it.
Conservative to the core; liberal with his opinion! J.R. has been involved in politics for over a decade and has worked on several campaigns in Hampton Roads. He has served on the Executive Committee of the Republican Party of Chesapeake and the Central Committee of the Republican Party of Virginia. He is also the director of “Blogs United” in Virginia. 
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JR,
I feel like that article is heavy on “why we went in” and noticeably light on “what we’re still doing there.”
Yep. And that has been this administration’s biggest fault: post-war strategy.
Are you really pointing to Feith to make a case? The guy’s got a list a mile long of current and former officials both in and out of Bush’s administration who think he’s everything from brilliant but looney to the “stupidest (bleep)ing guy on the planet” (from the wonderfully direct Gen. Tommy Franks).
As for the article itself, i see a couple a references, but a lot of conjecture and opinion presented as “fact”. When you have to build your case on such shaky ground, maybe the case itself is flawed.
Jim,
You and I have had plenty of discussions on why we went to war. You know how stupid I thought the whole idea was, that’s blood under the bridge at this point.
But even if you believe Bush was right in taking out Saddam, please don’t tell that this entire fiasco was a well thought out plan.
The post-”conflict” lack of planning was criminal. Thousands of American and Iraqi lives were needlessly lost due to gross incompetence.
Hey, I’ll be the first to admit that the Surge is working (I haven’t heard a rocket attack since Easter), but that plan was years over due.
We’re spending billions every week and serious reconstruction is only just starting. But until unemployment drops from 70%-80% to under at least 40% this country is still seriously at risk.
So whatever bullshit spin they put on “Why We Went to War”, everyone in the discussion making process should, at the very least, be reviled as morons, or sued for every penny they have.
I believe I was pretty clear in my comment, Frenchy, that the post-war strategy is flawed.
JR,
I gave the article its due. Feith exaggerates and it’s mainly fluff to resurrect some rationale explanation for going in. If anything, it’s silly and serves only to bolster the concept that we have to lay down and accept the edicts of the Security Council, an unelected body purporting to hand out the law of nations. But what do you expect from someone who was a graduate of and a professor at Georgetown University School of Law who disbelieves in the Framer’s view of sovereignty?
I was there in DC when 9/11 occurred. Once the black plume became visible from the Pentagon, I saw the mass of crowds heading into the Metro and thought, “Hmmmm, what if the crowd is too big down there and a device goes off . . . No thanks.”
There was never any mention of Sadaam and when he finally came about the only mention was “WMDs”. Feith’s background is highly suspect. It was from his now defunct baby, The Office of Special Plans, that the liberals claim bad information originated. Make no mistake. Sadaam is a bad man. But Putin is 1000 times worse. Cuba is more of a threat to Floridians than Iraq.
There is nothing to defend nor should we. We have to get over this stupidity otherwise it’ll be 24 instead of 4 years when we get back in charge. We’re going to get shellacked in November because of this justification.
The War in Iraq was sold to American Citizen’s with a heavy content of Weapon’s of Mass Destruction. Remember “But we don’t want he smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud”?
It is my opinion that the majority of us Americans were against the invasion of Iraq in the manner it was conducted. Some of us understood the other arguments but were only in favor of the invasion if it included a United Nations mandate that would promise some support from the world community for the long slog.
It’s not that some of us did not agree that Saddam needed to go, we just disagreed that American lives and treasure alone was worth doing it.
George Dubyah Bush went against majority opinion and insisted that he was right. Even without majority support, he felt the invasion was necessary. Well it turns out that some of the fears of the majority were correct and the leader that got us into it was wrong.
Jim – don’t even give Feith the respect of a mention on BD. He twisted the intelligence and acted in a manner that was unethical at best and criminal at worst. Who knows what his real reasons were – I doubt any of them are on the list you’ve presented.
I only hope that the next administration will have the courage to investigate Feith and every other member of the Iraq study group. Now if we could just draft him or his children and send them to Iraq…