Jeez, Ryan...

Don't pull a muscle patting yourself on the back, okay?

I'll forgo the opportunity to argue with Ryan again... and instead focus on Jambo's post.

I came to the conclusion that I did last night, not because I feel Iran is less a threat than I thought it to be, but because I was trying to imagine a viable alternative that would have accomplished two things: jumped started a representative democracy in the region and cost the US less in resources than the current effort in Iraq.

Whatever course of action that the US could have taken beside the course it did would have necessitated that the US military maintain its 60,000 to 80,000 man presence in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia simply to "contain" Saddam and force him (as much as we could) to comply with the 17 UN resolutions. Thus, if we imagine a course of action that would have brought about a shooting war between US and Iranian forces... we'd still have to factor in the number of troops that HAD to stay on the Iraqi frontier. These troops would have been exposed to the threat of terror and insurgent attacks from an increasingly hostile population of civilians (no reason to think the course of "popular opinion" would have changed much, is there?) while still needing to maintain the level of combat preparedness to fight Saddam, if the need arose. No net gain through this course of action, in my eyes.

In fact, no regime change-invasion-occupation could have happened that wouldn't have needed 60k to 80k US troops remaining on the Iraqi frontier... Bush Sr. and Clinton had made that course of action the de facto law of the land. As long as Saddam had a standing army, we needed to be able to counter that threat immediately.

If our course of action NOW is to simultaneously ASSIST in the rebuilding of a democratic Iraq and COUNTER Iranian hegemony in the region... than this was the only viable course of action to take. I am still firm in my belief that Iran was the most dangerous anti-American power in the Middle East, but if you wanted to point at where the largest "question mark" was in the region... then you'd point the finger at Baghdad, every time. Iran has been rather systematic in their actions and policies against the West... but Saddam was a "surprise waiting to happen" every time he got out of bed. Removing Saddam killed two birds with one stone... leaving him in power while other avenues of action are taken simply splits our forces between two strategic objectives, and that is NEVER good.

Perhaps the point I should have made in my last post (but didn't) was what an unmitigated disaster it would be to withdraw the US presence in Iraq under ANY circumstances that give the impression of failure or defeat. If, upon winning the White House, either Democratic candidate institutes the systematic pull-out they have been promising for over a year, and the Iraqi government and its Army and security forces CAN NOT hold control of the population... every other nation in the region that has a reason to fear Iran will alter their position (diplomatically speaking) to avoid open confrontation with Iran. That equals Iranian hegemony in the region, as far as I am concerned.

Very few polices of the Bush Administration towards Iraq have produced any good results, I'm sorry to say. Only in the last 12 months have real gains been made, but these hardly balance out with the 72 months of stalled (at best) results prior to those gains. However, there is no doubt that at least ONE very important gain was reached by the Bush gang after invading Iraq...

Muammar Gaddafi not only suspended his NBC research and development programs... he voluntarily destroyed or turned-over all the missiles and delivery systems that could have carried those weapons beyond the proscribed defense limits recognized by the majority of western nations. Inspectors have had unfettered access to his facilities and labs, and we couldn't find a more willing participant in the campaign to end WMD research in the region. This did not come about because Gaddafi understands the danger of global terrorism and its access to WMDs... they saw the "light" because they saw what non-compliance got the #1 Middle Eastern bad-guy. It wasn't all that long ago that "Colonel" Gaddafi was "Numero Uno" in that category, was it? And with Saddam gone, he may have felt eyes return to look over his past records of support and supply to terror.

I guess I have come to the conclusion that NOT invading and removing Saddam from power would have doomed the US to a policy of "containment" in the War on Terror (and by extension the fight against states that support terror). This policy WILL NOT WORK in this war. It is NOT a policy or a doctrine that will WIN anything... it guarantees the status quo, nothing more. Truman understood this in 1951, and he understood it in 1955 when he removed MacArthur from command... he couldn't afford an all-out war with China AND the USSR over the southern half of the Korean peninsula, so he fought out a "stale mate" conclusion that has existed ever since. We won NOTHING in Korea except the maintenance of the status quo.

I'll even go one better... Carter gave up FAR too much US advantage in the SALT treaties. By massively limiting US strategic missile capability that already existed in the hopes of limiting FUTURE Soviet capabilities was his greatest foreign policy failure. He was, in essence, giving away the US ability to bargain from a position of strength only to ensure a "parity" of position between the US and USSR. Where was the gain to the very clear and stated policy of the US since 1948 to counter Communist expansionism across the globe in THAT kind of mind-set? That is the danger of the "containment" doctrines employed since WWII.

In a world where children are routinely used as the means to deliver weapons capable of killing hundreds, perhaps thousands, of innocent civilians to further radical Islamic ends... how can anyone imagine a policy of "containment" to be successful? We MUST be able to show the world that we will protect the interests and security of both ourselves and our allies from ANY danger, terrorist or otherwise, Islamic or otherwise. Anything else is tantamount to saying "Go ahead... you win."

You can call me "conservative" all you want, but I am a HUGE proponent of the successful and proven ability of this nation to conduct "nation-building" on a scale that ensures freedom and liberty for entire regions of the globe. However, this is not a traditional conservative view... it is the realm of the Democrats far more than the GOP... but our current DNP leadership seems to have forgotten that.