Sheesh...

Let me sum it up this way...

I am still pissed that the Bush Administration planned and executed the invasion, pacification and reconstruction of Iraq as badly as they did. From clew to earring, they had this operation botched, and any success that the US has seen there is fully and completely attributable to the training, performance and expertise of the soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines carrying out the orders from the White House.

That said, I have conceded that no alternative strategic course of action allows for greater US security in the region and abroad. Even if we had invaded Iran or Syria (something I thought was a real option) as supporters of international terrorism and enemies of the US (something both are, no question), we would still have had to keep troops and equipment on the Iraq border to keep Saddam in check, which gains us nothing in advantage and puts more troops at risk then necessary.

Removing Saddam from power and ensuring a democratically elected Iraqi government ready to protect individual rights (relatively speaking, of course) at the same time as securing free elections and a moderate government in Afghanistan WAS the best course of action for the US in the region. I am convinced that hindsight proves this point time and time again, and might even make a very strong case that it should have been done 11 years sooner than it actually was.

I now readily admit that the invasion of Iraq was the best course of action we could take... and I still assert that the Bush Administration failed miserably to communicate this fact to the American public and the leaders of the free world prior to the invasion. I am also convinced that the post-invasion planning of the operation (if there actually was any) was so poorly executed that it set the entire effort back and cost our troops and allies years of extra time in-country.

In fact, speaking of remembering old threads and debates, I would be willing to bet that 40, 50 or 100 years from now, our intellectual descendants will be sitting around a fire or leaning back on their personal family hovercraft parked in their driveway, drinking, smoking and assessing the Cheney-Rummy-Wolfowitz plans for Iraq the way we discussed the Italian Campaign of WWII. No one will then doubt the success of the operation... but instead will discuss all the things that COULD have been done better, and what that would have meant to the overall effort of the war on terror and American foreign policy in the early 21st Century.