This is going to leave a mark....

So testy about text messages at the end there. Take it easy sweetheart, hike up that dress and lets go for a walk down memory lane.

I supported the Iraq invasion, loudly and often. And to boil it down I did so for two reasons. One, in the wake of 9/11 I felt the Jihadist enemy was now willing and capable of force projection here at home. Now I'm sure some CIA analysts somewhere at the time knew this already, but as a 20-something American citizen not privy to any Intel loop, it was the stark images of the towers collapsing that woke me to this realization. And given we now had an Islamic Pearl Harbor I felt it was not just possible, but likely, that Saddam either had or would eventually succeed (sooner rather than later) in his quest for nuclear weapons, and that he would in all likelihood strike the US (his primary nemesis) via handing those nukes off to terrorists for deployment on US soil. That was my primary rationale. Saddam with nukes in the post 9/11 era was unacceptable, he'd proven to be a madman that desired our fall, so we could no longer sit by as this guy rattled his saber again and again.

The secondary reason I supported invading Iraq was more general - the "drain the swamp" theory. I thought establishing a beach head of democracy in Iraq would cause liberty to spread in the Middle East. We would draw all the wanna-be jihadists into a nation filled with US Marines (as opposed to waiting for them to come here and fighting them on main street); and that after their demise this beach head could grow. As you might remember Bush said in one of his SoTU addresses, "Freedom is not America's gift to the world, it is God's gift to humanity." It worked in a nation of imperial zealots, via Japan, and it was even working on economic fronts in China (they are now feeding all 1.3 billion for the first time in their history). I fully believed in would work in Iraq.

So you have my two-fold reasons. Here was the two-fold mistake in that rationale:

First, we did not commit to total war as we did with Imperial Japan. I assumed we would - I was wrong. Now that sentiment may not feel accurate to any Marine taking fire at this moment, and understandably so, but what I mean is there wasn't a WWII mind set in operation. The rules of engagement, the home front sacrifice, even the unwillingness to name our enemy (always careful to parse words on Islam)... the PC nature of our war commitment cut the tendon of our right foot before we even started marching. In retrospect I believe our officials and the American populous had the stomach to start a war, but not the stomach to win at any cost, as was the case with the Greatest Generation. The problem is you don't "end" wars, you win or lose them, and we are a nation of people who want to know when the war will end, not how the war will be won. To sum this up as succinctly as possible - does anyone believe we would have the fortitude to deploy one, let alone two nuclear weapons if it meant a swift and sure success? No chance. Unfortunately our enemy does not have such commitment issues.

Second flaw... I'll start with Germany, because it's easier. The Marshall plan and the post WWII rebuilding of Germany into a vibrant, pluralistic, democratic society did not happen because the WWII generation had some secret power or formula. It happened because before Hitler the German people were a vibrant, pluralistic, open society. In other words, once we removed the scourge of Nazism the German people were capable of building this society because they knew what it looked like. The dominant religious culture of Iraq, and the Near East in general, has not progressed past the 7th century. In fact, forget a Jeffersonian democracy, they fully reject a Platoistic Democracy (or republic, as the case may be). They are unwilling to accept the gift of freedom, whether it comes from America or God. Even within the Iraqi constitution if you are Jewish you can never become an Iraqi citizen - and those are the "good guys", not ISIS. So to sum up the second flaw in my rationale - I underestimated how ill prepared and unwilling Iraqis would be to embrace freedom. Yes, thousands of them cast their vote with the inked blue thumb print, I get that. But they must be willing to fight and die for that ink, especially when their chief military patron won't even send a predator drone on a scraifing run right now. The experiment of an external "imposition" of freedom on a society from which it was not birthed naturally seems to be spiraling into a cataclysmic failure. I know Titus called that from the beginning. For my part I simply could not wrap my head around such a thing in 2003 - that freedom would not be embraced and that the Iraqis could not grasp that soldiering was about more than a steady paycheck. But then again I was raised in the West. The concept of dying for liberty here is as American, as well, apple pie.

Now here's the problem you're going to have Titus - if you accept my two points of flawed reasoning as accurate, then you must come to the conclusion that the invasion of Afghanistan was a mistake as well. Everything I wrote above can be applied to Afghanistan, and there can be no doubt of the Taliban's resurgence once we fully pull out this year. Hell, we just gave them back five of their commanders to help smooth that transition. And I don't remember you opposing the Afghan invasion.

Beyond that the question quickly becomes, "then what should we have done as a response to 9/11?" I don't know, fully anyway. I do know that going in and wiping out Al Qaeda, getting Bin Laden, and then getting the hell out appeals to me at the moment.

But the bigger issue seems to be the dark choice we - as Westerners - must make regarding the Mid East. Whether it's Egypt, Iraq, or Iran the peoples of that region seem capable of only two forms of government: A) a strong man, whom keeps jihadists at bay but in our support we betray our own principles (and that's if he doesn't turn on us, like Saddam); or B) a fundamentalist Islamic state which combines a 7th century mentality with 21st century weaponry and a white hot hate for America.

I'm being sincere in my frustration here - if supporting a strong man is untenable, and the region is impervious to external impositions of freedom, what to do? I would suggest that we do nothing, and when either form of government raises an ugly hand to strike at us we pummel them into fused glass. But it would seem we (as represented in our civilian leadership, in both parties) don't have the stomach for that either! So then what happens? Our enemy is not going away and unlike us they are fully committed.

I'll tell you what happens - we lose, turn the page.