Benghazi: What's the Charge Again?

[Heywood]

A)We had a moral obligation to remove Saddam Hussein from power.

No, we didn't. Sweet Reason, I don't know where to begin with this. A list is in order.

• First and foremost, we were at war with Al Qaeda. That should have been our top priority. We had an opportunity to crush Al Qaeda and squandered it because Bush placed Saddam as a higher priority. Saddam and Bin Laden, by the way, hated each other. Our enemy's enemy may not be our friend, and he certainly wasn't, but our enemy's enemy should at most be a secondary target. This is why I am glad Bush wasn't president during World War II. The Japanese would have bombed Pearl Harbor and we would have attacked Stalin in response.
  
• Second of all, we do not have the right to invade countries because they're run by dictators. That's called "aggression".
  
• Third, why just him? Why not every dictator on the planet? And why now? The key figures in the Bush administration had allied with him in the past when they knew what a monster he was.
  
• Fourth, nobody appointed us the world policeman. It's a role we have neither the authority, nor the financial resources, nor the manpower to continue. We're too broke to fund education but still want to pour money into our war machine.
  
• Fifth, what did we replace him with? What could we possibly have replaced him with? Only the most naive could have expected a Jeffersonian democracy. Best case scenario was a Shiite theocracy friendly to Iran. Worst case scenario is a bloody civil war complete with ethnic cleansing.
  
• Sixth, you can't export democracy at the point of a gun. When are we going to learn this lesson? People have to fight for it if they want it. Right now, the government people seem to want to fight for over there is a theocracy.
  
• More Iraqis have died since the war and occupation than did under Saddam. We've displaced millions. The economy has been demolished. The government is corrupt. If our goal was to rescue the Iraqi people, mission failed.
  

B)An endless quasi-war and endless sanctions against the Iraqi people needed to stop.

Non sequitur. You want to stop a quasi-war by escalating it to a full blown war? Positively Orwellian thinking.

I was hoping an occupation of Iraq would turn out like Germany or Japan.

Sure, and the democracy elves would ride in on unicorns down across a rainbow and then they would sprinkle their pixie dust on the Iraqi people and suddenly all the long-brewing sectarian feuds barely held back by Saddam's brutality would disappear and the Jesus would lead everyone into the sunset singing "hosanna".

Those who aren't so naive were expecting the majority to vote in a Shiite leader. The Sunnis, who had long oppressed the Shiites under Saddam, would rightly fear payback and rebel. Bin Laden would inevitably gain supporters among his fellow Sunnis. Iran would finally be able to gain influence among their fellow Shiites and eventually form Iraq as a client state, something they've dreamed of for a long time. Tit for tats would always threaten to spiral out of control into full blown ethnic cleansing. Mutual terror that resulted from the unleashing of long brewing sectarian hatreds would, at best, displace many Iraqis turning them into refugees. And all this was the best case realistic scenario.

I also thought it would be a good idea to surround Iran.

With a Shiite theocracy friendly to Iran. Got it. By getting rid of Saddam, we helped Iran get one step closer to being the dominant power in the region.

Why was Iran a priority again? We should have been concentrating on Bin Laden.

During the many times I was called a "traitor" for daring to question a sitting president, the right wingnuts would ask "have you forgotten 9/11?" No, I hadn't. I wanted our military efforts to be concentrated on fighting Bin Laden. I didn't forget. You people did. You took your eye off the ball and ran off on a completely unrelated quest. We played into Bin Laden's hands creating the very playground in Iraq he wanted to create. We couldn't have botched our response to 9/11 any worse and the world is much worse off because of it.

You are conflating our desire to destroy Al Queda with our obligation under the moral contract to rid Iraq of an evil man we helped put in power...and keep in power.

They are two separate issues.