On Iraq and Bush

On Irag and Bush

This started as a war blog and probably half of the articles here are on the war and related issues. However we have not assessed the war and the president in total. Thus this post.

The United States should have, as it did, effect regime change in Iraq.

The United States should get out of Iraq today.

It should have gotten out of Iraq the day that Saddam Hussein was captured.

We should not have attempted nation-building in Iraq one, because that should not be the mission of our armed forces and two because this was particularly infertile soil in which to attempt to plan the seeds of democracy.

The military plan to oust Hussein's regime was brilliantly executed.

The president and his foreign policy team deserve all credit for that military plan.

There should not have been a "post-end-of-major-hostilities" place for American troops in Iraq. After capturing Hussein we should have thrown a copy of The Federalist Papers at that and left.

We believe that the president was motivated by pure motives in attempting to establish a democratic Iraq. There were some signs, such as the first national election, that the transformation could happen. That possibility has long disappeared and whenever that long ago point was reached the blood of American soldiers stained the president's hands, tragically.

We judge the president a failure for the nation-building effort but we do not condemn him so harshly because he tried to do a noble thing. This is Public Occurrences.