Iraq: The Necessary War

Daniel Henninger's piece is good: "If Saddam Had Stayed." (Via Memeorandum.)

But check Jay Ambrose as well:

Bush came to power with lots more on his mind than Saddam and little inclination to mess with him. Then came 9/11, and he had to consider that Saddam, a nation-invading, genocidal maniac responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands and unendingly hostile to the United States, was harboring an al Qaeda chieftain, had supported terrorist groups and had paid for terrorists to be trained by al Qaeda. Experts said he still had a lot of WMD around.

At Bush's urging, Congress voted to back action against Saddam if he could not otherwise be curbed and Secretary of State Colin Powell convinced the United Nations to adopt a resolution authorizing military intervention if necessary. Though Saddam did allow weapons inspectors back in, his government dodged their demands, and as a U.S. senator named Joseph Biden said, there was "little option but to act."

We did just that, no WMD were found and critics screeched that President Bush lied us into war. In fact, an official search group did find weapons programs in contravention of the resolution. The head of the group thought some WMD remained hidden in Iraq and some had been shipped to Syria. As Herman notes, he told a Senate committee that "the world is far safer with the disappearance and removal of Saddam Hussein."

All could still have been lost if Bush had not faced up to his failures and then faced down widespread opposition in authorizing more combat troops operating under a new policy of keeping neighborhoods safe from terrorists that had been chased away. The effort set the stage for political stability, which remains uncertain.

It's an anti-historical contrivance that this war was an imperialist adventure to secure oil. Wars are always awful, and this one is no exception, though its monetary cost was no more than Obama spent on one ineffectual, politically corrupt stimulus bill. The war reduced risks from deadly menaces and could continue to do more of the same. That now depends on people other than Bush. Let's hope they perform as well as he did.

See also Cold Fury and Hot Air.