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October 21, 2005
Liberal hawks
There's been a lot of discussion in the liberal blogosphere lately about "liberal hawks" who supported the Iraq War and now are blaming the Bush Administration for screwing it up. I'm sort of a liberal hawk, if not of the type or stature of the type they're talking about, so I figured I should state my case.
My feeling that we should go to war wasn't justified by weapons of mass destruction, nor by the idea that we should go to war for democracy, nor by the idea that Saddam was uniquely evil. I (like almost everybody else) thought that Saddam had chemical and probably biological weapons, and maybe had some low-level nuclear programs running. But at the same time, I didn't think they posed a threat to U.S. interests. I never thought we'd get a working democracy out of this. It would be nice, but I figured the Bushes would wind up installng a western-oriented strongman who would observe the trappings of democracy -- an Iraqi Mubarak, if you will. And everybody knew perfectly well that Saddam was a butcher but not the worst of these.
My feeling was that we were already at war with Iraq. The last war never ended; we had been bombing Iraq off and on for over a decade, and they were shooting back. I also felt that the people of Iraq were having a pretty bad time of this. It was best to end the low-grade war and go in full-force, and end the misery. And I figured that Bush and Cheney always intended to go to war in Iraq, even before 9-11. So get it over with.
So, yes, I'm going to say that the Bush Administration's incompetence surprised me. I never dreamed that they couldn't figure out a way to declare victory and leave a puppet government in charge. I was wrong.
Posted by Mac Thomason at October 21, 2005 01:24 PM
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Comments
And so it's come to this... even Mac is now convinced we should have set up a new murderous strongman to replace Saddam, because he seems to feel that endless tyranny is all the Iraqis deserve.
No point in hoping the guy who was once willing to do whatever it took to destroy the terrorists, after 9-11, will ever emerge again.
I'm outta here.
Posted by: Tatterdemalian at October 24, 2005 04:52 PM