Freeing Iraq from Saddam was a good reason to fight the war even if there were never any WMDs.
The mistake was not in taking out Saddam, but in trying to set up a democracy in a place where the population would perfer to kill each other based on religious nuances (vs. places like Germany, Japan, etc. where the population is homogeneous).
We should have just handed everything over to the next generalismo, as we have done before. Or simply let them finish killing each other and let Iran and the Saudis divvy the place up.
Rudy was right - 9/11 has nothing to do with US policy. Osama is a nutcase, and unfortunately has a lot of followers who believe his nonsense.
No, that wasn’t a good reason. There must be an actual national interest. Saddam was threat to our interests. THAT was the reason.
“The mistake was not in taking out Saddam, but in trying to set up a democracy in a place where the population would perfer to kill each other based on religious nuances (vs. places like Germany, Japan, etc. where the population is homogeneous).”
This is unfortunately true. Including a constitution that places Islam as the highest law (Art. IIa) only makes it worse.