I admit I was wrong about the Iraq war (I supported it) but contend my error or made was for all the right reasons. I would like to argue that you were right, but I cannot make that case. Given what happened with the "Arab Spring", it seems likely that any Iraqi government other than a long-term strongman like Saddam would have been destabilized and overthrown those for whom Obama feels sympathy, as happened with Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Yemen, and the other Arab unrest. Saddam's removal made instability inevitable once Obama took power, and there was no better strategy, better tactics, better set of objectives, or other improvement that could have led to a less negative outcome than the status quo ante.
I'd like to say that once we have a president who supports America we can go back in Iraq and fix the mess we made, but that is not realistic. Another war in Iraq would have even less support than our recent war, and the opposition would be more motivated to hold out and wait for a new president who would walk away from Iraq. We can't fix the mess we made, and it's going to be both a negative precedent for the world and a major, unsolvable regional problem for a long time.
I agree with your comments but I would like to make the following distinction: I did not initially support the Iraq war to make Iraq a safe haven for Jeffersonian democracy, I bought the argument that Iraq was seeking the bomb and if in possession of that bomb it constituted a real and existential threat to the security of the United States. I still have not abandon that thinking today when it applies to Iran.
Therefore, I believe that it is in the interest of the United States to prevent rogue fanatic Islamic states from getting the atomic bomb which they might use, might pass off to terrorists to smuggle across our Mexican border or explode in one of our harbors, which would certainly change the balance of power and turn the oil patch on its head with profound economic and strategic implications for the United States.
To repeat, I did not support that intervention to further George Bush's yearning to create a model democracy for the rest of the Arab and Muslim world to emulate.
