I'm constantly reading stuff in the paper about people opposed to the war in Iraq and people who hate Bush. I'd like to add my two cents here. I like Bush. I think he's an honest decent person who believes that what he does is for the good of the country. I don't agree with some of his policies, maybe most of his policies, e.g. I'm pro-choice; I don't care AT ALL about gay marriage; we should fund stem-cell research; and the idea of teaching so-called "intelligent design" in science class is, uh, not so smart.
Iraq, however, far outweighs all of the above. I don't care about WMDs. I do care about defeating terrorism. I know I know, Saddam was not responsible for Sept. 11. Not the point. The entire Islamist culture, the one that indoctrinates its youth to believe that freedom is evil, that Americans and Jews are responsible for all the world's problems, that all so-called infidels must die, that all women must be subjugated, that it's honorable to sacrifice your children as suicide bombers, this is what must be defeated. To do this, there has to be another culture planted in the middle east, one that values freedom and humanity.
Iraq is the issue of our time, just as Hitler was the issue of his time. Hitler sought to impose a new world order, one governed by a terroristic authoritarian state. The Islamists are no different. Maybe it was wrong to use the WMD argument to justify the invasion but Americans weren't going to buy the need-for-democracy argument. Bush had to pick a state that was universally reviled, one that had a sympathetic populace where he thought we had the best chance to prevail. Saddam may not have been directly behind Sept. 11 but our invasion of Iraq has uncovered how vast and dangerous al-qaida is.
I see it like this: if you have a hornet's nest in your yard that's not doing too much damage, they just come out and sting you once in a while, do you leave it there so it can grow and maybe build more nests and risk having your kids be attacked sometime by a swarm because you didn't have the time, inclination, money or guts to extract the thing from your yard? Of course not. If we just sit on our asses and devote our resources to health care or better roads or jobs or the environment, what good does it do if in 5 years or 10 or 20 the Islamists, all the while continuing to indoctrinate a new generation of kids, get their hands on a nuclear weapon and launch it toward NYC or LA or DC? Think it can't happen? Don't be so sure.
