Why going to war in Iraq was required...

Lately things in Iraq aren't going too well. The war itself went better than any war we've ever fought. Our overwhelming technology and superbly-trained personnel swept through Iraq with lightning speed and unparalleled accuracy. Unfortunately, keeping the country stable and getting them on their own feet with their own government and military has proven to be a bit tougher; I believe that it is becoming more and more obvious that the main reason that we are currently bogged down in Iraq is due to the work of worldwide terrorist organizations working in conjunction with governments like Iran in an attempt to destabilize us in Iraq and make coming after them elsewhere much harder to do. The good news is that if we can hang on to Iraq and ultimately come out on top in Iraq, fighting these groups on their home turf should prove to be MUCH easier mainly because we will have severely cut down their numbers in the conflicts in Iraq. That, coupled with the fact that we can't afford a destabilized Iraq are the main reasons that we MUST stay in Iraq and we MUST finish our job there.

But a lot of people have questioned our need to have ever gone to Iraq in the first place. Many people that I know, in and out of the military, have asked me this question. They argue that we should have tried diplomacy first. For starters, we DID try diplomacy. Not only did we try diplomacy for 10 years during the Clinton administration, and everything we tried FAILED, but we also tried immediate diplomatic actions just prior to engaging Iraq in 2003. We went to the U.N. and requested a final resolution demanding that Iraq allow inspectors inside and to prove to them that Iraq had destroyed their WMD. Iraq did not do that. WHY??? It "appears" that Iraq did not indeed have any WMD... so I ask again: If they had nothing to hide, WHY didn't they allow the inspectors in and prove to them that they were clean??? I still think that they DID have some WMD and they figured out in those months before the war what to do with the evidence. After their non-compliance with the U.N.'s resolution, the U.S. Congress gave full support for the war, and the U.S. then went to the U.N. to make the case for war. At that point the U.N. issued several resolutions calling for Saddam to step down from power or he would be forced to. When he did not step down, the U.S. was simply following the next step of the diplomatic process.

You see, it seems that in today's world people tend to think that diplomacy consists only of striking deals and that everyone just complies with them. That is, of course, nonsense. And just like with everything else, when you say 'do this, or I'll do this'... YOU MUST BACK UP WHAT YOU SAID or else you are all bark and no bite.

In the book "Plan of Attack" by Bob Woodward, we read his explanation of why we HAD to go to war in Iraq once we had tried to solve things diplomatically and failed. He quotes Secretary Powell and makes reference to National Security Adviser Rice's policy on diplomacy. The text reads:

... Secretary Powell testified before the House International Relations Committee in support of the resolution. "I've been known as a reluctant warrior. It doesn't bother me. BUT THE THREAT OF WAR HAS TO BE THERE," he said. It was an argument that would be adopted by many democrats who might have been inclined to vote against a congressional resolution. Deterrence and containment of the Soviet Union during the Cold War had been built around the threat of massive conventional and nuclear retaliation. It was a policy that had succeeded and MODEL FOR AVOIDING WAR. Bush was not necessarily asking for war on Iraq. He was merely asking for congressional support as he THREATENED FOR WAR on Iraq. It was Rice's version of coercive diplomacy. [Emphasis are mine]

I think that this is important to understand. Prior to the war the U.S. (President Bush included) has what appeared to us as CREDIBLE intelligence that suggested that Iraq was in collusion with International Terrorism and that they possessed WMD. With this information and also the outlook (I believe) that the easiest of the 3 "Axis of Evil" countries to attack and terminate their terrorist ties was Iraq, the President acted. I believe the outlook was that the Iraq situation could POSSIBLY be solved diplomatically but that if it could not we would be fully justified in acting quickly because we had already been trying to work with Iraq for 10 years to no avail; and if forced to act, winning would be quick and easy compared to war with Iran or North Korea. Iraq was, for those reasons, the next best target in the War on Terrorism.

And to NOT ACT after all the diplomacy, after all the threats of war in trying to urge Iraq to act... well, that would have cheapened the authority of the U.S. and completely declawed us; and surely worlwide terrorism and the countries that support it would have been encouraged attack us again.

The fact is that war in Iraq sent a STRONG message to the other shady governments out there, and took the war with the terrorists to their turf instead of in our homeland. War with Iraq, no matter how ugly it gets, was the best solution at the time and ultimately we had little choice in the matter.