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[Spanky]

Originally posted by Sidd Finch
I will leave off the rest, as I've already addressed it, and only talk about this.

Calling Saddam and the Taliban evil is a no-brainer. Saying that their removal benefits their people is easy, but not quite as easy, because you then need to consider what comes next. The result in Afganistan certainly has been much better -- though I would argue that one cost of the Iraq invasion is that we have lost an opportunity to dramatically improve the lives of the Afghan people, which I believe would have been of great benefit to US security.

In Iraq, the question is harder, and still unanswered (the question of "are the Iraqis better off," not "was it worth it for US security"). Murderous, genocidal dictator gone. Replaced by..... It's still unclear. People vote, people get blown up. Civil war seems to approach, some say it's already here. If US forces leave, what happens next? Will US forces always be there?

And I will leave out all the "trains run on time" kind of stuff (things like oil production, electricity, clean water, etc), except to point out that Reagan and others used just that sort of justification to justify support of murderous, and even genocidal, dictatorial regimes in South Africa, Zaire, the Philippines, and a host of other countries (none of which were threatened by pro-Soviet, Communist insurgencies, which was the other rationale).

As an example of what I mean: I rejoiced the day that Mobutu left power. He was the worst sort of dictator. And yet -- was Zaire better off under him, or under Kabila? This may be impossible to say. Which is better: A dictator who tortures and slaughters his enemies and robs the country blind, or a never-ending civil war?

I agree that keeping murderous thugs in power cannot be justified in any moral way. The question is whether, from a national security perspective, it is beneficial to the US to go to war, largely unilaterally, to enforce moral positions. I think that it is very rarely a good idea, from a national security perspective, to do so. Where it may be a good idea, the question of scale intervenes -- it is one thing to support, even with troops, an independence movement. It is a very different thing to invade and occupy for an indefinite number of years. (Again -- the neo-cons who "planned" this refused to confront the clear problems that might cause a multi-year occupation, so all of the neo-con rationale now seems post-hoc.)

I agree with this generally, although when it comes to evil regimes, if you take it out, an evil regime may takes its place, but a chance that a better one will come along, even if it is small, in my opinion, is worth the risk.

Reasonable minds can disagree on this, but it is pretty hard for me to imagine a situation developing in Iraq that I would label worse than Saddam Hussein.