YBTD

Talk about moving goalposts – Iraq has gone from major looming threat to “central front on the War on Terror” to a Habitat for Humanity project with astonishing smoothness.

This was a sick conflict created out of whole cloth to project American power when we were down and needed a scapegoat. (”There are no good targets in Afghanistan. Let’s bomb Iraq.” – Donald Rumsfeld) It’s a shameful tragedy that we can only hope to eventually extricate ourselves from. *That’s* the truth.

So, despite your effort to change the subject, let’s go back to my original point: Iraq has not been burned down and obliterated, not by the coalition forces anyway and certainly not by President Bush. Didn’t happen. That’s a fairy tale–and a rather gross and hateful one, to boot. You have to be willfully blind to the facts to sustain that fairy tale–willful, because the facts are well-documented and you don’t even ask for them, you just deny, deny, deny.

But it’s the truth.

Now, whether it as all worth it or not is another subject. I contend that it was, and even if it wasn’t we should all still be working together as Americans (and other members of the coalition like the Brits, Canadians, Aussies, and the dozens of other allies who helped us or are still helping us) to assure victory and assure that Iraq is a better place than it was when we got there.

Which, has already happened. It is UNDENIABLY a better place now than when we got there, and indeed a better place than it has ever been in all of its history. Real progressives would cheer that if nothing else, but hatemongering rabid partisans who are not really progressives would refuse to do that. Or so it would seem to me.

“Iraq must be freed from the tyrannical boot of Saddam. This will be a long hard slog, costing thousands of American lives and hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade. In order to secure the nation in the chaos that will follow Saddam’s overthrow, we will have to destroy the Iraqi national infrastructure and then rebuild it, brick by brick. But the effort must be made – how can we live with ourselves as a nation if we do not undertake this cause? This is not a war, this is not an invasion – this is an intervention.

Some say Iraq is a threat to the United States. And obviously, after 9/11 we must take all threats seriously. But there is major disagreement over whether any real threat exists, and just months ago my own national security team felt we had Saddam contained. Almost all our information about escalation of the threat comes from dubious sources with their own agendas.

But this is not about the threat of Iraq to the United States. This is about giving glorious God-given freedom to the Iraqi people, so they can vote and protest and bicker politically just like every other democracy.

Of course, we must consider our own interests as well. Permanent military bases in Iraq, once the humanitarian effort is complete in several years, will allow us to maintain the fragile and volatile peace in the region.

So I ask my fellow Americans to join with me in this great effort to free the Iraqi people.”

If the nation votes for it then, I grant you everything.

There has been a small turn towards sanity, like when Bush acknowledged recently that Al Qaeda wasn’t in Iraq before the U.S. invasion (oh sorry, “humanitarian shock and awe parade”). His response, in typical introspective fashion, was “so what?”

Yes, the whole “experiment” (your term) was definitely worth several hundred thousand dead, $600 billion (so far), and evisceration of the U.S.’s global influence. Bravo. Mission Accomplished.

Iraq is, by almost any rational standard, better today than it ever has been in its entire history as a nation. Better economically, better politically, better on everyday practical things like electricity and clean water, better on individual liberty–almost across the board.

It’s a beautiful thing, and it’s really a shame that so many so-called “progressives” in this era refused to be a part of what was the greatest US humanitarian intervention in generations.

Still, I’m looking forward to most of them acknowledging that Iraq is making spectacular progress. That will likely start the day Obama is sworn in as President. And, in another year or two, they’ll all be hailing mighty Obama and giving him credit for all the improvements we’ve already seen. So it goes. The most important thing is, Iraq is in better shape today than it ever has been since it was formed as a country, and, is continuing to improve rapidly. That’s the most important thing.