Dishonesty or Insanity: The Left's View of the War Against Saddam Hussein

I have never encountered a political debate so contentious, in which one side was so wrong, so completely misguided on their analysis and policy prescriptions, as that over the War in Iraq. In this debate, the political Right has not always adopted the best possible strategies to defeat our Islamist enemies. Yet the political Left is so clearly irrational about the proper strategy to take in this War that there is no conclusion other than they are either being dishonest or they have lost touch with the political and moral realities involved.

You can argue that Iraq was not the first country after Afghanistan that the U.S. should have attacked. You can argue that the U.S. should have first attacked Iran or Saudi Arabia or Pakistan. And you can argue that the U.S. should have devoted more resources to securing Afghanistan and preventing the escape of Al Queda terrorists and Taliban members. However, you cannot argue that it was even remotely immoral to attack and oust Saddam Hussein’s regime. Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship was psychotic, megalomaniacal, and mass murderering; and any nation had the right to end such a regime, even if there was zero evidence of WMD and terrorist ties.

However, given the fact that there was tons of evidence of WMD and ties to terrorist organizations; and given the fact that almost every expert and interested politician (including Bill Clinton, John Kerry, Hans Blix, and Richard Clarke) believed that Hussein had these weapons and ties in the years leading up to the war; and given Hussein’s hatred of the U.S., there is absolutely no remotely reasonable justification for saying that the Bush administration’s war against Hussein was based on "false premises" or was "immoral" or "illegal". That is, unless you are more worried about the U.S.’s "prestige" with the U.N. and France and Germany and Russia, than in doing what is right and in America’s self-interest.