War and Peace

Before the Bosnian evasion there was little drumbeat, alliance building, UN coddling or any public relations maneuvers that led up to war. In fact during the invasion and subsequent troop installment there was little opposition. Sure the president said that this would be a quick incursion and the troops would be home but it didn't happen. If the US erred in the campaign, who cared. Milosevic was a genocidal creep. The racial killings ended and troops are still there keeping the peace. It may not be good policy to invade a country when we have little to no strategic interest. We can assume that since the Democrats are fine with the Bosnian campaign then we can infer they feel war is necessary if a countries leader commits ethnic cleansing.

So here we go years later into Iraq with a president of a different party. Lets say that there were no weapons of mass destruction, or state sponsored terrorism. Would the left be content that we at least stopped a leader that committed ethnic cleansing of its Kurdish and Shia citizens? Democrats are not the bad guy here but there is a matter of inconsistency if one were to say on the one hand Bosnia was okay but Iraq is not even brazen to suggest, as the New York Times editorial and Barak Obama have, that if genocide ensures if we leave, that's okay.

The Iraq war has a lot to be critical of but the end result is that it is a democracy. The country is a mess but seems to be on the mend, is the campaign worth it? If we look at the map we can see that Afghanistan and Iraq are big countries and that if there is stability in these places it would be a lot easier to contain Iran, whom, by all accounts, is a complete menace to the region and the rest of the world.

If the Iraq war is bad policy to the leading Democratic contenders is it only so because it wasn't executed correctly due to, as they say, an incompetent president? If so then this is an opposition of the means, are they in agreement with the ends which is a stable and free Iraq? Or in the very least, an Iraq that doesn't anymore ethnically cleans its citizens. In short is the opposition to Iraq by Democrats have less to do with mistakes and more to do with the fact that George Bush is running the war?