Defending the Iraq War

As Iraq slides into the hands of Islamic extremists many people, including veterans, are saying the those who died or were injured in the Iraq war made sacrifices for nothing.  Not so.  Losing a battle does not mean we are losing the war. 

Let's go back to September 12th 2001.  On that day we all knew a lot of our soldiers were going to die taking the fight to the enemy, and we suspected a lot more of us might die sitting at our desks while we worked.  We also knew a whole lot of the enemy were going to die as well...  whoever the enemy was! We were going to kill them in big numbers.  That was not the time for negotiations or summits.  Wholesale death was going to be our response and everyone knew it.  Had we managed to kill Osama Bin Laden later that night, it wouldn't have been enough and we wouldn't have stopped there.

The problem is that a civilized society doesn't simply kill large numbers of random people for revenge, no matter how righteous our blood-lust might be.  If we are forced to fight, then we should fight to fix the problems that caused so much bloodshed in the first place in the hopes that we might leave behind a legacy of peace and friendship with our former adversaries.

So with that in mind, here are the problems that led to 9/11 that we attempted to fix:

1.  Islamic extremists thought we were a "Paper Tiger".
Islamic extremists thought they could attack us repeatedly and that we would not risk lives to fight back.  They thought we did not have the will to sustain a long, drawn out battle, so they concluded we would retreat the first time we lost a soldier in battle.  Instead, we responded by taking over Afghanistan and Iraq, and we didn't pull out when we lost soldiers.  We proved that the US is definitely NOT a paper tiger.  More importantly, we left the message behind that we don't even care if you did it!  If you laughed when we got hurt, then you just made the list.  That's what happened to Iraq.  We stood up and said "OK, everyone is going to straighten up and behave."  Saddam flipped us off so we took him out.   No matter how Iraq turns out after today the paper tiger problem has been solved.
Our response:  A+

2.  Rogue States run by dictators and theocracies spreading terrorism and instability in the Middle East.
There is a theory called "Democratic Peace" which states that democracies don't fight democracies.  We can debate if this theory holds for all cases, but the correlation between the spread of liberal democracy and peaceful relations between those countries is well established.  So if we are forced to risk our soldiers' lives, kill a bunch of people, and spend a fortune taking over a country, then this theory tells us that the best possible outcome would be if we could convert that country into a liberal democracy.  The history after World War II with Germany and Japan showed us that this can be done successfully.  We tried converting Aghanistan and Iraq to democracy with disappointing results, mostly because of issue number 3.  The important result of this effort is that we tried to do the right thing and that the world saw us trying to do the right thing under extremely difficult circumstances.  We did not kill for revenge and we did our best to turn our enemies into responsible world players.  This has long-term consequences.
Our Response: C

3.  Islamic Extremism
The only way for number 2 to work is if a liberal democracy can take root in a country dominated by Muslims, or if a weak, newly formed democracy can survive while bordering a country controlled by Islamic extremists.  Turkey used to be such a country, but has recently turned more oppressive.  Unfortunately it looks like Islamic extremists are over-running the moderate Muslims around the world and ruling by terror.  This can be a difficult process to stop once it's started.  Our war may not be with Islam, but it definitely is with Islamic extremists.  Islamic extremism needs to challenged or it will take over without a fight.  In our efforts to be politically correct we have not even begun to fight this war. 
Our Response:  F

So we have shown ourselves and the world that we are willing to fight if forced to and that we will try to make the world a better place while we're doing it even when the price is lives and treasure.  We had to do the first and we were right to do the second.  This battle with dictatorships and theocracies will never end and it's important that we maintain our sense of morality and civility even when forced to go to war.  In Iraq and Afghanistan we have done that and I'm proud of our troops.  We chose the right path and someday the sacrifices of our soldiers will pay off.