Ben replied “The sanctions regime was collapsing, even in the wake of 9/11, due to French and Russian fecklessness.”

I would like to point out that another factor was increasingly vehement opposition from domestic leftists and liberals and assorted “think of the children” peaceniks.

Supposing they went ahead and did so, using covert measures to assassinate Hussein. What happens then – one of his sons would have taken over, or someother of his henchmen, so do you keep killing them? I’d like to know how this continual process would have resulted in regime change or caused any less chaos in a country that would have been on its knees with no-one in charge.

Furthermore, the Iraq war has not resulted in “countless” deaths of American troops. The number is in the thousands over several years. Compare this to Korea, Vietnam, WW2, WW1 and you’ll realise that to sacrifice a few thousand lives for the sake of at least one country and it’s people is a relatively small price to pay.

Opportunistic and feckless chickensits.

Everything no make sense.

Bush has always said that many of our efforts would not be seen. We are learning about the enemy’s funding, recruiting, and communications. We are closing these operations down slowly but surely. The most difficult area to control has been propaganda, and yet the brutality of the terrorists is now known by Muslims around the world because they have seen them in action in Iraq. If these people can see that we remain committed in Iraq, they may come to prefer us.

Nice going, Mr. Klein. Nice going.

So far you’ve hit “Mission Accomplished,” “Bush had no plan,” “intermittent electricity”(=”Iraq is worse off now than it was under Saddam”), “Saddam was contained,” “we should have gone after the Saudis,” and perhaps most importantly at this point, “neocons/supporters of the effort in Iraq know we can’t win and are just biding their time, waiting for a chance to blame the Democrats.” Here goes.

“Mission Accomplished”: oh, come on. You skipped the fake turkey. This is hardly worth the virtual ink, but the “Mission Accomplished” banner belonged to the aircraft carrier, because their mission was accomplished. Bush pronounced that “major combat operations” were over – which means Saddam and his government had fallen; it did not mean we were done in Iraq. But that particular milestone was something to celebrate.

“Bush had no plan” – yet the military, the CIA, the FBI, Homeland Security, even the oh-so-inconvenient-and-irritating airport security folks seem now, and have seemed all along, to be doing something according to some plan or other. Perhaps it’s not the plan you would have supported. Perhaps it’s not even the most effective plan possible; we can’t run side-by-side experiments to check. Bush may be a lousy communicator (and I actually don’t think I fully believe that; he’s been up against a media that was fully in the tank for the other side for the past eight years, yet he certainly did manage to get himself elected in 2004, didn’t he?), but he doesn’t lack for decisiveness or political courage. And that is clearly part of Leadership 101. Just as importantly, the plan does appear to be working. Would another plan have worked faster to get to the point where we are now? Well, I think we can be pretty confident that actually leaving Iraq wouldn’t have accomplished much. (BTW, be careful of the word “countless” about the lives lost for the ground gained.)

“Intermittent electricity” – electricity in Iraq was more intermittent under Saddam, just not in Baghdad (and I’d wager not in any of Saddam’s palaces). The underlying bit, “better off under Saddam” than under the most liberal constitution in the Arab world – okaaay…

“Saddam was contained” and “we should have gone after the Saudis” – the former has been well flogged herein and I trust you won’t be bringing it up anywhere else. The latter – do you really think we haven’t been “going after the Saudis”? We just haven’t been bombing them or murdering them in their beds (I’ve got to second the comment of the person who pointed out that that would have been an unequivocal act of war against at least a nominal ally, versus an invasion of a rearming nation that was in violation of cease-fire, which served – at minimum – to make the point that we were not a paper tiger, Vietnam notwithstanding. Libya got the point quickly). Since the earliest stages of the so-call “GWOT,” interrupting terrorist financing has loomed large in our strategy. And showing that we’re not out to destroy Mecca, but that we won’t sit by idly and be attacked either, has significant diplomatic value. Nuance – it’s all about the nuance.

Finally. We can’t win? Nicole has striven mightily to show you the scope of the problem. Success in Iraq is not a day without IEDs. Israel is by any measure at all a notably successful democracy; yet it’s continually having to deal with terrorists within its borders. (Yup, I chose Israel on purpose.) Britain in the early ’90s suffered frequent IRA attacks – my husband missed by about an hour being injured or killed by the largest bomb to go off in the City since WWII, and I missed an Underground bomb by one train. And we only lived in London for six months. Yet Britain’s government was and is very clearly in control of its territory, governs by the rule of law, and guarantees important rights to its citizenry. These were generally true in Belfast even in the worst of the Troubles. Iraq doesn’t have to be perfect; it just has to work. And unfortunately for your argument, it seems to be doing more of that all the time.

As for Viet Nam, the history books basically jump from 1968 to 1973. At its height the Army of the Republic of South Viet Nam fielded 4 million troops. Yet you never see them in the popular history. Read A Better War.

As far as Iraq taking a long time, I hate to say, if you believe that, you don’t know what a long time is. We in the Anglosphere consider ourselves the purveyors of democracy. We have supported it and spread it to more people, more successfully than anyone. Bumpy, yes, but successful? Definitely. See: India, U.S., Canada, Australia…

But how long did it take for us to get from the Magna Carta’s “The king shall not have absolute power” (because we, the aristocracy, are claiming some) to the United States Constitution’s “There will be no king”?

575 years.

6 years? 7 years? 10 years? Forever? Seriously? What an enormous lack of perspective.