It's not a failure until the day we give up and pull out without achieving the objective of a stable democratic government in Iraq.
A "stable, democratic government in Iraq" is a complete contradiction in terms. Besides, this is an absurd position. The German strategy in World War II was clearly a failure long before Field Marshal Jodl signed the surrender.
I believe that it's a worthy objective, with a lot of potential to alleviate many of the problems in the area.
Whether or not it's a worthy objective with lots of potential doesn't mean it's a realistic one. Why don't you Neocons try thinking realistically for once?
We won't really know that for sure until the terrorist presence is eliminated.
Assuming you mean foreign terrorists, then yes, we
do know that for sure. We know that now, since the foreign terrorist presence in Iraq is relatively small, and most of the insurgents are Sunni or Shia Iraqis intent on killing the opposite group.
We have allies helping us in the effort, Britain and Australia being the most notable.
Don't forget Poland.
Seriously, don't be so disingenuous. Britain's and Australia's support is waning. It's virtually a unilateral action on our part.
The UN resolution 1441 gave us the acquiesence, if not the approval, of the UN for the invasion.
No, it didn't. It paved the way for a tougher policy towards Iraq; it was never intended as a blank check to invade Iraq.
It wasn't a unilateral action. Even if it were, it is not a half-witted policy, because striking at the countries that support terrorism groups is in our national interest.
First of all, I disagree that such a policy is at all in our interests; striking at countries that support terrorist groups that directly harm our interests, after diplomacy has been exhausted, and ONLY when we have a viable plan for rebuilding and stabilizing those countries - that MIGHT in our interests. Simply striking against countries that support terrorism is idiotic and self-defeating.
Secondly, if this policy really was in our best interest, then we should have invaded Saudi Arabia. Iraq didn't support al Qaeda. Powerful elements in Saudi Arabia do.
The point is that even in the greatest republic created we had very serious problems, very serious moral and political failures. Can we expect less from a nation that was unnaturally pieced together from disparate cultures and held together by fear for so many years.
No, of course we can't expect less. We can expect exponentially greater problems than those we faced - and guess what? We've got those problems on our hands, and it's turned out that those problems are too great for us to handle. It's all nice and heartfelt that you're citing the problems that the early U.S. faced, but the problems we faced and the problems they're facing right now are worlds apart.
One advantage Iraq has (so far), is our help.
I don't believe this is an advantage in the slightest. U.S. presence has only acted as a catalyst in this situation. Sunnis see our support of the Shia government as support for Shia dominance over Sunnis. Shias aren't convinced that we're fully on their side, either, and the Mehdi Army and other Shia militant groups seem to be protecting a lot of Shias where the American forces cannot. And on top of that all is the looming feeling among many Iraqis that, whether U.S. intentions were noble or evil, we ARE, to one degree or another, the cause of all this violence.
If we pull out, we not only fail them, we fail ourselves.
We already
have failed ourselves, by involving ourselves in an unwinnable war based on the flimsiest of pretexts.
and the respect of the world (which is more important than being liked by the world).
We currently have neither. The longer we remain in Iraq, the less respect the world has for us. The idea that the world will somehow lose more respect for us if we renounce unilateralism and our idiotic policy in Iraq is completely delusional.
The goal of the terrorists is to wear our will down, so that we will leave and they can wreak havoc on the infant Iraqi democracy.
The foreign terrorists are a completely peripheral element in Iraq; if you're at all interested in the outcome of this war, you should be more focused on the indigenous insurgents.
Our goal is to wear the terrorists down until the Iraqi democracy can handle things on its own (which is not an impossibility, despite the naysayers)
It is indeed impossible, because that would require us wearing down all indigenous insurgents, as well - and there's a LOT more of them, and they're a LOT more widespread, than our troops.
It is not our goal to exact bloody revenge on everyone else.
No, but it's the goal of many Iraqis', and we're not going to be able to stop them.
This war is about to match the time span to our Civil War, but I doubt we will see a million American casualties.
Irrelevant. We will doubtlessly see many more Iraqi casualties than that, because of our own stupidity.
Iraq is only headed for disorder if we give up and pull out of there before achieving the stable democratic government.
It's headed for disorder no matter what we do.
Getting back to the original question, Bush relied on intelligence, that while flawed, indicated a serious enough threat to warrant doing something about Saddam.
Nonsense. Dealing with that threat, which did turn out to be false, has turned out to be entirely too costly, in terms of human cost, financial cost, and political cost (domestically and especially internationally).
Bush has the responsibility if the U.S. is attacked again, so he has the incentive to deal with threats early. He worked with Congress and the UN to pressure Saddam to open up to the UN inspectors. When that failed, Saddam was proven to be in material breach, bringing the "serious consequences" that the resolution called for. None of this qualifies as impeachable offense material.
Nor did I state that it was, so I'm not too sure why you even brought it up in the first place.
