In another sobering article, Niall Ferguson describes the pre-history of the war that begins in 2007.
He describes the very plausible scenario that we may be building right now. As with my previous post on Steyn, I cannot recite Ferguson’s ideas better than he, so I suggest taking the time to read the above link.
I will pipe in with a further thought experiment. In order to judge the success of Iraq, one must not simply compare its current state to its state before the war -- although the comparison is more favorable than most would guess. Instead, one must imagine the current day, had we not removed Saddam.
In all likelihood, the UN inspectors would have faded from the scene. The US and Britain would still be patrolling the north and south of the country. UN oil-for-food money would still be enriching Saddam’s regime and flowing to the governments of Europe and beyond.
Saddam, hyper-intelligent, ruthless and emboldened by the West’s toothless diplomacy, sees that his Shiite neighbor has developed nuclear weapons. (Recall Saddam’s brutal history with Iran and the Shiites in his own country.)
Would Saddam be sitting idly by? No, instead, the West (read: the US) would now be confronted with two major oil-enriched Middle Eastern powers pursuing nuclear weapons. And imagine how Saudi and Egypt would be looking at this...
Yes, the current scene in Iraq might be described as simmering chaos. But imagine how it might have looked without pre-emption. Will history remember Bush as a visionary? Did he understand all of these risks, and choose the least-bad option? What is the least-bad option with Iran?
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