This is the best argument I have read that makes me think I may have been wrong in my support of the Iraq invasion. I still think Iraq has to be better off without Saddam Hussein. But this piece does make a strong case that, in typical American fashion, we did not have sufficient historical perspective to understand what complications we might be facing. The problem ultimately, though, is that we can never know those sorts of things. We have to make decisions in real time in real circumstances, and the world keeps moving along, providing us with ever-new and usually dangerous circumstances. It would be nice to say simply that I may have been wrong (though in saying that I do not in any way concede anything to people who opposed that policy for purely political reasons), but we are talking about something that caused a lot of people on all sides to die. One more reminder that ideas do indeed have consequences. We should all bear that in mind as a way of curbing our enthusiasms.
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