12 Years too Late

Vox Day responds to the idea we should have attacked Germany preemptively in the late 1930's. It seems to me that this analogy is the wrong one to make with regard to Iraq. What we did in Iraq was wait 12 years after the appropriate time to take out Saddam Hussein thereby causing ourselves a lot trouble. It's almost as if the Allies in 1945 had stopped at the borders of Germany and signed a cease fire with Hitler. Then 12 years later in 1957, the American president decides that he's had enough of Hitler even though he's been contained for twelves years and then invades Germany and deposes of him. This obviously would have been ridiculous, but that's what we did with Iraq. In 1991, we had a far larger armer then in 2002. We had the authority of the UN and the support of the world. Although some members of the coalition would have dropped out when we went beyond the mandate of liberating Kuwait, we could have done it so swiftly that it would have been a fait accompli. Sure, we would have some of the same problems we are facing now but we would have been in better shape to deal with them. Many in Iraq would have supported us because they hated Saddam. A large number of those people aren't there now because we let Saddam massacre them in 1991. Furthermore the timing would have been right. Timing is critical in military strategy. In 1991 Saddam was clearly the aggressor who started the war by invading Kuwait. In addition, Saddam was not prepared in 1991. Because his army was no match for the US military, his army was quickly routed. In 2002, he knew he couldn't beat the Americans in a head-on conflict so he made plans for his forces to disappear into the countryside and launch a guerrilla war. In 2002 we made ourselves look like the aggressor and had to come up with a lot of unconvincing justifications. I still think getting rid of Saddam was a good thing but it would have been a lot better if we had done this when the time was right.