[LXAAlum]

Originally posted by DeltAlum
Remember, these are opinions...

Looking back with 20/20 hindsite one year later...

1) Our armed forces did a magnificent job. Well done!
Absolutely!

2) We were misled and entered the war for the wrong reasons.
I don't think we were "misled"...I think "misinformed" is more appropro...remember that all intelligence sources indicated that there probably were WMD's in Iraq - and that wasn't just US Military, or CIA intel, it was French, British, etc....intelligence.

I still believe there are WMD's, but we're looking in the wrong place. Syria is mentioned time and again as a place that a lot of Iraqi WMD and other material were sent to in between the time the UN inspector were expelled by Saddam, and their return, and the subsequent invasion.

3) Terrorism is as bad or worse (given the past few days) and there were no WMD's discovered.See above.

4) We executed the war exceptionally well and the aftermath exceptionally badly.
Somewhat true - though no one can ever predict with any accuracy exactly how things will turn out. What I don't like is the people that say we need to "leave now" - that will make a chaotic situation even worse. It takes time to get a country back on it's feet - look what we did for Germany and Japan after WWII - we didn't leave 2 weeks after the war ended.

5) We are losing the support of much of the world community -- save Great Britain. Particularly in Europe. A lot of people think that we are a power hungry superpower (According to the Pugh Survey released just this week.) A substantial piece of the Iraqi population blames us for their post war problems. Which is not totally fair -- but is partly, due to number 4 above.
I think Spain made a grave error in their election - hints of Chamberlain's "peace in our time" fatal miscalculation. Appeasement cannot work against an enemy whose only stated goal is our destruction (not "change", or "diplomacy", but they want to kill all non-believers)

6) Now that we have committed so much, we must "stay the course" or Iraq will fall back into anarchy.

7) Sadaam is gone. That's good. Nobody has filled the vacuum. That's bad.

8) This will last a lot longer. Do we have the national willpower?
We certainly are a different people in the last 50 years, that is true - we certainly had the patience to stick it out to win in WWII, and to get the world back on it's feet - but Americans today want a "24 hour" fix to all the world's problems, and that just isn't possible.

9) While the economy and employment will continue to be the main issues, this will be a huge factor in this year's elections.

Rambling thoughts on a Thursday morning, one year after war.