A look back at who was for the Iraq war when it started….
(The author neglects to mention the post 9/11 anger)
And who was against it….
And how that plays now…Of course hindsight is 20/20, right?
by TA-NEHISI COATES @ The Atlantic
[L]et’s assume that many Iraqis may indeed be better off. For Americans that’s not the relevant fact. After all, many people in Cuba, North Korea, etc might be better off if the U.S. invaded there too. The question I am asking is whether this was a sane investment of American lives, money, national focus and attention, and international reputation. I argued before the war and soon after that it wasn’t, and I think time has strengthened rather than weakened that case.
And finally it meant the election of the country’s first black president whose ascent began at an anti-war rally in Chicago.
I say all this to say that if I regret anything it is my pose of powerlessness — my lack of faith in American democracy, my belief that the war didn’t deserve my hard thinking or hard acting, my cynicism. I am not a radical. But more than anything the Iraq War taught me the folly of mocking radicalism. It seemed, back then, that every “sensible” and “serious” person you knew — left or right — was for the war. And they were all wrong. Never forget that they were all wrong. And never forget that the radicals with their drum circles and their wild hair were right.
Watching reasonable people assemble sober arguments for a disaster was, to put it mildly, searing….
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Was this war worth its costs?
My answer would be No.