[deccan]

* Shrug *

On balance, I'd say that I supported the war based on the evidence available at that time. I'd say that Iraq's renewed acceptance of the UN's weapons inspectors at the threat isn't sufficient for me because it was a case too little, too late.

Remember that I'm in the Solomon Islands. Here, we had an amnesty period within which the militants were supposed to hand in their weapons in exchange for not being persecuted. However, in order to avoid conflict, the government kept renewing the amnesty over and over again, and made the entire Townsville Peace Agreement which created the amnesty into a laughing stock.

But I would also say that, even based on the pre-war evidence, GWB's claims that Iraq represented a grave and imminent threat to the U.S. were hyperbole. If the rationale for the war were mostly based on that, then I'd agree that the war was unjustified.

My own pre-war reasons for supporting the war was never based on the imminent threat that Iraq supposedly posed to the U.S. As a Malaysian, I saw the war as justified on humanitarian principles, based on overthrowing a despotic regime, universally hated by its people. I saw a chance to establish a democracy in the Middle East and prove that Islam IS compatible with democracy. And I saw a chance for sending a strong, clear warning to any and all rogue regimes in the world that at least one country would be prepared to militarily intervene against evil-doing, particular to North Korea (which IS a concern, given where my country is). It helps that all these things are GOOD in the long-term for the U.S.'s own interests.

Why would I believe that the U.S. would be prepared to do these things? I admit that I certainly have no right to ask the U.S. and its people to take on this responsibility, but if they do want to do this, then certainly I support them.

Overall, however, I am disappointed with the post-war developments. Despite its pre-war claims to the contrary, it is now painfully obvious that the U.S. never did give much thought or make much effort to determine what sort of post-war government Iraq should have. The huge disparity between the pre-war effort made to properly plan the war and the pre-war effort to plan for the future of Iraq is shameful. The abrupt change of the U.S. administrator, the Last-minute frantic efforts to hire experts who understand the local culture (when such people ought to have been properly identified and contacted well in advance), the inability to deliver proper public services to the Iraqis etc. are nearly enough for me to regret my pre-war support for the effort.

Things may yet turn out right in the end, and I certainly hope that they do, but unless they do, it seems that Iraq will turn into another example in a long list of such examples of the U.S.'s tendency to think in terms of short-term benefits and ignore the big picture.