Why Are We in Iraq?

Two of the biggest news stories of the new year have been the trial of the Vice President's aide, Lewis Libby, and Congress's attempt to pass a resolution opposing the surge of additional troops to Iraq.

The two events are bookends in a sense to the war in Iraq; the Libby trial uncovered the administration's attempts to hide the potentially falsified reasons to go to war and now Republican's are attempting to hide the reasoning for the surge opposition resolution (attempting to frame the resolution as not supporting the troops as opposed to rejecting George Bush and makking Iraq responsible for Iraq).

If there is to be an honest discussion and decision about the resolution, and the future U.S. role in Iraq, then the Democrats, media and public are going to have to get actively involved in the debate and act on reason rather than fear.

The reason the United States got in the war in Iraq is that there was an unwillingness, not unsurprisingly after 9/11, to question the what was viewed as the administration's "attempt" to protect the country. Today, as the Washington Post reported, some congressional leaders are calling the Iraq war "the worst foreign policy mistake in the history of this country."

Today, too many people say that "if we knew now what we knew then, there wouldn't have been a vote to go to war." Well that's fine, but perhaps what's need is more comments like former Sen. John Edwards, who said that the vote authorizing the vote was a mistake. The only way the U.S. is going to regain the respect of the world, and get them involved in solving the Iraq problem is to admit our mistakes.

Without that admission there is little reason for foreign governments to get involved in our mess. The 9/11 Commission said that among the failures that took place which allowed the 9/11 attacks was "one of imagination." Unfortunately today too many people still have their war blinders on and are not willing to look at the big picture.

The country must ask ourselves why we are still in Iraq? Is it to fight terrorists or to take sides in a civil war? Without understanding why we are there will limit our planning, leading to additional failures.