Why I believed the war in Iraq was a good idea

I'd like to highlight a comment I just wrote, because I think it does a decent job of encapsulating many of the reasons I supported the war in Iraq:

I recommended reading these quotes on InstaPundit, and in response to the second quote Alan asked:

Do you agree that the main reason for invading Iraq was to "set up a secure base of operations for the eventual attack on Saudi [Arabia]"?

I responded:

Not Saudi Arabia in particular, but I believe having a secure base of operations and military presence right smack in the middle of Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Iran is important. That itself may even serve to prevent war because we can threaten convincingly from a position of strength. At least as important, but probably more, is establishing a successful democratic capitalist neighbor to the surrounding totalitarian states, so the people in those states will start to say, in greater and greater numbers, "Why not me?". I believe a functioning liberal capitalist society in Iraq will help to bring about the eventual downfall of the Baathist regime in Syria, the Mullahcracy in Iran, and the "royalty" in Saudi Arabia.

The war on terror, or more properly the war on Islamic fascism, is truly "World War III"^[1]. Since the "run up to war" in Iraq I've believed that the elimination of Saddam's regime in Iraq, as well as the establishment of the type of society I spoke of above, is one central objective in the prosecution of this war we find ourselves in. I knew that our strategic goals went far beyond eliminating Iraq's WMD's, though that was to be the main thrust of the "legal" justification we used to get the U.N. on board.

Furthermore, going forward in Iraq has done some other things. It has shown that we're very serious, which is terribly important for establishing our negotiating position in the future (which, again, may help serve to prevent future war), and it has had a few unintended, and very beneficial consequences, particularly Libya's capitulation, which is so important in and of itself, not to mention all the intelligence we've been able to gather both from Libya (most significantly, the history of weapons proliferation between Libya, Pakistan, North Korea, Iran, and Syria) and Iraq. It has also helped to unravel the Oil for Food scandal in the U.N., and it has made Iraq a sink for terrorists to come and be destroyed. Really, al Qaeda and other terrorists are coming to face our soldiers and be destroyed, rather than coming here to attack civillians -- we couldn't have asked for a better situation! And, of course, the world has one fewer evil dictator, and we helped to free dozens of millions of people from his torture and oppression. So, do I still think the war in Iraq was a good idea? Hell yes.

One of the things I forgot to mention (this was what spurred the second commenter on InstaPundit to mention Saudi Arabia) is that while the war in Iraq wasn't "for oil", which, when asserted by the left, meant that it was to benefit "Bu$h's oil buddies" and Cheney's Halliburton buddies personally, the fact that Iraq has one of the world's largest oil supplies is very important strategically in our war on terror. Freeing up Iraq's oil supply should eventually reduce the power of OPEC and reduce our dependence on hostile nations' oil supplies. In addition to the war in Iraq helping to bring about the downfall of Syria and Iran, as I argued above, I hope that it will also lead to the eventual downfall of OPEC.

Footnotes:
[1]: Some people consider the Cold War to be WWIII, and that may be a good point. In that case, we're currently fighting WWIV. We've won all the others, and if God continues to bless America, we'll win this one too.

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15:40 (utc-4)
edited: 16:37 (utc-4)