The American Thinker has a letter by Herbert E. Meyer that those who conflate their distaste for George Bush with opposition to the battle in Iraq should read. An excerpt:
Now, you may be among those who believe that the President’s strategy is absurd – that there isn’t the slightest possibility of Islam reconciling with the modern world and of democracy taking root in the Mideast. Or, you may believe that the strategy is plausible, but that the President has made an historic mistake by choosing Iraq as first Mideast country in which to make it work. Or, you may believe that it can be done in Iraq, but that we have gone about it badly, for instance by not putting enough troops on the ground in that country to overcome the Baathists and the non-Iraqi terrorists who are fighting now to prevent the upcoming elections from succeeding.
In the end, history will prove you right – or wrong. But as of today, we simply don’t know how things will turn out in Iraq. Read the last sentence again, slowly, because it really is the heart of the issue. We are in the middle of a war and no one – absolutely no one – knows whether we will win or lose it
Unfortunately, if winning it is not a shared objective, I think we do know the outcome. I do not expect Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore to abandon their promotion of American defeatism, but it is hard to understand how sane Americans would advocate such a result simply to punish George Bush.
Christopher Hitchens adds:
For reasons that I have explained at length elsewhere, I think that the continuation of the Saddam Hussein regime would have been even more dangerous than the Bush administration has ever claimed. I also think that that regime should have been removed many years before it actually was, which is why the Bush administration is right to remind people of exactly what Democrats used to say when they had the power to do that and did not use it. No, there are two absolutely crucial things that made me a supporter of regime change before Bush, and that will keep me that way whether he fights a competent war or not.
He tells you what these things are here.