So was it "the right thing"?

Has our invasion of Iraq limited the capacity or likelihood of another

Islamic extremist terrorist attack on us or our interests?

We have deposed Saddam Hussein,

no small gesture in the world of eliminating despots. He no longer has

the capacity to make trouble in the Middle East, or to build anymore weapons,

or to terrorize his own people.

But my question here would

be, What link did Saddam ever have with Islamic terrorists? And the answer

is, None has ever been proved by the Bush regime or anyone else.

I never thought it made sense

for a Stalinist style dictator to cede power (control) to a group with

a different agenda, and one he couldn't control. You can't attack

a country with 7000 nuclear weapons with any sense of impunity, nor would

it be wise to allow a traceable surrogate to do so.

What about the evolved reasoning:

bringing democracy, by way of example to the Middle East? I don't

find this an outlandish supposition, if only from a humanitarian point

of view. I'm just not sure it is possible to force democracy on a

people, nor do I adhere to the notion that it will magically spread by

the will of Iraq's neighbors.

More importantly, from a cost-benefit

point of view, will the amount of lives and treasure expended on such

a risky venture be worth our effort?

So far we've sacrificed

400 dead, thousands wounded, billions in war costs, and 87 billion more

pledged, and that's just what we know about.

And here's the key: The

outcome of this nation building is 100-percent unforeseeable at this juncture.

It could get a lot more expensive, and like Vietnam, turn into a black

hole with an adverse ending.

If it works out, we have a

happy, healthy Iraq in the middle of a bunch of perennial losers and troublemakers.

Any real benefits against Islamic terrorism may be decades off if any

really exist.

In the meantime, we live in

the real world of limited resources. If the right thing is protecting

ourselves and our interests against radical Islam, could not all these

resources in Iraq be used against the actual proponents and actors of

Islamic terrorism?

This is the part I have not

understood from the beginning. Whatever your bent on Iraq, you have to

ask yourself, have our limited resources been most beneficially used in

the subjugation and open-ended rebuilding of Iraq? Would they have been

better used tracking down and destroying the guilty, solving the Israeli-Palestinian

problem (the terror Petri dish), and opening a real dialogue with reasonable

Muslims?

If you look at this miasma

from the point of an American, rather than a cultural warrior on either

side of the current divide, you have to say, there's a great possibility

we have not done the right thing in Iraq, and we may well be throwing

good resources after bad.

Timothy J. Parker

Peachtree City, Ga.