I seem to remember that in 1990-91 many people agreed that Saddam was a bad man who should be removed from power. I also seem to remember that some pundits at the time were calling for coalition forces to go ahead and drive to Baghdad to forcibly remove Saddam from power. Maybe they were right. However, because of the wording of the 1991 U.N. resolution, the coalition forces stopped after removing Iraqi forces from Kuwait. It was hoped that Iraqis would rise up and topple Saddam, but that didn't happen.
Now, in 2003, we're paying the price for not dealing with Saddam back then. Would it have been less costly to have removed Saddam from power in 1991? I don't know. I have a hunch that it would have been, considering all the trouble Saddam's been over the past twelve years. Now in 2003, we're driving to Baghdad from Kuwait and removing him from power just like we could have done twelve years ago.
In the last few days, I've heard some pundits talking about how evil Syria is. About how it's also ruled by the Ba'ath party. About how it is a repressive regime. About how it's also developing weapons of mass destruction. About how it has also invaded a neighboring country. I have also heard some pundits saying that freeing Iraq is an example to other repressive regimes in the area and a free and democratic Iraq will be a model for the rest of the Arab world. Will Syria learn from the Iraq example? I don't know. I'm not encouraged.
One could argue that ignoring the U.N. and forcibly removing Saddam from power in 1991 would have been the right thing to do. Since January of this year, that's exactly what we've had to do. Ignore the U.N and do the right thing; invade Iraq to free it and protect our country. Are we doing the right thing by stopping with Iraq? I hope that in twelve years U.S forces aren't back in the Middle East. I hope we don't have to invade Syria in 2015 to free the Syrian people when we could have done it now and saved ourselves a lot of time, trouble, money, and most importantly, lives.
I'm not an advocate of war. But I do believe it's always better to deal with problems sooner, rather than later.