war and motives

Lew Rockwell, guest-blogging over at the Huffington Post, makes an important point:

For years people will debate the real reasons the US invaded Iraq. Was it an honest mistake, based on the belief that the Hussein regime was hiding weapons? Was it revenge for political disobedience? Was it about oil or regional control, Bush’s place in history, or bolstering the US military budget? Maybe it was only to satisfy the post-9-11 blood lust.

Given the mixed-up world of half truths, lies, and duplicity that inhere in all war ambitions, these tantalizing questions may never be finally resolved, even by the most objective observers, of which there are few.

But this much we do know with apodictic certainty: virtually nothing in Iraq has gone as the US envisioned it. It is a calamity that might not quantitatively equal Vietnam in terms of the loss of life, but it is qualitatively equal to any of the great war failures in world history.

It's irrelevent why Bush invaded Iraq, what matters is the actual death and destruction. It's wrong to bomb people who haven't attacked us, no matter what one's motives are.

This is something that is difficult for leftists to understand, as can be seen from some of the comments to Rockwell's post.