The Occupation, Not the War

It's very easy to get so caught up on our local politics that one forgets we live in a wider world community. A community that couldn't care less about our pointless shadow plays of little men, disingenuous analysis, and desperate spin. Events and issues of greater import absorb the world's attention, and of these, none has loomed larger the past few years than America's (mis)adventures in Iraq.

It's quite fashionable these days to call the Iraq War a mistake, even among those who used to support it. Not so Christopher Hitchens. The Slate columnist sticks to his guns (pun intended) and succinctly recapitulates the reasons the invasion had to take place. On reading them, one can't help but agree. So it seems it was never the Iraq War that was a mistake. It was only the Occupation that was botched, and for that we can rightly blame Bush and Rumsfeld.