IS A BUSH-LEAGUE WAR WORSE THAN NONE AT ALL?

Josh Marshall asks a very important question in the debate over Iraq:

Is it possible that regime change by force is the right thing to do, but that this administration is inclined to do it in such a reckless, ill-conceived and possibly disastrous manner that, under these circumstances, it is better not to do it at all?

Marshall is right to worry about the Bushies botching the aftermath of a successful campaign to oust Saddam. As he points out, you need look no further than Afghanistan to see the Bush administration's distate with "nation-building" threatening to reverse much of the good that came out of our overthrow of the Taliban regime. Its also unclear whether the Bush team learned the right lessons from his father's botched Gulf War endgame. Poppy's "New World Order" was pretty much a return to the status quo ante - with the Kurds and Shi'ites brutally repressed, the Saudis calling the shots, and Kuwait remaining a corrupt emirate. Never before had so crushing a military victory translated into to so little political change. So, in a way Marshall's question echoes the same one Jeff Hauser asks about the first Gulf War. Without the benefits of a fundamental change in the political order, was military action against Saddam worth it and will it be worth it again this time? The answer is yes and yes.

Clipping Saddam's wings, as we did in the Gulf War, or replacing Saddam with a Mubarak type as the Bushies might wind up doing - is akin to performing a minor surgical procedure that temporarily improves the problem. It is insufficient and will inevitably result in a return of the problem, but it still worth it because of the temporary relief it provides the patient. Sure its best to destroy the cancer - but's that doesn't mean that its better to let it grow than send it into remission. Not responding to Saddam's thrust into Kuwait would have left him the dominant power in the region, free to obtain weapons of mass destruction and serve as the pursestrings for thug regimes around the globe. Allowing Saddam to stay in power greatly increases the chances of a non-conventional attack on American interests. The realist policy rationales for war against Iraq - the need to contain anti-American capabilities and preserve regional stability - are justified even if they are depressingly short of vision and temporal scope.

W., however, is not pre-destined to repeat the mistakes of his father. What we need now, however, is a serious discussion of how the Iraq campaign fits into the broader war on terror, and public engagement on the issue of nation-building. Liberals need to tap into the missionary instincts of the American public. The stakes and expectations of this war must be raised - thrusting Democracy to the foreground of our war aims. W. needs to be sent a clear message - that if he follows his father's cynical, risk-adverse path, it will carry him to the same place - out of office at the end of one term.