"If you can assume a military cast of mind, ask yourself, 'What must we do to prevail in a war that is global but centered in the Middle East, and can possibly last for 20 years?' One of the most immediate answers is that you need to control significant amounts of real estate at the core of the struggle. Given the nature of the war, nothing else will answer across a long struggle. It is close to a certainty that this answer first appeared in the minds of professional military men around noon on September 11, 2001."

--- Gerald Vanderleun, American Digest, November 2, 2004

1. It gives us a permanent land base for our military in the heart of the Middle East, something we have never had before. The leverage this affords us is enormous. It changes the geopolitical calculus for every regime in the region, for they know our history in Japan, Germany and Korea and know they'd best not hold their breath waiting for us to go home: we're there to stay. And we're heavily armed.
    
2. It ends the threat of Saddam's use of WMD and/or eventual acquisition of more WMD for future use. Whatever the extent of the actual threat, we now no longer have to worry about it or be distracted by it.
    
3. It ends all possibility of collusion between Saddam and terrorists, and his using terrorist organizations as proxies against us or our allies. Whatever menace Saddam posed to us, a good part of that menace was the potential for collaboration between his regime and rogue elements like Al Qaeda. We no longer have to worry about this, either.
    
4. It gives the West access to a source of oil that is not subject to being cut off by angry Arab potentates. This will tend to neutralize--or at least blunt--the threat of an Arab oil embargo, and will let the Arabs know that we are not likely to be brought to our knees as we were in 1973. This gives us much latitude. We will need it in the struggle to come.
    
5. It relieves us from having to genuflect to Arab despots, allowing us to clarify our policies and focus them on the problem at hand. A correlary of the previous two items, this means that the Arabs know--or will soon figure out--that the United States is not going to be begging anymore, for anything.
    
6. It gets our forces closer to the heart of the Arab/Islamist/Mideast problem. We have always had reach before with our carrier forces, but never a constant presence in the region. Now we do, and are poised to intervene wherever trouble beckons.
    
7. It puts us in an advantageous position for dealing forcibly with Iran if we choose to do so. We may well have to, for Iran is the chief Islamist menace and a determined sponsor of the Hezbollah terrorist organization. Their intransigence may leave us with no option but war.
    
8. It puts us in an advantageous position for dealing forcibly with Syria (protector of Hezbollah, bastion of Baathist fascism) if we choose to do so. We probably will.
    
9. It puts us in an advantageous position for dealing forcibly with Lebanon (physical home of Hezbollah, in the Bekaa Valley) if we choose to do so. This may not be necessary, with Iran and Syria out of the fight; the Lebanese are neither strong nor stupid.
    
10. It puts us in an advantageous position for dealing forcibly with Saudi Arabia, the spiritual home of Wahabbism, if we choose to do so. This may not be necessary. Saudi Arabia is a paradox: on the one hand, it is arguably the ultimate, most important target in the War On Terror, since its state religion was the inspiration for Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda. It is, to us, the land of Mordor. On the other hand, Saudi Arabia is about the least urgent of all the tasks at hand. There is no need to deal with them immediately, only when it is most convenient. We will get around to them in due time.
     
11. It puts us in an advantageous position for rapidly intervening in Saudi Arabia, and securing their oil fields, should the House of Saud be overthrown by Islamists. From American Digest: "Regardless of the evil nature of the House of Saud, it does not threaten the world with incipient economic disaster. An Islamic fundamentalist government would be a very different animal. With no connections to the West and yearning for a 9th century way of life, such a government would have both the power and the will to plunge the world into an extended economic depression that would make the Great Depression look like roughing it for a weekend in a national park."
     
12. It ends Saddam's financial support for Palestinian terrorism, including his practice of offering $25,000 bribes to Palestinian parents to send their sons and daughters into Israel as human bombs.
     
13. It discourages other Arabs from continuing to support Palestinian terrorism. President Bush had cited Saddam's support for Palestinian terrorism as one of the reasons for invading Iraq--a clear warning to other Middle Eastern leaders.
     
14. It strengthens Israel's hand in getting a peace settlement from the Palestinians. The chief obstacle to Middle East peace has always been the belief, by the Palestinians, that they simply did not need to make peace with Israel--that somehow, sooner or later, an Arab hero (probably Saddam) would come riding to their rescue and drive the hated Jews into the sea. They are slowly getting the idea that peace with Israel might be desirable.
     
15. It gives us valuable information, before we go forward with the War On Terror, about who we can count on to stand beside us, and who we cannot. Iraq was a test case. We now know that much of continental Europe lacks the spine for difficult endeavors, and even the British are a bit wobbly. And, once again, we are reminded vividly that the French are not only NOT our allies, but are more wisely viewed as tricky adversaries--or even enemies.
     
16. If a peaceful, constitutional, representative government can be established in Iraq, democracy may spread throughout the region on its own. Whether it does or not, we will have a successful test case that can guide us in establishing it by force of arms elsewhere in the region. Results are encouraging so far, but it's still too early to tell whether our efforts will bear the fruit we desire.
     
17. If democracy cannot be made to take hold in Iraq, where it has arguably the greatest chance of succeeding, then we will at least know enough not to waste our time and energy trying to establish it elsewhere in the future. God forbid this should happen, as the consequences for the Islamic world could be truly dire.
     
18. It sends a message to U.N.: either lead, follow, or suffer the fate of the League of Nations. President Bush made that choice clear to the U.N. in his September 12, 2002 address to the General Assembly. They chose not to listen then. They will probably listen much more closely the next time he delivers that message, for it will be made clear to them: there will not be a third chance.
     
19. It sends the same message to our European "allies": if you want to be considered allies, then act accordingly. Otherwise, you will be considered adversaries--like France. The consequences to Chirac of his perfidy have yet to unfold. They will, soon.
     
20. It helps put an end to the "Mogadishu Syndrome" by convincing enemies and allies alike that Americans are no longer going to be deterred by fear of casualties. The perception that the United States was a "paper tiger" had taken a long time to build up in the Arab world and was an important factor in Osama bin Laden's calculation that he could attack us with impunity. It was imperative to the Administration that we dispel that notion in as abrupt, rapid and spectacularly violent a fashion as possible. The invasion of Iraq achieved that.
     
21. It goes a long way toward erasing the Clinton legacy of seldom meaning what we say, or saying what we mean. The perception had evolved in the Arab world, and among our other enemies and even allies, that America simply could not be counted on to do what it said it was going to do. Now, perhaps, they will listen to us a bit more closely.
     
22. It ends Saddam's murderous, genocidal treatment of his own people. This fact alone, without any other consideration, puts the entire enterprise beyond moral reproach.
     
23. It ends the ever-present threat Saddam posed to his neighbors, a threat which had been abundantly illustrated by his war against Iran in the 1980's and by his 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
     
24. It ends the absurd, useless farce of the U.N. weapons inspections. Volumes could be filled with appropriate ridicule of Hans Blix and his senseless sham, but why bother?
     
25. It ends the U.N.'s corrupt "oil for food" program- another farce whose monstrous dimensions are only now becoming clear. No longer will the West's hard-earned money go toward lining the pockets of venal U.N. functionaries and greedy French politians, industrialists and bankers.
     
26. It ends Saddam's threat to Israel, which now no longer needs to concern itself with Scuds from Iraq, loaded with nerve gas, raining down on Tel Aviv.
     
27. It reinforces the message sent by the overthrow of the Taliban: attack or threaten us, and you're history. In the Arab world, it sometimes takes more than one application of a lesson to get a point across. Iraq helped.
     
28. It seems to have calmed the "Arab street" a little bit. Contrary to what we were told to expect, much of the Arab world now seems to have calmed down and begun a sobering-up process. They are starting to think, not just emote.
     
29. It ends the no-fly zones and the cost of supporting them. More than 300,000 missions flown to protect Kurds in the north of Iraq, and Shiites in the south, had cost the United States and Great Britain several billion dollars over the course of the last decade. We no longer have to bear the expense of maintaining that effort, nor must we live with the constant drain on our military resources.
     
30. It ends the U.N. sanctions on Iraq. These had little effect on Saddam, who kept on building lavish palaces, and succeeded only in punishing the Iraqi people for Saddam's misdeeds. The people of Iraq are now free of that burden; and in place of economic hardship, they now have help.
     
31. It undermines the power of the Iranian ayatollahs in Qom, by allowing more moderate centers of Shiite power to flourish in Iraq. If Shiism can be led away from supporting violent groups like Hezbollah, that will be a major step forward toward Middle East peace.
     
32. It removes the "Mecca Excuse" for Islamic hatred of the U.S., the presence of our troops in their "holy land" of Saudi Arabia. The Sauds no longer need our protection from Saddam, and our troops are now almost entirely withdrawn.
     
33. It allows us to choose the battleground in the War On Terror; and we choose it to be over there, not over here. Columnist David Warren, of www.davidwarrenonline.com, has dubbed this the "Flypaper Tactic," an apt description. It appears to be working.
     
34. It will provide some motivation for the U.N. to become something more than an irrelevant annoyance which allows anti-American third-world dictators to dine in fine New York restaurants, punch above their weight and get in our way. Stranger things have happened, so reform of the U.N. is not an impossibility.
     
35. It provides a much-needed, vivid demonstration of America's military power: in the space of barely a month, the United States conquered the Arab world's mightiest ruler while suffering less than 300 combat casualties. As we saw from Arabs' reactions shown on Al Jazeera, they noticed.
     
36. It sends a message to all aspirants to the Nuclear Club: MAKE OTHER PLANS. Quaddafi got this message, loud and clear.
     
37. It sends a message to Islam: like it or not, you really need to start thinking about becoming a Religion Of Peace.
     
38. It will inflame latent jihadis and goad them into the kind of confrontations with us that they can only lose decisively. It will provoke them into fighting our kind of war, not their kind of war. Far better to crush them in a direct, frontal battle than having them continue to snipe at us from alleyways and rooftops.
     
39. It may force a decisive confrontation with Iran and Syria as well. This may well be what is happening with the so-called "uprising" among al Sadr's Shiites and in Fallujah. And if that is the case, the enemy has made a serious blunder.
     
40. We need sites for the boost-phase intercept (BPI) component of our anti-missile defense that will enable us to defend against Iranian nuclear missiles. Iraq will supplement Afghanistan in that role.