DID THE US PUBLIC SUPPORT THE WAR IN IRAQ FOR THE WRONG REASONS?
This post by Josh Marshall was depressing to read.

What Josh argues is basically that Bush's fall in the polls, as well as the decline in people who think the "war was worth while," seems to be correlated with David Kay's report about WMDs.

WMDs?! I don't get it. Are the American people that dumb? The way I see it, WMDs are pretty much a zero in the case for war, and always more or less were. I never cared about them at all. The great, noble, moral reason for the war was liberation and nation-building, setting an example of democracy for the Middle East. Even to the extent that WMDs were a factor, the issue wasn't whether he had any, but 1) his noncompliance with weapons inspections gave us a pretext in international law for a war that was good and beneficial for other reasons, and 2) he would be sure to get WMDs quickly enough-- and to put them into the hands of terrorists (yes, he and bin Laden have ideological differences, but to think that that would reliably prevent them from cooperating against a much stronger mutual enemy is pretty silly) if he could manage it-- as soon as we lifted the sanctions and starving the helpless Iraqi people. We, and everyone else, certainly believed that Saddam had WMDs, less because of intelligence than because he was starving his people to avoid inspections, so he must be hiding something. But Saddam's possession of actual WMDs is quite superfluous to the case for war.

If liberation and ending the sanctions were the reasons for war, why did Bush and Blair make claims about WMDs? One reason is the UN. The press talks far too little about the fact that Bush and Blair were trying to get approval for their war plans from an organization in which dictatorships have all manner of votes and vetoes, and which enshrines a concept of "international law" which legitimizes every sort of nasty tyranny that establishes a monopoly of power within often unfair but rigidly sacred borders. It was highly inadequate in noting that as soon as UN approval was out of the picture, Bush rapidly began shifting his case for war from WMDs to liberation.

But I think there was more to it. I'll introduce my guess with a story.

Last spring break I took a short trip to Washington, DC. The real reason for my trip was to look for a job. However, I also had some relatives in the DC area. I didn't actually expect to find a job, and I didn't have any interviews lined up, or contacts or anything. So instead of saying, "I'm going to DC to look for a job," I mostly people, "I'm going to DC to visit some relatives." Getting a job was a much more important objective, but I was less likely to succeed. Visiting relatives was sure to be successful, and it was a perfectly good reason to go to DC, although in my case it was actually neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for the trip.

Now up to now I've credited Bush and Blair with more or less the same approach to Iraq. What they really wanted was to free the Iraqi people from a nasty dictatorship, and preside over the transition to a freer and hopefully democratic regime which would provide a beacon to the Middle East. Nor was this hope unrealistic, and as far as I can tell it's basically on track. This was a hugely important and idealistic goal, but distant and uncertain of success: like my finding a job in DC. By announcing this goal for the war, they would raise the stakes very high, and invite a great deal of skepticism. WMDs were, or seemed at the time, a much more certain route, since everyone was pretty confident-- well-warrantedly so-- that he had WMDs. If the Iraqi people did turn out to support Saddam Hussein, we could clear out the WMDs and say it was a pity, but international security required it, and there would be nothing dishonest about that. But if the war really turned out to be a liberation, we could still take credit for the much more important triumph.

WMDs have been an obsolete issue since April 9th, when the Iraqis greeted the fall of Saddam's regime with celebration. None of the setbacks and complications since then change the fact that the Iraqis are glad to be rid of Saddam and have a much brighter future now. What was so inspiring was that I thought the American people understood this, and that they were willing to sacrifice America's blood and treasure for another nation's life and liberty. The war seemed to show that Americans were a much better and nobler nation than I had imagined, living in the country the twenty-five years before that. Josh Marshall's post suggests that maybe I was wrong to think so well of them. Sad, sad, sad.