Seriously, how can you call yourself a decent human being and allow inocent people to be killed? If you have the means to save lives you should act. What are your thoughts Glenda?
My thoughts are that you are cheerypicking the reasons for invading Iraq..and seriously deviating from the foreign policy discussion, to make a point. There are countries all over the planet that are killing innocent people...it happens every day. If our foreign policy were based on the United States intervening in every case of "ruthless people killing innocent people" then, we would be at war 24/7/365.
I like to think that civil societies do not condone killing of innocents...but that does not mean it does not happen; and it does not mean that we as a country need to invade every country that does it.
It also does not mean that our goevernment leaders are not above condoning a certain amount of collateral damage...and the decision happens regardless of which political party a policy maker/decision maker belongs to...
IMO your argument is a red herring to the reality of what happened in the decision to invade Iraq. It was irrelevant to the ones making the decision, and it remains irrelevant.
Yes, it may well be that many Iraqi people are better off without a hateful dictator in charge of their country; likewise, it may just as well be that many are dead today that would not have been; the infrastructure of the country is in shambles today and it was not before we invaded. Only the Iraqi people can really say whether our invasion of their country made it better.
What is completely true is that there are thousands of US men and women and families who are either dead or seriously wounded never to recover, and have had their lives turned upside down because of the Iraq War. There are US children who have lived years of their lives without their mom or dad...and in fear that their mom or dad would never come home--and many did not. There are many families who have empty places where their son or daughter once sat...the hospitals and rehab centers are full of our young men and women who will never be the same.
There were many other options for dealing with a hateful dictator...the cost to those of us whose family members served in that war is much too high for just getting rid of a dictator who was killing people...our military is designed to protect the United States from enemies who are a threat to us--not to intervene in other countries' internal horrors. If that were the case, then I believe the Rwandan slaughter was a much more appropriate intervention.
We elect our officials to make good decisions. This was not a good decision IMO and I find it disingenious on your part to continue to see this from such a narrow point of view.
. I agree we went in there based on bad intelligence and false pretenses. In retrospect, we never should have invaded. On the flip side, I try to imagine a world today with a desperate Hussein still ruling, with the country of Iraq still squeezed by political and economic sanctions, with millions of people suffering under totalitarian rule, and I wonder if, over the long term, the sacrifices the Iraqi people and the U.S. and other coalition forces made will ultimately be deemed worth while. Based on hindsight, we had no justification for invading. But is Iraq better off and is the U.S. safer because we did? My guess is that in the end the answer will be yes.