The anti-war crowd is demanding that US troops be brought home, and demanding to know "how many more" will have to die.
Dennis Prager has observed that the "2000 dead" issue is largely bogus. The opponents of war believe the war was fraudulent, undertaken for bad reasons, and has made things worse. In that case, one dead US soldier is too many.
Supporters of the war have to weigh the cost in US deaths against the value of what's been achieved and what's being achieved. Opponents have to account for their acceptance of the first 1999 deaths.
Iraq has gone from despotism to freedom, from strong-man rule to a Constitution and an elected Parliament, both democratically elected.
...[T]he overwhelming majority of Iraq's people – have repeatedly given every indication of valuing their newfound freedom: voting in two elections at the risk of their lives, preparing for a third, writing and ratifying a constitution granting more freedoms than exist in any country in the entire Arab Middle East. "The secret is out," says Fouad Ajami. "There is something decent unfolding in Iraq. It's unfolding in the shadow of a terrible insurgency, but a society is finding its way to constitutional politics."
Ajami is no fool, no naif, no reckless idealist, as Scowcroft likes to caricature the neoconservatives he reviles. A renowned scholar on the Middle East, Ajami is a Shiite, fluent in Arabic, who has unsentimentally educated the world about the Arab predicament and Arab dream palaces. Yet. having returned from two visits to Iraq this year, he sports none of Scowcroft's easy, ostentatious cynicism about human nature, and Iraqi human nature in particular. Instead, Ajami celebrates the coming of decency in a place where decency was outlawed 30 years ago.
It's ironic that those who oppose the Iraq war are very likely to be "pro-choice". The effect of the removal of Saddam and the institution of a democratic regime in Iraq has been to give all Iraqis more freedom of choice.
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