The real reason

I believe much differently about the war in Iraq than almost anybody else I know. I believe there was some misrepresentation done by the administration...and a lot more misrepresentation of what the administration said by the media. I think the war is going better than is purveyed...and like anyone else who sees things in "a different light", I have research to back that up, research that talks about the good things going on that never reach the news because, let's face it...kids walking to school, women being allowed outside unescorted for the first times in their lives, a nation voting, a nation holding discourse on how various ethnicities and religions can get along, these things are not newsworthy...but a car bomb is. So we see the bomb, not the progress. And maybe that is how it should be. Maybe not.
I am very conflicted on this. On the one hand, I believe very few wars...ever, by any nation...have been justified. As a general rule, both nations share the blame when things break down to that level. Sometimes one nation is retroactively and heavy-handidly blamed for their part...see Germany in World War I...and sometimes a nation gets off too lightly for their part....see France, Russia, England, the same time...
But the point of this post actually has something to do with an idea I see cropping up more and more and more in the media, the idea there should be more war protests just as there were over Vietnam. The implicit and explicit idea is this war is the same as Vietnam. Therefore, there should be the same protests.
And I am here to say...bull smurf.
We entered Vietnam to maintain a failing French position as a bastion of "The Great Game", bearing "The White Man's Burden" (and you should really read the Kipling poem of the same name to truly understand the jingoistic intent of that statement). We moved against a man, Ho Chi Minh, who so idolized the ideals of freedom and justice that he wrote the Vietnamese Comnstituition based on it, even having some of the identical wording. Sure, later he turned into a maniacal madman, gleefully slaughtering his own people by the thousands.
Meanwhile, Saddam Hussein was gleefully slaughtering his own people by the thousands. I have heard nobody dispute he was more lethal than the hated and vilified Slobodan Milosevic, whom was removed to great acclaim from his position for that reason. The purpose of war is not to prop up a racist belief system or to save a failing Old World power. The leader being attacked had no great love for the abstract concepts of "freedom", "democracy" and "progress". Never forget, one man's freedom is another man's chains. One man's progress is to another man evil.
But it is pretty plain to me why the level of protest will never match that of Vietnam. It is a valid point of discussion to debate how much lying went in to the initiation of the war, and that I will listen to people on both sides of...even agree with points people on both sides make. It is valid to discuss the progress of stabilizing the region and improving the infrastructure of Iraq, the lives of the people. Again, I think people on both sides of the debate have valid points. It is valid to discuss whether we should have ever gone into Iraq in the first place.
But at the end of the day, never forget this: a mass murderer was removed from office. The efforts of Chemical Ali are done. While there are still abuses (it is to the everlasting shame and discgrace of everyone who participated, both actively and by standing by, in the execution squads, they do not come anywhere near the levels of Hussein. Compare what we complain about...the Guantanamo Bay guys can't pray when they want to...to complaints under Hussein: he tried genocide, ethnic cleansing, whatever you want to call it, on his enemies.
Like many others, I think there have been huge errors in the process to go to war, fight the war, change the society...but the reason you won't see me marching in any protests or giving lots of support to them is pretty simple. At the end of the day, a mass murderer was removed from power. And while there are many places where the world stands impotently by, watching rapes, murders, looting, and so forth, in other countries, at least in one country something good has been accomplished.
Regardless of why we went there, regardless of disrepancies in motivation, the accomplishment is valid. And that is at least one good thing to think about today.