Getting back to the point of the Iraq War, the problem is one of understanding history.
Trying to catch President Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, or Dick Cheney in a quote that shows them guilty of war mongering is only ever going to be met with retaliatory comments of how Saddam was really a threat "at the time" or how other politicians in the US or other nations viewed the Iraq situation.
The issue is
not one of simple "gotcha" politics.
The issue is that this administration, and if we're honest the past two administrations as well (though not nearly to this degree), have completely misunderstood the place of the United States in the post-Cold War world. The folly of this administration was to believe that "everything changed after 9/11." Whether they believed that in earnest, or used it as a tag line to drive changes dishonestly is up for debate. Yet, from a conceptual level the notion itself is completely false.
The two primary false historical conceptions are these:
1. The United States is now the sole Superpower and we are more powerful now than any nation has ever been in history.
2. Septmeber 11, 2001 changed everything. Every issue must be viewed through a post 9/11 prism.
The problem with these conceptions are this:
1. When the Soviet Union and the entire Eastern Bloc fell, the United States lost its counter-balancing influence. In other words, the days of us going into another country and saying "choose sides" are over. Diplomacy lost its dichotomy. It lost its us or them attitude. The nations of Europe, Africa, Southwest & Southeast Asia, Latin America, etc no longer have to do as we say or face a complete withdrawal of US military support and aid. Our economy is so internationally intertwined that we cannot even use our strongest weapon to simply bend nations to our will (OK, so that may work on Benin, but not France, China, or Brazil).
Now we have to work with and alongside nations, build relationships, manage alliances, and make the case for our causes. We no longer have the power we once had as the other side of the Cold War coin.
2. The reality is that September 11, 2001 changed next to nothing. Yes, air travel is considerably different. Otherwise, we experienced something that many other nations have known for decades (some for even longer). It was only different because
it happened to us. The truth is that international politics, international business, military tactics, and international economics had not changed significantly at all. There was (and is) no September 11th prism. International terrorism had existed before and still exists after the travesties of that day. The British, Germans, Greeks, Italians, Austrians, French, Israelis, Egyptians, Syrians, Saudis, Russians, on and on...had all experienced it.
Read all the books you like on how Islam is taking over the world, how "
Islamofascism" is a real threat, how terrorists are coming for you and your family, how "democracy must be protected"...and the bottom line at the end of the day is that on a very fundamental level 9/11 changed nothing. Counterinsurgency tactics are fought using the manual General Petraeus authored in 2006:
here. As you can see, not a lot has even changed in this field (and interestingly much of this document is being blatantly disregarded at the moment). International terrorism exists, yes, but the death rate is fairly consistent and even including 2001, it has never been very high.
Despite quotes from the radical fringe, Islam is not the dangerous and bloody religion that it was made out to be by
some. Much of the "academics" involved in "Islamofascism" come from a time when France was fighting in Algeria and racial attitudes from the French in Algeria (and in this country as well) were deplorable. Democracy as an entity is under no realistic threat except from the usual weight of corporate, personal, and PAC greed in most democratic nations.
In light of these two misread historical conceptions, it is little wonder that not only are we in the quagmires we are in (both economic and military), but that Americans enthusiastically cheered us right into these situations. We don't have the stomach, leadership, or desire to be a full on explicit Empire with the economic and military ramifications that would bring. Nor are we, apparently, willing to fit back into a role that is of great, but lesser, importance than we had as the big dog of the Cold War world. As long as we stay in the limbo between those two we are going to be stuck in this situation of both economic and military pig shit (for lack of a better term).
