So is it time for critics of the Iraq War to eat a little crow? According to this editorial from Denmark’s leading newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, Iraq is far better off today – despite Bush’s motives for the war and the massive civilian deaths – than it would have been with Saddam Hussein at the helm in Baghdad. And most controversially, it compliments the U.S.-led coalition for avoiding civilian casualties.
The Jyllands-Posten editorial says in part:
The U.S., its allies and the Iraqi security forces have paid a very high price in lives and treasure to abolish the tyranny that once prevailed in Iraq. Fourteen thousand people were killed in battle, among them seven Danish soldiers, and up to 100,000 civilians died in the effort to create an Iraqi democracy.
By comparison, the Balkan Wars took only four years – 1992 to 1996 – and cost the lives of 260,000; the war in Somalia from 1988 to 2004 claimed 550,000 lives. The higher priority put on protecting Iraqi civilians showed some results.
The motives of President George W. Bush in launching the war will be debated by historians for a long time to come. But the many Danish critics who in 2007 demanded an end to the Iraq War, such as foreign policy spokesman for the Social Democrats Mogens Lykketoft, who that same year declared, “for both Bush and his Danish followers, the Iraq War is a monumental derailment of the war against terrorism,” should take the time to consider the positive results of the war.
It is a nation under development; a nation that stubbornly working its way toward political stability and economic prosperity. True, five months after Iraq’s democratic elections, conflict continues between Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds on the formation of a new government.
But this is evidence of a democratic discussion and development after the ouster of Saddam Hussein’s totalitarian regime. … Whatever the motive was for the war, that discussion is now clearly overshadowed by the fact that the decision to remove Saddam Hussein and his regime was the right one.
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