Rebuilding Iraq

But our self-interest does not detract from the truth that what we are doing in Iraq is morally different from what we did after World War II. In Iraq, we are engaged in rescue rather than the undoing of our own destruction. We've undertaken the maddening task of cleaning up someone else's mess.

As the extent of the horror inflicted by the Baathist regime is documented day by day, opponents of the war are increasingly shamed. With every mass grave discovered, those who marched with such moral assurance just two months ago under the banner of human rights and social justice must make an accounting. In the name of peace, they supported the legitimacy and defended the inviolability of a regime that made relentless war on every value the left pretends to uphold:

• Human rights: Outside of North Korea, Saddam was the greatest violator of human rights in the world. The list of his crimes, the murders and the tortures, will take a generation to catalog.
  
  
• Economic equity and social justice: Saddam was not just a murderer, he was the king of robber barons. Since 1983, Iraq did not even have a national budget. Every penny of its wealth was plundered by Saddam and his fellow mafiosos and spent on the most grotesque extravagances, while his people were made to starve.
  
  
• The environment: Saddam was unquestionably the greatest eco-terrorist in history. During the Gulf War, he produced the worst deliberate oil spill ever. He followed that with the worst oil-well fires ever. Then came perhaps the most astonishing ecological crime in history: deliberately draining the marshes of Southern Iraq in order to depopulate and starve out the ``Marsh Arabs'' who were hostile to his regime, creating a wasteland that will take years for the world--meaning Iraq's American rescuers--to undo.

Torturer, murderer, plunderer, despoiler. ``We've gotten rid of him,'' said presidential candidate Howard Dean, prewar darling of the Democratic left. ``I suppose that's a good thing.''

It was a very good thing. A noble thing. And rebuilding the place that Saddam destroyed is an even nobler thing. It is fine to carp about our initial failures at reconstruction; it is well to remember, however, the nobility of the entire enterprise.