The vision of 9/12 was that we had to avenge the events of 9/11 and take action against any possibility that attacks on America, on that scale, could recur. The immediate targets were Afghanistan and Osama. We conquered Afghanistan. Osama is probably dead, but his spirit is very much there, and the talk today is not of liberating Afghanistan, but of stabilizing it. Thus also the talk: What would we need to do in Iraq after Saddam handed over his sword? Will the three great factions in Iraq put together a viable state? How much more money will be needed to effect a recomposed Iraq than is available from the sale of its oil?
These questions begin to leech the resolution of the Great Avenger called up after 9/11. Back then we were ready to fight in the Mideast, and although the Taliban were in power in Afghanistan, drawing us there in search of Osama, Iraq was the central enemy. We had fought a war against Iraq and won it, and were looking at 10 years of elusiveness by Saddam in the matter of the biological, chemical and nuclear weapons he fosters. Iraq came back as a central concern when it achieved standing as one element in the axis of evil. Iran, Iraq and North Korea.
What happened was that weeks and months went by, bringing an etiolation of Iraq as the unruly monster that needs a democratic lance in its eye. It really looks as though war or peace depends on whether Mohamed Atta talked in Prague with a princeling of Saddam Hussein. The War of Jenkins' Ear comes to mind, and reasons day by day amass against proceeding with war on the government of Iraq.
It would be very different if Britain, France, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Turkey addressed the American people, pleading that our technology be mobilized against a common threat. This is not now happening, and two years from now we will need to blame either our allies for their failure to make their case, or our president for the failure of his administration to galvanize such a petition.