Eric Coobs argues below that I fail to understand that the war in Aghanistan and the war in Iraq are both really just battlegrounds of one war: The War on Terrorism. I certainly do not agree that the wars are one and the same, any more than I believe that the war in Vietnam and the war in Iraq are the same war. These are (or were) sovereign nations; lumping them together under the rubric of a war on terrorism violates international order and our own long-established precedents in ways that should trouble any conservative.

Perhaps I should explain my position on the Iraq War. I can't really say I opposed having a war with Iraq. I supported using the threat of force to compel compliance with UN resolutions. You can't coherently support the threat of force while opposing actual force. I did oppose the Iraqi war resolution because I believe in the Constitution, and the Constitution says that wars should be declared by Congress. Nothing that I see in the Constitution allows Congress to delegate that responsibility to the president.

I always thought Saddam could be pressured into compliance. He is evil, but he isn't crazy. More than anything, including his desire to punish both George Bushes, he wanted to maintain control of Iraq. That's why he allowed UN inspectors in. That's why he was destroying weapons that violated ceasefire sanctions even as troops were massing on his borders. The inspectors kept asking for more time, and it never made a lick of sense to me that they shouldn't have it. The whole situation eventually began to feel to me like World War I: We had to mobilize troops because we wanted to pose a threat; we had to start a war because we had mobilized the troops. Thus the threat becomes the war.

Wars are inherently destabilizing. They always produce unintended consequences, and most of those consequences are bad. That's why they should always be avoided when other options remain. I thought we still had plenty of options.

I never supported invading Iraq just because Saddam was a bad man. That has never been U.S. policy, and what has happened in the last year illustrates why. It's one thing to intervene in a foreign country for humanitarian purposes when the existing order has broken down, as in Rwanda, or Serbia, or Liberia. It's another to attack a country that is more or less stable.

Leaders like Saddam don't arise out of nowhere. He is the product of longstanding cultural, religious and political schisms in Iraq. It just seemed incredibly naive to me to think that we could kick him out of power, establish a Western-style democracy and make a graceful exit, all in record time. Nothing that has happened since has changed my opinion.