Iraques

Are we as a nation safer for having invaded Iraq? Was the decision to remove Saddam from power after 9-11 a step forward in the war on terror, or not? The answer is yes.

Is the answer absolutely, yes? Of course not. Wars don't work that way. Did the decision by the country to wage war on both Japan and Germany in the wake of Pearl Harbor make the U.S. safer at first? No. Even after critical successes at Midway, in North Africa and Italy, thousands of Americans still lost their lives. The war had to be won, and the cost was high precisely because our enemies knew it was going to be a fight to the death. And Americans understood that security could not be had in a piecemeal fashion given the nature of the enemies we faced.

Similarly, we should remember that the war on terror is not just about defeating terrorists. The larger meaning of 9-11 was the recognition that the mix of terrorists seeking weapons of mass destruction with dictatorial regimes who gave them support, and who themselves had or were seeking such weapons, was potentially too dangerous a brew for the United States to take a reactive stance toward. As such, the war to be waged requires not only taking on the terrorists themselves, but also the states that give them support or, through their governance, are spawning new cadres of jihadists.

On that broad front, America's record of success has been substantial, and we are the safer for it. Both the Taliban regime of Afghanistan and Saddam's Baathist rule in Iraq are history.

Two of the most brutal regimes in recent times can no longer call us their prime enemy. Libya's Moammar Gadhafi turned over his entire nuclear weapons program, while Pakistan's A.Q. Khan, once the world's leading purveyor of illicit nuclear technology, is no longer in business.

And while far from complete, the salve of political reform has begun to take hold in the region, with real elections in Afghanistan and Iraq, a dramatic reassertion of self-rule in Lebanon and even small but potentially significant changes taking place in the political systems of Egypt, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

For those who think that invading Iraq was a distraction, the question they have to answer is whether - with the exception of the progress made in Afghanistan - the record outlined above would have been conceivable absent removing Saddam and his henchmen from power. How power is used matters perhaps more in the Middle East than in any other region of the world.

Toppling Saddam wiped out a decade's worth of pan-Muslim hubris about America's weakness after the retreat from Somalia and, conversely, helped set the table for the progress that's been made so far.

Moreover, the war in Iraq has not stopped us from reforming the CIA and the FBI to better enable them to wage the war on terror or, for that matter, disrupting al-Qaeda cells in South and Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Nor have the disagreements with key allies over Iraq prevented them from fighting alongside us in Afghanistan, sharing intelligence on terrorism, joining the administration's Proliferation Security Initiative and, increasingly, taking the lead in challenging Iran on its nuclear program.

Iraq was not some sideshow when it comes to the broader war on terror. The fact that no WMD stockpiles were found - and the occupation poorly executed at times - does not mean that it was the wrong war at the wrong time. As both David Kay and Charles Duelfer, the heads of the post-war inspection team concluded, Saddam Hussein was still committed to acquiring those weapons. He had had them in the