This morning, I saw both Prime Minister Blair and his opposite number Iain Duncan Smith offer their reasons for supporting the war in Iraq. It is a wondrous world in which we live, that in the same minute one can see a live debate inside Whitehall and the battlefield of the very war they are debating. What a time to be alive.

Nation-Building
I would submit that the United States, with assistance from the United Nations, will do a fine job of rebuilding Iraq into a functioning member of the world community. I offer as my examples of successful nation-building Germany, Japan, and South Korea. Earlier today, a friend cited Iraq's non-industrialization as a nullifying difference between it and my examples. This is a valid point of discussion. However, I offer another explanation as to why we successfully rebuilt the three states cited above and why we will successfully rebuild Iraq: it was and is in our strategic interest to do so. A liberalized and remilitarized West Germany was the lynchpin of Anglo-American (later manifest as NATO) resistance to Soviet hegemony. By the 1970s, the West German Bundeswehr (army) was the second-largest in NATO, and would have been crucial to the defeat of any Societ aggression. A liberalized and economically powerful Japan was the key to resisting Sino-Soviet encirclement, and provided a secure base of operations for the stablizing Amercan military presence (ironic, I know, given Vietnam, but the Seventh Fleet really has generally kept the peace, especially in containing Chinese adventurism). The first of the Asian "tiger economies," a rich, militarized, and eventually democratic South Korea was the key to defending Japan. American strategic interests, sustained American attention.

The Middle East is one long, rolling disaster. The only democratic states in the entire region are Israel, which is hated by every other state in the area, and Turkey. Turkey is, unfortunately, neither Arab nor terribly rich. Iraq, however, Iraq is a goldmine. Iraq has potentially the world's second-largest reserves of petroleum. An oil-rich, pro-Western, and someday democratic Iraq would serve as a moderating influence on the entire region. It could exert considerable pressure on the Palestinians, help Iran through the difficult process of transition once its young populous finally turns on their masters and tears down the Islamic Republic, and remove American dependence on the corrupt House of Saud as our chief ally in the region. A strong and liberal Iraq, like Germany, Japan, and South Korea before it, would be a great asset to American security and foreign policy. That is why I believe we will be necessarily committed to the successful rebuilding of Iraq.