At the close of an awful week, Inkwell is loath to head into the break with two relatively frivolous posts.
We’re at the one-year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, and many people are asking: Was it worth it?
I can think of no better words to ponder this weekend than these from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in this morning’s New York Times:
“Americans do not come easily to war, but neither do Americans take freedom lightly. But when freedom and self-government have taken root in Iraq, and that country becomes a force for good in the Middle East, the rightness of those efforts will be just as clear as it is today in Korea, Germany, Japan and Italy.
“As the continuing terrorist violence in Iraq reminds us, the road to self-governance will be challenging. But the progress is impressive. Last week the Iraqi Governing Council unanimously signed an interim Constitution. It guarantees freedom of religion and expression; the right to assemble and to organize political parties; the right to vote; and the right to a fair, speedy and open trial. It prohibits discrimination based on gender, nationality and religion, as well as arbitrary arrest and detention. A year ago today, none of those protections could have been even imagined by the Iraqi people.
“Today, as we think about the tens of thousands of United States soldiers in Iraq — and in Afghanistan and elsewhere around the world fighting the global war on terrorism — we should say to all of them: ‘You join a long line of generations of Americans who have fought freedom’s fight. Thank you.'”