Real Clear Politics linked to a really well stated case for supporting the war today in the UK Times. What caught my eye was the title which appeared to equate freedom with Pandora’s box – which is an analogy I refute whole heartedly.

Yes, we have opened Pandora’s box in Iraq – but freedom has sprung free

Once you get beyond the awkward title, you find a well reasoned, respectful discussion of optimism for Iraq. First, it sets out to separate the non-serious critics from people who might have come to the wrong conclusions honestly.

ON BOTH SIDES of the Atlantic, the Stop The War cries are deafening now. Fold the tents; cut the losses; bring them home.
Some of the pleading comes from people whose motives are purely mischievous. These are the critics who opposed the war in the first place and would like nothing more than to see it end in a humiliating climbdown for its authors. Their concern for the Iraqi people or the lives of British and American troops flows in rivers of crocodile tears….

Once the irrelevant have been marginalized to the sideline, the author tackles the challenge of convincing good people of conscience they can still be good people of conscience in support of our efforts in Iraq. I strongly suggest everyone read it and soak up what it is saying. A few of the stronger points:

In a couple of weeks, Iraqis will go to the polls in their millions for the third time this year (the exercise of democracy can be habit-forming, can’t it?). This time they will choose a government that will have real power over the direction of the country. It will be a genuine first in the history of a region where medievalist tyranny has enjoyed five centuries of extra time.
…
The critics of the war were right to say three years ago that it represented the high-risk option. There’s no doubt, as they said at the time, that not invading would have been the safer option.But over time, repeatedly exercising the easy option rarely produces long-term stability. By repeatedly deferring difficult decisions, repeatedly seeking accommodations with an ever more unacceptable status quo, we make the ultimate crisis that much larger, its consequences that much more devastating. The fluid of all those easy decisions crusts eventually into a hard carapace that can only be cracked with explosive force.

I liken it to the law of compound interest. A delay to address something today becomes ever more costly tomorrow, even if for the simple reason of the increasing cost of money. But what happens in delay with international problems, like Hussein, is the other side grows stronger and pushes the status quo to their benefit. Therefore this is not a stagnate arrangement, but a slowly moving one. One slowly moving against those trying to delay the day of reckoning. This results in a higher interest rate on the cost to correct the problem as time goes on due to normal interest, but the constantly adjusting status quo.

In the Middle East, we have an enormous amount of built up ‘interest’ to dismantle. The 500 years of remnant dynastic government is one portion. The 30 years of Saddam’s bloody rule are another. And we have our 50 years of our own short sighted diplomacy which put the cold war as priority over all else.

But now we can see that Bush’s plan in Iraq is accelerating the decomposition of all these factors. It too is accruing interest, in this case the term ‘momentum’ is more accurate. And it is accelerating because the Iraqi people are tasting the fruits of freedom and realizing for the first time in centuries why the west is so enamored by, and willing to die for, the cause of freedom.

Cross posted at No End But Victory.