Liberals Got Some Explaining To Do...

Riddle me this...you hear as universal liberal talking points about American policy in the Middle East several truisms:

1. Al Queda was created by the United States in Afghanistan to fight the Russians

2. The Iranian revolution was a result of the United States supporting the Shah and intervening in the 1953 election

3. Terrorists hate and attack us because we blindly support Israel or blindly support the Royal family or whatever, something/somebody we back in power.

There are others, but these are the three biggest half-truths. They imply several things: US behavior has consequences in the region and often not the consequences we intended.

So...if all of the above are true...then how can we ignore arguably the biggest American policy decision in US-Middle East history and the effect it has had on the region: Iraq War 2. Whether we intended it or not, the Iraq War has prompted this Arab Spring. There is no way around it. The Iraq War freed one of the most powerful and wealthy countries of the region from the worst dictator in the region - then suffered through an ugly insurgency and survived - and now holds together as a fragile democracy. Now every dictator in the region is undergoing civil unrest.

This Arab Spring may turn out to be nothing. But I don't think so. It seems like they've passed a threshold in Tunisia and more importantly, Egypt, and there is no turning back. Syria and Iran may be able to hold back the masses...then again...if they collapsed a month from now it wouldn't come as a total shock.

Anyhow, I implore some liberals who like to point out all the "unintended consequences" of US meddling in the region to recognize the good with the bad. It strikes me as plainly obvious the Iraq War and aftermath has contributed and led to this Arab Spring. Why should this be controversial to admit? It doesn't necessarily justify the war itself, although it certainly may bear re-examining it.

UPDATE: I am not the first to make this point, as Christopher Hitchens said as much over a month ago. The link here is a criticism of the Hitchens/me point and I imagine it will be a sticking argument: People will argue the Arab Spring came about from people INSIDE their own countries rising up whereas what made the Iraq war illegal was that it was imposed by the outside (ie us)...the old democracy at the barrel of a gun argument. This point would be true to anyone ignorant of the particularly heinous nature of the Saddam regime and his mafia-like control over his own country. It is almost offensive for Americans and Westerns to suggest the only legitimate way for Iraq to enjoy self-government would be for every day Iraqis to rise up on their own and get rid of Saddam as if thousands hadn't already tried (and were greeted with the killing, torture, and rape of their entire families, or in the case of the Kurds, chemical weapons). Think about this logic for a moment and it is pretty sickening. Saddam wasn't going anywhere quietly or without violence. We - the Western World - had him pretty much in a box. That is true. He was not an existential threat to us. But he certainly was an existential threat to his own populace who suffered generation after generation of his brutal rule. Couple it with the possible ascendency of Al Queda (at the time) and it rejiggered the calculus.

Anyhow, what's done is done. Things strike me as better now than they were before.