You asked if conservatives would change their opinion. Since you wrote a piece on the war I assumed you meant changing opinion about the war. I am not a conservative. I am a person that the US and any other country must defend itself regardless of world opinion. World opinion has never saved the US and seldom saved anyone else except when translated into force. The US has saved many countries from tyranny and genocide and I am quite sick of people who act like the US is a villain on the world stage when no other country has ever done as much for the rest of the world as the US has. I find it ludicrous that US citizens can believe that the likes of Russia, Germany, and France should have ultimate authority over US actions. The US has made many mistakes on the world stage worthy of criticism, but not as great as those of Germany, Russia, and France. Many of those mistakes were made in misguided defense of Germany, France, and other regions of the world from Russia.

None of that means I think we should disregard world opinion or tell them we could care less, about their opinion. However, I feel we did make an honest effort to get world support and France and Russia were simply against the use of force under any conditions. It is quite obvious Saddam cooperated with inspections only under threat of force and that Russia and France's failure to back force lead to further Saddam stonewalling. It is even more ludicrous to accept Saddam’s statements he had no WMD when he is tossing out inspectors or stonewalling them.

I also find it moronic that people cannot understand that Ben-laden will make any alliance of convenience to achieve his aims. Whether or not Ben-laden was involved directly with Iraq there was good reason to believe Iraqi WMD would have eventually fallen into his hands. All you have to look at is the evidence of inside help in so many of his escapades.

Your hand wringing over Iraq totally ignores the historical context of GW1. Without his invasion of Kuwait and the treaty he subsequently signed the US would have been out of line. All the US did was enforce the terms of that treaty. It was not out of line as you claim. Where the hell were you when GW1 happened? You are over 30 aren't you? How 9/11 plays into this is that we probably would not have had the resolve needed to do that if our tolerance level for Saddam possessing WMD was not greatly lowered by fears of terrorism.

As for the UN it is quite clear that the aim of many in the UN particularly France is simply to obstruct US policy by any means necessary regardless of the validity of the US position. Why else would it fail to enforce it's own sanctions and resolutions when they were failing? The US was simply demanding existing US resolutions be followed to assure Saddam would never again be allowed to commit atrocities which were well documented. How do you propose to change an organization that's goal is restraining the worlds sole remaining super power rather than protecting the world's people? How can you condone counties like Libya, Iraq, and Syria being given leadership positions on committes they are posterboys for the abuses the committees are supposed to eliminate? I used to believe in the UN and voted against Dole in part because the Gingrich was so fond of bashing it and Dole failed to distance himself from Gingrich on that and right wing stances of the Republican party, but I am sorely disapointed with it's dismal record over the last 10 to 20 years in places like Ruanda, Yugoslavia, and Somalia. Early on I blamed the failures on lack of US support, but I no longer believe that.

If I misstated your opinion why did you disagree with everything I said?

Regards,
Mark