Was Bush Right?

It's one thing to ask the question as if the only opinion that mattered was ours--as if we were the only ones affected by our decision to resort to force. I'm sure it's easy for American politicians, intellectuals, and pundits to feel satisfied with a policy that asked so little of them--in taxes or in the risk to their personal well-being or that of their loved ones. But since morality does not principally deal with how we feel about ourselves--but rather how our behavior affects others--it follows that one does not pose these questions to oneself.

The main moral question of Iraq, as I see it, relates to the violence we necessarily imposed on the victims of a tyrant so that we might remove him. In this case, hundreds of thousands of people, no longer among the living, that we are responsible for, due to our choices. The Iraqis who were killed certainly had no say in it, nor the family members that lost them. The question we should be asking is whether they think it was worth it, since either they or their loved ones might still be alive today otherwise. Personally, I don't feel comfortable speaking so confidently about what is "right" in such circumstances, particularly when an alternative--and preferably democratic--solution might still have been found.