Now that U.S. troops have entered Tikrit and the U.S. POWs have been found alive, it seems that the war is truly over. I admit to tears of joy for the release of those servicemen and women. At the same time, my conscience reminds me of the bereavement of those whose sons and daughters won’t be coming home and of the families of those hundreds of innocent Iraqis who were killed in the process of the war. Even as we cheer the downfall of an evil regime, we should remember that innocent people were killed in the process.
Now is the time to begin to think seriously about how to leave the Iraqis a stable and limited government and how to disengage from the region. Let us hope that the career bureaucrats at the State Department are overruled and that Iraq is given a federal state, with a constitutionally limited government, including all those cumbersome checks and balances that career bureaucrats hate so much. And let us hope that the neoconservative and humanitarian-imperialist agenda of going on to Syria, Iran, and other states is thwarted. It’s time for the U.S. to begin a process of disengaging from the Middle East. Our republic may not be able to withstand the demands of administering an empire.