If We Had Known Then . . .

By Jeff Jacoby
Jewish World Review

Was it a mistake to go to war in Iraq? The latest voice to say so is that of conservative commentator JWR columnist Jonah Goldberg, National Review Online's shrewd editor-at-large and, until last week, a supporter of the war.

Goldberg hasn't become a John Murtha clone; he still believes that a precipitous American withdrawal would hand the jihadis a victory, and that finishing the job is preferable to bugging out and leaving Iraq a shambles. He proposes putting the question to the Iraqis: Let them vote on whether US troops should stay or go.

But he has concluded that invading Iraq was the wrong choice, however well-intentioned. "The Iraq war was a mistake," he writes, "by the most obvious criteria: If we had known then what we know now, we would never have gone to war with Iraq in 2003."

Yet is that really how this war — or any war — should be judged?

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