Why I Supported Operation Iraqi Freedom

Read this and then ask yourself, are there really "plenty of dictators in the world just as bad as Saddam"?

I often heard that classic logical fallacy used by leftists before the war. If you can't topple all the dictatorships in the world with horrific human rights records at the same time, just do nothing. That's the 'logic'. What it masks is the underlying opposition to anything the United States does in the world. If you turn the question around - which dictatorship did you support toppling instead? - you will not get a straight answer. Another good question which will go unanswered, which dictators killed more people than Saddam in modern history? The best answer is North Korea's Kim Jong Il (or is it Kim Jong Il's North Korea?), not coincidentally another "Axis of Evil" member. But the Stalinist state is so closed nobody really knows the death toll in North Korea.

Confusion about numbers is similar to the situation before the Iraq war. I used Saddam's brutality as a justification for war, but I didn't know the exact figures (for the same reason as North Korea, dictators don't usually advertise mass killings). I would argue for war based on the brutality. In response, I'd hear the standard "he's just another bad guy". Now that we actually know the numbers, we know Saddam was no ordinary bad guy. He was one of the worst in modern history.