It's how it ends that counts.

We're in Iraq so that it doesn't become an Afghanistan, an Iraq (under Saddam) or Iran or Syria or Hezbollah or Gaza....

From Investor's Business Daily:

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A nation that's defended Europe from aggression in the 60 years since World War II is asking why Iraq can't defend itself.
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Yes, we should demand more of the Iraqis. But those who ask whether we can or should stop Iraqis from killing themselves forget that we're in this to stop others from killing us and using Iraq as a base camp from which to do it.

We've been Europe's security blanket for six decades. We are Japan's security blanket. We are South Korea's.

... We forget that this war really began when a truck bomb went off in the parking garage of the World Trade Center in 1993, nearly killing tens of thousands.

Iraqis — civilians, military and police — are risking their lives for their country every day, from the millions who proudly held up their purple fingers to the young police applicants who are murdered as they line up to serve their country. Then more line up in their place.

Are the Arabs ready for democracy or are they doomed by an ingrained tribalism? We need only to look at Lebanon, where a multicultural democracy once flourished. Beirut was called the Paris of the Middle East until the country became a human shield for the PLO and then Hezbollah terrorists supported by Syria and Iran.

The Lebanese might have sustained their multicultural democracy had we not cut and run after Hezbollah killed 241 Marines in Beirut in 1983, deciding we could no longer afford to be Lebanon's security blanket. Sometimes democracies need a little help from their friends.
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Democracy is a fragile and rare commodity. We forget how close this government of the people and by the people actually came to perishing from the earth. It might not ever have come into being if a French fleet hadn't provided a security blanket at Yorktown.