1. I don't know if anyone mentioned this above, but the national debt is not the deficit.
2. The Democrats clearly have moved to the left. My main man Clinton put the smackdown on Hussein in 1998 unilaterally, and he also helped screw Milosevic in 1999 without UN approval. Now things are a bit different on the left, as the worship of the feeble-minded Cindy Sheehan makes clear.
3. Many of the statements made by the administration before the war, for instance, that Iraq developed nuclear weapons fit into a pattern of blatant lies. Despite this, there were good reasons to do Iraq--
a) We f---ed Saddam Hussein. His despotism was a WMD threat in the midtern. Ceteris paribus, the world is a better place in his absence.
B) The United States of America showed a willingness to spend dollars and spill blood to defend itself. There were 3K Americans dead after 9-11; there have been 25-100K Muslims dead up to this point in the Iraq war. As the recent case of France shows, if one simply appeases militants, they will walk all over everyone.
c) Our presence in Iraq functions like a giant terror sponge. All the jihadists are going over to their backyard in Iraq to die at the hands of Americans instead of attacking civilians here in America. This gives truth to the saying "fight them there, or we'll fight them here." There has been no comparable follow up attack since 9-11 on the United States.
d) Lastly, our presence in Iraq has strategic value. Iran and Syria sponsor international terror with a passion. If another major attack occurs, they know they're next, no questions asked. As a result, there's a powerful incentive for them, as long as they aren't nuclear, not to support groups aiming terrorism at the USA.