Question of the day: Was removing Saddam Hussein in fact a good thing?

During the summer, the Best Defense is in
re-runs. Here are some favorites that ran in late 2012 and in 2013. This item originally
ran on Feb. 5, 2013.

Recently I was at a foreign policy discussion in which a
participant said that everybody agrees that the removal of Saddam Hussein was a
good thing, despite everything else that went wrong with the boneheaded
invasion of Iraq.

I didn't question that assertion at the time, but found
myself mulling it. Recently I had a chance to have a beer
with Toby Dodge, one of the best strategic thinkers
about Iraq. He said something like this: Well, you used to have an oppressive
dictator who at least was a bulwark against Iranian power expanding westward.
Now you have an increasingly authoritarian and abusive leader of Iraq who
appears to be enabling Iranian arms transfers to Syria.

And remember: We still don't know how this ends yet. Hence
rumors in the Middle East along the lines that all along we planned to create a
"Sunnistan" out of western Iraq, Syria, and Jordan.

Meanwhile, the Iraq war, which we left just over a year ago,
continues. Someone bombed police headquarters in Kirkuk over the weekend, killing 33. And
about 60 Awakening fighters getting their paychecks were blown up in Taji. As my friend Anthony Shadid used to
say, "The mud is getting wetter."