Non-Hawks Saving Face

Matthew Yglesias provides those of us who (by now) think the war (as it was fought) was a mistake with a nice justification for wanting Iraq to succed:

He [Julian Sanches] makes the point that, quite rightly, even if things turn out well from here on out in Iraq that would hardly constitute a justification for having launched the war. I -- or he -- could no doubt produce a long argument to that regard, but the simple argument is just that there's a reason Bush didn't say, 'I want to invade a country that poses no threat to the United States, spend hundreds of billions of dollas and get thousands of people killed, in order to build a nice Shiite democracy.' On the one hand, this argument is a needed debunking of much hawk propaganda. On the other hand, keeping the argument in mind will help non-hawks avoid any hint of subconscious desire for things to go poorly in Iraq. We can -- and should -- hope things turn out for the best, without believing that things turning out well in any way undermines our point.