In the miasma (here and here) of people explaining why they got the war wrong here is Jim Henley explaining why he got it right.

I wasn’t born yesterday. I had heard of the Middle East before

September 12, 2001. I knew that many of the loudest advocates for war with Iraq

were so-called national-greatness conservatives who spent the 1990s arguing that

war was good for the soul. I remembered Elliott Abrams and John Poindexter and

Michael Ledeen as the knaves and fools of Iran-Contra, and drew the appropriate

conclusions about the Bush Administration wanting to employ them: it was an

administration of knaves and fools…

Libertarianism. As a libertarian, I was primed to react

skeptically to official pronouncements. “Hayek doesn’t stop at the water’s

edge!” I coined that one. Not bad, huh? I could tell the difference between

the government and the country. People who couldn’t make this

distinction could not rationally cope with the idea that American foreign policy

was the largest driver of anti-American terrorism because it sounded to them too

much like “The American people deserve to be victims of terrorism.” I

could see the self-interest of the officials pushing for war – how war would

benefit their political party, their department within the government, enhance

their own status at the expense of rivals. Libertarianism made it clear how

absurd the idealistic case was. Supposedly, wise, firm and just American

guidance would usher Iraq into a new era of liberalism and comity. But none of

that was going to work unless real American officials embedded in American

political institutions were unusually selfless and astute, with a lofty and

omniscient devotion to Iraqi welfare. And, you know, they weren’t going to be

that….

What all of us had in common is probably a simple recognition: War is a big

deal. It isn’t normal. It’s not something to take up casually. Any war you can

describe as “a war of choice” is a crime. War feeds on and feeds the negative

passions. It is to be shunned where possible and regretted when not. Various

hawks occasionally protested that “of course” they didn’t enjoy war,

but they were almost always lying. Anyone who saw invading foreign lands and

ruling other countries by force as extraordinary was forearmed against the lies

and delusions of the time.