I'm an occasional music buff and, in between the blanket CNN/FoxNews/MSNBC coverage, I occasionally swap over to MTV.   In what was probably an act of sado-masochism, I watched MTV News for a bit to get their (predictable) take on the war.    One interviewee -- a Muslim Bengali-American -- was brimming over the top with deep outrage over the American Military-Industrial-Imperial complex:

Why Now?   Why do we suddenly care about Iraq now?   Why weren't we talking about democracy there before? I just don't understand why this came up all of a sudden.

Well, I guess I'll answer.   First, I'll refer to a FANTASTIC article in Newsweek documenting the twists and turns over the past 12 yrs leading up to this war. 

For almost a decade, Iraq was a disagreeable problem that most policymakers preferred to pass on to their successors. (To some degree, Saddam is a problem of America’s own making; during the 1980s the United States aided Iraq in its war against Iran, even helping Saddam get the ingredients for bio-chem weapons.) America has, in effect, been at war with Saddam for 12 years, ever since it drove the Iraqi dictator from Kuwait in 1991 and imposed a “no fly” zone over two thirds of his country. The CIA has tried, off and on, to get rid of Saddam, and “regime change” in Iraq has been the official policy of the United States government since 1998. But despite occasional volleys of cruise missiles and periodic spasms of determined talk, the war against Saddam was—until September 11, 2001—a phony war, an exercise in wishful thinking, buck-passing, denial and equivocation.

Clinton (MTV's favorite president) was talking about the need for regime change, the desire to get rid of WMD well before Bush part deux came to the scene.   Clinton's administration very aggressively explored both overt and covert means for removing Saddam from power.   He just didn't have the stomach to actually commit to any of his plans.   And I don't fault him entirely -- he was brought to office by a very inward-looking domestic electorate.

One, impossible to ignore, factor for Bush & the majority of the American public was that 9/11 provided the final "call to attention" about the growing menace in swamps afar.  Tech's getting cheaper and sooner or later we have to round the corner and take significant, new action.

I can't help but think, however, that what is truly "sudden" is the the far-left's knee-jerk opposition towards the belief that we need to do something drastic in Iraq.   Clinton certainly espoused the same beliefs and yet for many in the left, this aspect of Clinton's policy barely registered on the radar screen.   When thoughts are coupled with action plus a Texas/Republican president, now the left "suddenly" mobilizes.