During a friendly interview on Fox News, a Republican presidential hopeful from Florida was asked a simple question: Was it a mistake to go to war in Iraq?<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, I don\u2019t believe it was. The world is a better place because Saddam Hussein doesn\u2019t run Iraq,\u201d he said, adding, \u201cHindsight is always 20\/20, but we don\u2019t know what the world would look like if Saddam Hussein was still there.\u201d<\/p>\n
That interview took place in March; the candidate was Sen. Marco Rubio<\/a>.<\/p>\n Less than two months later, the most extraordinary thing about former governor Jeb Bush\u2019s statement that he would have authorized the Iraq war despite \u201cknowing what we know now\u201d wasn\u2019t the statement itself, but rather the immediate backlash it provoked among conservative pundits and candidates for the Republican nomination. \u201cYou can\u2019t still think that going into Iraq, now, as a sane human being, was the right thing to do,\u201d said conservative talk radio host Laura Ingraham<\/a>. \u201cIf you do, there has to be something wrong with you.\u201d And nearly all of the party\u2019s would-be standard bearers, including Rubio, pounced on the controversy. \u201cNot only would I have not been in favor of it,\u201d he declared<\/a>, \u201cPresident Bush would not have been in favor of it.\u201d<\/p>\n The uproar on the right was especially remarkable given that hawkish foreign policy has become something of a litmus test in the Republican primary. At the recent South Carolina Freedom Summit, Rubio summed up his strategy toward global terrorism by quoting Liam Neeson\u2019s character from the movie \u201cTaken\u201d: \u201cWe will look for you, we will find you, and we will kill you.\u201d<\/a> In addition, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker \u2013 who previously suggested that his crackdown on Wisconsin\u2019s public-sector unions prepared him to take on the Islamic State \u2013 told the crowd<\/a> that the United States needs \u201ca leader who is willing to take the fight to them before they take the fight to us.\u201d<\/p>\n