Why Iraq will be seen as a failure in the War on Terror.

Make no mistake about it. We are at war with terror and our enemy is fanatical in their belief, battle-hardened and will stop at nothing to achieve their goals. George Bush is without a doubt the worst president in history (I include William Henry Harrison who died within 30 days of taking office, at least he taught people not to give long speeches in the rain) and the effect of his presidency will have unknown consequences for years to come.
However, Saddam Hussein was a danger and he was pursuing Weapons of Mass Destruction along with funding terrorism in the Occupied Territories which created instability in the region but an invasion was not the correct course of action. We've currently been in Iraq for 4 years and upon careful consideration I understand why the Bush administration was pushing for regime change in the country. Saddam had constantly flouted international sanctions and whilst he did not have WMD's at the current time there was evidence presented to Congress during David Kay's briefing in 2004 that Iraqi scientists had deliberately misled UN weapon inspectors due to fear from the Hussein regime. With intelligence pointing towards a covert build up on WMD’s and a mad-man who had no respect for the rule of law (including terrorizing his own citizens and torturing political prisoners) the US saw little option but regime change and I support that.
However, the War on Terror cannot be fought by an army. To instil regime change (as is quietly being done in Iran) you must first support a pro-democratic group through funding and intelligence. After supplying the pro-democratic group with enough intelligence and weaponry allow them to quickly and quietly remove any remnants of the tyrannical regime that stood before it. When the citizen’s wake the next day there will be a pro-democratic government and trade can resume with sanctions being lifted. Political prisoners would be released, a constitution would be drafted which focused on ensuring civil liberties and human rights were paramount and restricting governments to 4 years or less in order to ensure that governments could be overthrown via legal and legitimate elections.
These measures would ensure that there were limited civilian casualties during the period of transition and eventually the new government would gain international recognition and another democracy would be born.
This method is of course a best case scenario and it could lead to many different paths, some good and some bad but it is the way that the War on Terror will be won. Notice that in this scenario there is no mention of a foreign military presence and no need for hundreds of thousands of troops. The War on Terror will be fought quietly and it will take longer than any war fought in the last century. When we eventually prevail there will be no victory parade with confetti covering the troops or monument of soldiers raising an American flag because this war will be fought in the shadows and the warriors will be the smartest and the toughest that the West has ever produced. This war will be fought by the spies and the battlefield won’t be troops moving from house to house but a lone man with a silenced pistol in an alleyway. To quote the 1998 movie The Siege "The army is a broadsword and what you need is a scalpel". America may prevail in Iraq, crush the insurgents and install a peaceful, democratic government but Iraq is and will always be considered a failure in the War on Terror. It has led to the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi's (this number is very difficult to determine due to the ease that insurgent forces have of passing themselves off as civilians) and over a thousand US and British lives that could have been averted.
Terrorism cannot be fought by an army; despite painful efforts to keep civilian deaths to a minimum, innocent people will die during aerial bombings which in turn will increase animosity to the Western World and create a never-ending cycle of violence. Carefully planned targeted assassinations dramatically reduce the amount of civilian casualties and hopefully in the years to come the scalpel that are the intelligence services of the Western World will finally eradicate those that threaten our freedoms and democracy.