Note - this rambling is incomplete. I've been working on it for a few months, but I won't have time to finish it. Ordinarily I'd fill it with links to sources, but I just decided to post it as-is.
(06/30/05)
Everyone I know hates Bush*. I'm not a big fan myself. I hate his unreasonable policies pandering to the religious right, disagree with his policy of "tax cuts and spending increases" (I can support one or the other, but not both), and dislike his disingenuous treatment of the American public, especially concerning the war on terrorism.
However, although I detest his PR campaign concerning the war, I still think the war is just. The most common criticisms against the war in Iraq are EASILY deflected:
- Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11
- Irrelevant. Al Qaeda and the Ba'ath Party in Iraq hated America, and would do anything in their power to destroy it. An analogy - a lawyer whose 10 year old daughter is raped ends up spending the rest of his career fighting child molestors. He needs no justification based upon any link between the actual rapist of his daughter, or even that the two crimes are analogous - he could prosecute those who molest young boys, etc. When someone mentions 9/11 in the context of Iraq's justification (at least when I do), they usually mean that 9/11 taught us that the enemies of the United States hate us and that passive security is inherently flawed. 9/11 is a justification for preemption, not specifically justification for toppling Saddam.
- Saddam had no WMDs
- Saddam engaged in a decadelong game of deception concerning WMDs. No one disputes that Saddam once had WMDs. No one disputes that Saddam once used WMDs targeted specifically at civilians he didn't like. No one disputes that Saddam did not allow weapons inspectors to confirm whether he, in early 2003, possessed any WMDs or programs to obtain WMDs. Take a look at the anti-war protestors of early 2003 - they didn't exactly focus on WMDs because they believed that there was not sufficient justification for going to war, even if Saddam had WMDs. In the fall of 2002, Bill Clinton went on Letterman and said, “He is a threat. He's a murderer and a thug ... There's no doubt we can do this. We're stronger; he's weaker. You're looking at a couple weeks of bombing and then I'd be astonished if this campaign took more than a week. Astonished” (emphasis mine).
- Bush lied to us to go to war
- lie - A false statement deliberately presented as being true; a falsehood. I honestly believe that the Bush Administration genuinely believed that Saddam was a threat and that it was better for national security to go to war. Looking back, Saddam was probably less of a threat than we believed, but we are probably safer at home because it's more cost-effective for terrorists to go to Iraq and attack Americans there. Colin Powell's flawed presentation of Uranium from Niger and the Downing Street Memo don't prove deception and guile; rather, they prove incompetence and irrational behavior. I personally believe that the Administration in 2003 was a big enough mess of incompetence and intra-administration politicking that they couldn't have put together any big lies.
- The war is all about oil
- This is the most intellectually immature of all the arguments. If this were true, we'd have dropped sanctions under the condition that Saddam allowed American investment in oil exploration. We wouldn't have engaged in an infrastructure-wrecking shock and awe campaign. Also, the two biggest critics of American action, Russia and France, were the two nations profiting the most off of illegal manipulation of the oil-for-food program. If you throw the blood-for-oil argument at me, I'll counter right back with the flaws in the UN's oil-for-food program. Another thing is that it's unfair to target Bush for the mess that was our Iraq policy during the entire Clinton Administration. Again, I liked Clinton on foreign policy, and he's more like Bush in this regard than most people, Democrat or Republican, would like to admit.
Valid criticisms of Bush on the war focus mainly on his execution of the war, and the poor intelligence and planning leading up to it. The leaders should have made more of an effort near the beginning to make this a nation-building exercise (which most conservatives hate), which requires the expertise and money from the UN and NATO. Another criticism could be that Bush squandered international good will post-9/11.
I will admit that I had deceived myself into believing that Rumsfeld and the neocons would have been out of the Administration by now, and that was a mistake on my part. Nonetheless, I still think that we can better the lives of Iraqis and Afghanis, and that our mission in these two countries are worth the cost.
Also, I concede that if we had known then what we know now, I would not have supported the war at that time. I just don't think that much would have changed though, and eventually the problem of Saddam would have had to be addressed. Either way, we're in now, and we would be doing a disservice to everyone in the world if we left Iraq the mess it is without cleaning it up.
Even if you disagree with me, at least respect that I have put my money where my mouth is and have joined the Army in a time of need. I'm leaving for basic training in less than 2 weeks, and I'm pretty damn excited. And it's good for you, my friends, because this career should be a great source of entertainment value.
*except for people who don't know anything about politics, legal matters, foreign affairs, or current events, who say retarded stuff like "well I'm Christian so I would vote Republican if I were to ever vote" or "Yeah I want to be rich so I vote for policies that are good for the rich." But that's another topic entirely.
