March 16, 2003
FREEDOM--NOT OUR BUSINESS:
Don't Support Our Troops: Win or Lose, War on Iraq is Wrong (Ted Rall, March 13, 2003, Yahoo NewsAs patriots, we want our country to win the wars that we fight. As Americans, we want our soldiers--young men and women who risk too much for too little pay--to come home in one piece. But supporting our troops while they're fighting an immoral and illegal war is misguided and wrong.Iraq has never attacked, nor threatened to attack, the United States. As his 1990 invasion of Kuwait proved, Saddam is a menace to his neighbors--Saudi Arabia, Iran, Israel--but he's their problem, not ours. Saddam's longest-range missiles only travel 400 miles.
Numerous countries are ruled by unstable megalomaniacs possessing scary weaponry. North Korea has an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of hitting the western United States and, unlike Iraq, the nuke to put inside it. Pakistan, another nuclear power run by a dangerous anti-American dictator, just unveiled its new HATF-4 ballistic missile. If disarmament were Bush's goal, shouldn't those countries--both of which have threatened to use nukes--be higher-priority targets than non-nuclear Iraq?
Iraq isn't part of the war on terrorism. The only link between Iraq and Al Qaeda is the fact that they hate each other's guts. And no matter how often Bush says "9/11" and "Iraq" in the same breath, Saddam had nothing to do with the terror attacks.
That leaves freeing Iraqis from Saddam's repressive rule as the sole rationale for war. Is the U.S. in the liberation business? Will Bush spread democracy to Myamnar, Congo, Turkmenistan, Cambodia, Nigeria, Cuba, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan or Laos, just to name a few places where people can't vote, speak freely or eat much? You be the judge. I wouldn't bet on it.
Of course, it would be great if Iraqis were to overthrow Saddam (assuming that his successor would be an improvement). But regime change is up to the locals, not us. George W. Bush is leading us to commit an ignominious crime, an internationally-unsanctioned invasion of a nation that has done us no harm and presents no imminent threat.
We find ourselves facing the paradox of the "good German" of the '30s. We're ruled by an evil, non-elected warlord who ignores both domestic opposition and international condemnation. We don't want the soldiers fighting his unjustified wars of expansion to win--but we don't want them to lose either.
Mr. Rall is so vile it hardly seems worth responding to the stuff he writes, but here he reflects a mindset that seems all too prevalent on the Left. Regardless of why George W. Bush is waging this war and of how many other governments deserve to be overthrown, how can you acknowledge that Saddam should be deposed and then not only oppose our doing so but actually root for his troops against ours? If Mr. Rall is serious about getting rid of those other governments and imposing a uniform global standard of lawfulness on national leaders, by all means, let's do it. But don't wring your hands over oppression and then try to wash them of any responsibility for acting where we can. Posted by Orrin Judd at March 16, 2003 10:51 AM
Mr. Judd;
Note also that Rall believe that attacks on allies
are irrelevant and “their problem, not ours”. Apparently Rall, if he actually had friends, would stand idly by while they were assaulted as long the criminal took care not to hit Rall himself.
Rall also seems to a bit off in his assessment of international politics. Musharif can be called many things, but "anti-American" isn't one of them. He may not be a particularly staunch ally but he's hardly an enemy. Heck, I'd trust him over Chiraq.
which more or less defines "damning with faint praise".
Posted by: oj at March 16, 2003 11:52 AMIraq has never attacked, nor threatened to attack, the United States.
Why does the antiwar crowd keep trumpeting these lines as if they've never been addressed by the administration and war advocates?
Yes, we know
Iraq hasn't attacked the United States. We know Saddam didn't mastermind Sept. 11. But those aren't the point.
The war on terror is based on a new type of doctrine, spelled out by the president quite clearly, over and over again, since the week the towers fell: We are going to dismantle the foundation that supports the terrorism that threatens our country, and this includes preemptive attacks on certain rogue states.
If one disagrees with this doctrine, or with the tactics being employed to prosecute it, then by all means speak up. But to continue parroting this blather about "Why are we attacking Iraq, they didn't attack us" or "There's no link between Iraq and Al Qaeda" is to blithely ignore the stated reasons for the war. There may be valid arguments to make against this war; those are not among them.