The Iraq War was not something I thought we should do but now that we are there, we are obligated to stay until we can leave them in better shape than when we arrived. What I have a hard time with is the whole politics of the thing.
At the time we were discussing going to war, I was against it. My first objection was the underlying premise: We think Saddam has weapons of mass destruction so we should remove him. That statement is like saying someone is capable of committing a crime so we should arrest them and put them in prison. Granted that in this case, the individual has a known tendency to use violence. That does not validate the argument. Preemptive wars simply prove which party is most prone to use violence.
My second objection has to do with state’s autonomy – we do not have a general right to invade another country because we don’t like their government. I do not want to live my life subject to the laws of
And that leads me to my third object – if the concepts we are using to justify the
My unrelated objection was that I could not see how this war would help us in the long run. People do not like having outsiders dictate to them. There is a natural resentment that results from being forced to do it the way someone else wants. Thus I expected an increase in resentment/hatred of Americans. I also felt that there was too much religious language in use, making us Christians and them Muslims. Religion is so personal that it amps up the emotional impact of everything else. And when you add in the clearly defined US as the outsider them, then there is a focus for all the rage, anger and fear. I could not help but believe that our invasion in
My expectation was always that this would be a long war. My fear was that it would become another
But President Bush and his cabinet ignored these issues and pushed us into the war. I doubt we will ever know the truth, but I believe that the decision was made in advance and Bush just looked for the facts that would support his decision. He does not welcome dissenting opinions and seems to prefer a group-think process to any intellectual rigor. My personal take on it is that George W is trying to prove that he is better than his father and so wanted to do internationally the one thing his father did not do. The problem is that he is taking the rest of us along with us (nothing more dangerous than a man with ego-problems and some power).
So now we are in this war and everyone has decided that it is time for us to pull-out. Not because we have accomplished something, but because they are beginning to realize how costly a war can be. The
Which brings me to my current struggle with the whole politics of what we do next. If we don’t want to make it worse, we have to stay and ensure a stable, democratic government is installed with adequate police and military to prevent ethnic cleansing and/or the reversion to a brutal dictatorship. We need to ensure that there is better infrastructure when we leave than when we arrived.
But I fear that once again I am going to be a minority voice. As a nation, we want instant gratification without paying for it. I am hearing more and more rumblings that the war is too costly and it is time to pull out. What we need now is someone willing to point out that the cost of pulling out too soon will be worse.
If we don’t accomplish better and more stable conditions, we will desperately wish that we had. Leaving to soon will do nothing more than create a crucible in which anti-US terrorists will breed and multiply. We will create a world condition worse than what we started with and, eventually, it will be our own citizens who die as a result.
©scrapsnthread
