Posted on 11/01/2005 8:57:02 PM PST by NorthOf45
World would be worse off if U.S. hadn't acted
By Rory Leishman
The London Free Press
November 1, 2005
Over the past three years, more than 2,000 American and allied military personnel have been killed in the Iraq war. Have these lives been sacrificed in vain?
Most Muslims in Canada and around the world think so. They deplore the United States-led war of liberation in Iraq. It matters not to them that, but for this war, Saddam Hussein, a tyrant responsible for the deaths of more than a million Muslims, would still be terrorizing Iraq.
And the same goes for most non-Muslim liberals and a sizable minority of conservatives in the United States and other Western countries: They insist that Bush's war of liberation in Iraq has been a moral and strategic blunder.
Prominent among these dissenters is Brent Scowcroft, the former national security advisor to the first president Bush. In an interview published in the current issue of The New Yorker magazine, Scowcroft avowed: "I'm not a pacifist. I believe in the use of force. But there has to be a good reason for using force."
In Scowcroft's opinion, there has never been any good reason for the current war in Iraq. Even before the conflict began, he maintained there was no need for the United States and its allies to use military force to prevent Saddam from using weapons of mass destruction or supplying them to Muslim terrorists.
How can critics such as Scowcroft be so certain? After all, Saddam had authorized the widespread use of nerve gas in the war he started with Iran and did not shrink from gassing dissenters among his own people. It stands to reason that if he had gotten away with defying the United Nations in 2003, he would have gone on to revive his nuclear weapons program and build up a new stockpile of chemical and biological weapons.
Consider also the impact of the Iraq war on Iraq's belligerent neighbours. If the Bush administration had shrunk from overthrowing Saddam, could there be any hope that any means short of war could now persuade Iran to forgo its manifest intention to acquire nuclear weapons?
Last week, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declaimed to a rally of radical students that "Israel must be wiped off the map," adding "the Islamic world will not let its historic enemy live in its heartland."
For the Western democracies to allow a regime headed by such a fanatical, Jew-baiting, fascist to get its hands on nuclear weapons would be reckless in the extreme.
Some critics of the Iraq war argue that the U.S. and its allies were right to overthrow Saddam, but once they had achieved this objective, they should have promptly withdrawn their troops from Iraq.
What, though, would have been the likely result of this approach? Iraq would have disintegrated into a civil war among Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds. Worse, Turkey, Iran, Syria and other Mideast states might have been drawn into the conflict, igniting another general Middle East war.
By staying the course in Iraq, the U.S., Britain, Australia and other staunch allies have avoided this catastrophe and succeeded beyond the imagining of many critics in clearing the way for democracy in Iraq. Who would have thought just a few years ago that a great majority of the Iraqi people would soon vote not once, but twice, for the creation of a democratic Iraqi federation?
Meanwhile, what has Canada contributed to this struggle for peace and democracy in Iraq? Practically nothing. Under the leadership of the Chretien Liberals, Canada betrayed its U.S. and British allies, by refusing to play even a symbolic role in the liberation of Iraq.
Nonetheless, many Canadians, inside and outside the Martin government, have the gall to complain about Canada's lack of influence over U.S. foreign policy. In a candid address in Washington last week, Lawrence Wilkerson, a former chief of staff to then-secretary of state Colin Powell, confided that if he were not such a diplomat, he would tell these whiners: "As long as you sit behind our military up there in Canada, don't do a damn thing, eviscerate your own military and continue to look like you're the world's pacifist nation, you're getting what you deserve."
Quite so.
Ping
"Another Canuck who gets it. We're not all the same up here."
Thanks to sites like FR, we know! Thanks for posting this!
Well done. He at least reaches the position taken by the ALP Right.
Ping!
Here's another regarding the Iranian threat to Israel ...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1513848/posts
And that would not have been a bad outcome all by it self. Th have the center of the Muslim world tear itself apart and waste their blood and treasure would be rather nice.
However, its likely that Israel would get creamed even as a bystander to the dog fight, and we would have to do without mid-east oil for 5 years.
Ultimately, tho, Iran would have won the cat-fight and taken all of Iraq. By staying the course in Iraq, the U.S., Britain, Australia and other staunch allies have avoided this catastrophe and succeeded beyond the imagining of many critics in clearing the way for democracy in Iraq.
Nice as that is, it is but a tip of the spear of what is in fact the grand plan for democracy all over the middle east.
Thank you. My About page (or should that be my "Aboot Page") sorely needs to be updated. : )
Good for you. Thanks.
LOL :)
Well said.
Thanks for the post! Will Canada wake up?
Glad to see it.
Unfortunately, your government has aligned itself with the French. If you gave Quebec to France, could sanity be restored?
good story. Thanks!
THIS HAS TO HAVE BEEN WRITTEN ON APRIL FOOLS DAY
"The people of our country have long understood that, as a proud citizen of the world, Canada has global responsibilities. We can’t solve every problem, but we will do what we can to protect others, to raise them up, to make them safe." Paul Martin
An insomniac bump for later reading. :) Thanks for posting it.
It is not Quebec. The problem sits squarely at the English Canadian elites in Ontario. As long as the sheeples from Sudbury to Ottawa continue voting for them, there is no way Canada will choose to go with the United States on the critical issues.
I'm not laughing at that. I remember some people had characterized Paul Martin as relatively friendly to the US back when he just became the Prime Minister in late 2003, and saying he will "rebuild the bridge", and that "he is as conservative as Canada can go". And interestingly, back when Mark Latham appeared relatively sane, his stance were being compared with Paul Martin - even though at heart Martin is a left-pandering opportunitist while Latham is a left-leaning psychopath.
In general, your own Gough Whitlam was considered Australia's Pierre Trudeau in terms of leftism. The difference is Trudeau was Prime Minister in Canada from 1968 to 1984 with only a two-year interruption between 1978 to 80, while Whitlam was booted in 1975 after only 3 years in office. Trudeau so successfully modified Canada into his own vision that even today, after Trudeau was out of office for more than 2 decades and the man dead 5 years ago, it is still impossible to see anything in Canada's political, social, and economic matters that are without his influence. Canada could be spelled as T-R-U-D-E-A-U and a majority of Canadians still speak of him as if he is their national hero. Could we imagine most Australians recall Whitlam with such fondness?
Both Whitlam and Latham got their answers in no uncertain terms. I think Latham scored a record low for the ALP at the last Federal election. As voting in Australia is compulsory, election results are a good indication of how the nation feels. I tend to think of Trudeau as a Don Dunstan - someone who enaged in conduct that attracted attention. In short, Trudeau attracted attention towards Canada. Canadians felt noticed and less insignificant in the world. I wonder if this explains the rise of Canadian Liberalism?
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