Posted on 12/17/2003 8:04:12 PM PST by Commie Basher
Sunday's capture of Saddam Hussein made it a great day — a great day for empty rhetoric and meaningless posturing by politicians and journalists.
Somehow it was assumed by politicians and the press, without explanation, that Hussein's capture has vindicated the Bush administration's attack on Iraq. But from September 2002 to March 2003, George Bush said nothing about capturing Saddam Hussein. Instead, Bush talked incessantly about weapons of mass destruction and Iraq's ability to attack the U.S. with them — as well as Al Qaeda camps in the Iraqi desert. How does finding Saddam Hussein make Bush's claims any more true than they were last week?
We're told that that the Iraqis can see now that Saddam Hussein isn't coming back to power — as though they couldn't figure that out for themselves with 130,000 foreign troops occupying their country.
But in the wonderland occupied by politicians and journalists, the capture of Hussein must mean that all the resisters — also known as "loyalists of the old regime" — would have no more reason to resist.
Some politicians said that if anti-war protesters had their gotten way, Hussein would be in his palace today, instead of in jail. Yes, and if the anti-war protesters had gotten their way, several hundred Americans and thousands of Iraqis would be alive today, instead of dead.
The press played its part in the celebration. Wolf Blitzer of CNN said that Hussein's capture proves to the world that "the President of the United States means business" — whatever that means.
In fact, we've known all along that George Bush means business — the business of getting reelected.
There were plenty of TV pictures of Iraqis firing AK-47s into the air. But no inquiring minds bothered to ask how everyday Iraqis could be carrying AK-47s out in the open, when the American occupiers have imposed strict gun-control edicts and are at war with resisters.
What if Saddam Hussein says that all the dreaded Weapons of Mass Destruction were destroyed years ago? Well, we know that George Bush believes in preemptive strikes, and he's already made one on this front. On Monday, he said of Hussein:
He’s a liar. He’s a torturer. He’s a murderer. . . . He’s a — he’s just — he is what he is: He’s a person that was willing to destroy his country and to kill a lot of his fellow citizens. He’s a person who used weapons of mass destruction against citizens in his own country. And so it’s — he is the kind of person that is untrustworthy and I’d be very cautious about relying upon his word in any way, shape or form.
In other words, "Believe him only if he confirms what I've been telling you for the past year."
Liberation
Donald Rumsfeld said that Hussein's capture means that the Iraqis can now be free in spirit, as well as in fact.
Ah yes, liberated Iraq. It is now a free country. George Bush has liberated it.
How has Iraq been liberated? Let me count the ways . . .
1. The country is occupied by a foreign power.
2. Its officials are appointed by that foreign power.
3. Its citizens must carry ID cards.
4. They must submit to searches of their persons and cars at checkpoints and roadblocks.
5. They must be in their homes by curfew time.
6. Many towns are ringed with barbed wire.
7. The occupiers have imposed strict gun-control laws, preventing ordinary citizens from defending themselves — making robberies, rapes, and assaults quite common.
8. Trade with some countries is banned by the occupying authorities.
9. The occupiers have decreed that certain electoral outcomes won't be permitted.
10. Families are held hostage until they reveal the whereabouts of wanted resisters — much like the Nazis held innocent French people hostage during World War II.
11. Protests are outlawed.
12. Private homes are raided or demolished — with no due process of law.
13. The occupiers have created a fiat currency and imposed it on the populace.
14. Newspapers, radio stations, and TV are all supervised by the occupiers.
This is liberation in the NewSpeak language of politics.
Words like freedom just don't seem to mean what they used to, do they?
Not true. Libertarians allow individuals to voluntarily help others. However it seems that your conception of conservatism is socialism, in that you want to use the state to force some people to help others.
Yes, but he was praying to "the moon god."
Seriously, I'm amazed by the hordes of FReepers who, when it suits their political agenda, get all teary-eyed about religious freedom for Muslims and the need to libertate them from tyrants. Yet on other threads, FReepers turn out en mass to denounce "Palis" and "ragheads" and the "religion of peace's" false Satanic moon-god.
Maybe they're two entirely different sets of FReepers, but there are so many Muslim-bashers on FR, I can't help but think there's an overlap between the two groups. And so I am cynical about conservatives' supposed desire to liberate Iraqis, and I suspect ulterior motives for these "wars of liberation."
Same here. I made the switch after I learned of his plan to promote the homosexualation of the military. Made Algore ideas for making the military a bastion of sodomy sound reasonable.
The problem with your example is that Osama is not the nut case in islam he is the shining example of all that the true muslim should be in spreading the control of islam to all the world, not the humble quiet muslim who does not make waves. Thus no outcry from millions of other muslims.
I'd appreciate you not making assumptions about my positions.
I agree with libertarianism in many ways - I have a big bone about Harry W. Browne, but I don't think that's the same thing as disagreeing with libertarianism.
Thanks! No sooner do I post # 202, then you show up with your anti-Muslim post to prove me right.
I have close relatives who are extremely liberal. I haven't estranged myself from them. I still love them, we just disagree on politics. I know that concept is incomprehensible to some around here.
I even have a certain affection for you, despite the fact that you're an irascible coot and you've wasted very few kind words on me - I know you don't have many too give.
-- and those you denigrate.
Since I haven't come close to denigrating anyone but Harry W. Browne on this thread, I take it you agree with him? I've asked you about that once or twice already, and you've preferred insults to answers.
You choose an odd way to show your agreements with libertarianism.
In your opinion.
Where were you when I was being told I wasn't a "true conservative" because I said the government didn't have any business being the bedroom police?
I think that Libertarians, like the other fringe parties, need to start local and build to national if they hope to have any real impact. In most cases, third parties have a negligible effect on the national political scene.
I group Harry W. Browne with Pat Buchanan, Alan Keyes, Ralph Nader, and the other perpetual presidential ankle-biters. All of them have a few useful things to say. None of them would be able to govern if elected, but none of them are going to have to worry about that.
You could try to help them all, but likely at the cost of your own life. Is it worth your life, or the lives of hundreds of American boys to attack every 'mugger' on the planet? Is it really worth it?
I'm not holding my breath that I'll get a response. At least, a coherent response.
No, their position is that the unintended consequences make foreign intervention beget foreign intervention, and do not serve the interests of the average American. For example, was it worth it to you for the U.S. to spend billions and billions of dollars and lose thousands of American lives just to put the Kuwaiti King back on his throne? Is that what the U.S. military is for? I was under the impression they existed to defend us? Not to puts kings on thrones have a world away and stir up attacks against us.
Isolationism didn't work for the last idiot that held the presidential office and it won't work in the future.
Clinton was an isolationist? He didn't send U.S. troops to invade Haiti? He didn't send U.S. troops to invade Kosovo? He didn't bomb Iraq, Sudan, and Afghanistan? Good grief, memories can be short.
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