Posted on 07/07/2004 6:56:21 AM PDT by Clive
MONTREAL - The appearance of Saddam Hussein in a Baghdad court last week should lay to rest skepticism about the justness of the Iraq war.
International politics in our time was reconfigured by 9/11. There are precedents for such sudden changes. One happened following the attack on Poland by Hitler's Third Reich in September 1939, another when the former Soviet Union became a nuclear power in 1949.
Among competing issues demanding attention in international politics, such as inequities in resource distribution and income, the issue of security takes precedence.
Security is the plinth on which is built the life of a city, a nation, a civilization, the international order.
Undermine security and, as the Irish poet William Butler Yeats wrote, "anarchy is loosed upon the world."
Security is indispensable for freedom and the flourishing of a culture. Providing security consistent with the requirements of freedom is the supreme task of political practice and the perennial dilemma of political philosophy.
Sept. 11 removed any doubt among those who have seriously pondered the security dilemma about the extent to which Muslim fascism is the plague of our time requiring containment and, if possible, elimination.
While most nations agreed on the need to contain and eliminate international terror following 9/11, there emerged differences over the means.
Without the resolve of the Bush administration to take the war on terror to its Middle Eastern heartland, the architects of 9/11 and their allies would still be a present menace rather than fugitives on the run.
Afghanistan under the Taliban regime of Mullah Omar had become the citadel of Osama bin Laden and his thuggish organization of al-Qaida terrorists. From the mountain fastness of this unruly country brutalized by occupying forces of the Soviet Union, bin Laden and the transnational network of Muslim fascists threatened the world with impunity for nearly a decade.
Iraq under Saddam, a psychopathic mass murderer, was one of the most tyrannical police states in the world, and unquestionably the most heinous in the Middle East. Saddam's Iraq represented the sickness of a strain of Arab nationalism gone rabid, as did German nationalism under the Nazis. It profited out of the Cold War logic of playing one side against the other, and became a haven for terrorists.
The demolition of the Taliban's Afghanistan and Saddam's Iraq was an essential prerequisite for eventually suffocating the brand of terrorism that planned and executed 9/11. This would not have occurred with repeated, but unenforced, United Nations Security Council resolutions, or with and diplomatic pieties.
It became clear that tyranny in the Arab-Muslim world was not going to implode internally, as communist regimes had in Eastern Europe. An external force was required if a tyranny imperilling international security, such as Saddam's Iraq, was to be dismantled and its people given freedom.
What could have been done before 9/11 remains a matter of speculation. After 9/11, what needed to be done was put into effect. Whether it could have been done better will be debated for a long time.
But those who doubt the justness of the war that demolished Saddam's Iraq need only hear majority of Iraqis speaking freely.
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BTTT
That isn't to say that I don't appreciate a certain bit of extra professed war logic, in that if even a rudimentary democracy, real democracy, takes hold in Iraq that could bear some delicious future fruit, so my change of War heart has not resulted in a change of heart as it relates to President Bush.
The architects of 9/11 are still a present menace, even if they are on the run... across our open borders.
It became clear that tyranny in the Arab-Muslim world was not going to implode internally, as communist regimes had in Eastern Europe. An external force was required if a tyranny imperilling international security, such as Saddam's Iraq, was to be dismantled and its people given freedom.
We can defeat terrorism the same way we defeated the Soviet Union: cut off the money. Build nuclear reactors and develop alternative sources of energy. Government regulation is the biggest reason our enemies have the cash to fight.
Freedom is a vague concept in a society that has been repressed for so long. The memorys of mass graves, assasination and gassing have a way of causing mistrust in the noble cause. As Americans we truely understand freedom.
To the oppressed, freedom is fragmented by the day to day struggle of survival.
Saddam is out of power, no longer giving aid and comfort to terror. The rest of the terrorists are on the run because they are scared to confront the concept of freedom face to face. They prefer anarchy over democracy. They rule by terror and fear. If we didn't go there to free the Iraqis exactly why did we go there? Please explain.....
Now the talk is about freeing Iraqis, and while there may have been an ancillary connection to that, and the uncovering and subsequent destruction of the WMD, we were not sold this War with the following rationale: 'WE ARE GOING TO WAR TO TO FREE THE IRAQIS.'
I'm glad they're free, and they should remember that they are forever in the debt of the 700 or so American Soldiers, and the many more who are maimed, who had the balls they did not, but I don't want to see my Nation become fond of Nation building.
Let the oppressed learn to free themselves they way we freed ourselves. Let us supply them with materiale, if appropriate, with moral support without a doubt, but let them learn the following lesson personally: 'the tree of liberty must from time to time be replenished with the blood (native blood) of patriots and tyrants.'
I think that today's libs DO NOT understand what freedom means. They have lived in freedom, but do not understand the basic concept. They have no idea how the rest of the world really lives, and how thankful they should be to be in America.
We also went there to remake the politics of the Middle East.
Let the oppressed learn to free themselves they way we freed ourselves.
In the last century, this country has freed Germany, Japan and the countries behind the Iron Curtain - and now Iraq. Sometimes a strongman needs to get a a**-whuppin' by a stronger nation in order to fall.
That I understand, that's the genesis of my comment in my first post on this thread referencing the possible future fruit.
In the last century, this country has freed Germany, Japan and the countries behind the Iron Curtain - and now Iraq. Sometimes a strongman needs to get a a**-whuppin' by a stronger nation in order to fall.
I don't really disagree with your point about the a**-whuppin', but I don't think our invasion of Iraq is analagous to our entry into WW II. I will say though that erudite extrapolation could convince me otherwise.
You know of course that Hussein was a major supporter of terror in and outside the U.S. To deny that Hussein was a major threat to the U.S. and its allies is to say that many analysts (including Steven Hayes, Laurie Mylroie, Jayna Davis, and others) who've studied Hussein and have concluded that he was neck-deep in Islamo-fascist terrorism including Al-Qaeda and other wahhabist groups. Jayne Davis claims that Hussein was deeply involved in the Oklahoma City bombing. Mylroie puts has him complicit with the 1993 WYC bombing. And he still might have had a hand in 9/11. Vladimir Putin has evidence that Hussein planned terrorist attacks in the U.S. Now some of these people might be wrong, but ALL of them?!!? I strongly supported removing Hussein long before the war, and I'm now far more sure of that belief than I ever was.
In a way, WWII was an object lesson for going after Iraq. How many times have you heard it said that Hitler could have been stopped for the price of a bullet, had nations acted earlier?
Plus, there was one other, critical factor in play in Iraq - the ghosts of Mogadishu and the cowardice of the Clinton Administration. Our enemies believed after Mogadishu that the United States would turn tail in the face of any casualties - and that belief was bolstered by Clinton's unwillingness in Kosovo to commit ground troops and having Americans coming home in body bags, lest support for his little adventure dissipate. However, Kosovo was also not in our national interest - whereas the Middle East clearly is - so Americans have been willing to suffer casualities and still support the war there.
As I said this effort could turn out to be a boon for all, as I hope it will be, but only time will reveal whether that's the case. But I'm still worried about the awful state of our Intelligence, and said intelligence which ostensibly led to this invasion.
Why would you have said no? We went into Iraq to prevent another 9/11, not to free the Iraqis. Having a free Iraq is part of the solution; it would be a waste to go into Iraq, remove Saddam, leave, and let another terror-sponsoring madman rule in his stead.
In the end we wanted proof and all Saddam gave us was promises. I guess Saddam's promises were good enough for some people. Example, Charles Mason is up for parole. He promises he won't kill anyone when he is released. Absent any other evidence other than his history, would you believe him?
Well said.
Parole follows conviction, it doesn't preceed it.
but am now like Bill Buckley: if I knew then what I know now, I would have said no.
Why do you think we went there?
Do you have a link to Bill Buckley's take on this?
What exactly is it that you actually know now that you didn't know then that would have compelled you to say no?
As I said, we went there to establish a presence and Hussein was the easiest to eliminate without enflaming the whole region. I know that, but we weren't sold the War on that premise. And now, the premise that we were sold the War on has taken a huge body-blow, and will be hard to make whole should we have to.
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