Posted on 11/12/2004 4:43:25 AM PST by Chi-townChief
The election is over and so we can forget about the Iraq war. It is no longer a political issue and hence matters to no one. The American electorate has followed the tradition of standing by a wartime president and thus endorsing the president's war. It was once his war. Now the election has made it our war. The issue is closed.
A recent report suggested that if one compares the number of deaths that usually occur in Iraq per year with the number since Bush's invasion, the cost of the war in dead Iraqis may be more than a hundred thousand human beings. Now Iraqi deaths don't count because they look funny and talk funny and have a funny religion. Besides they're Arabs, and we have a score to settle with Arabs because of their attack on the World Trade Center. Yet if we are able to sustain the number of deaths that have happened as a consequence of the invasion, we will soon have accounted for as many as Saddam Hussein did. That's a lot of dead Arabs -- and a lot of bereaved spouses, parents, children, other relatives and friends. How many before will we have to kill before we're satisfied with our revenge?
Someone might say that when leaders of a country have caused so many deaths that they might just deserve to be hauled before an international court of justice as war criminals -- especially if the war was based on false premises and conducted with an ineptitude that staggers the mind. It is an unnecessary, unjust, stupid, sinful war. The majority of Americans have assumed responsibility for the war. Therefore they share responsibility for all the Iraqi deaths.
OK, lets say there's only 50,000 extra dead. So that's not so bad, right? Americans are never going to have to render an accounting to their Creator for having supported such a massacre. Right?
I don't judge the conscience of anyone, leader or follower. I am merely saying that there is objective sin in the Iraq war, and our country as a country is guilty of sin. I'll leave it to God to judge the guilt, because that's God's job. I also leave it to God to judge whether there ought to be punishment for that sin. However, I think Americans -- so serenely confident that the Lord is on our side -- should live in fear and trembling about punishment.
The terrorists blew up the World Trade Center because they believed that the United States has done terrible things to Palestinians. The next explosion will be revenge for what we have done to Iraqis. We may not have been responsible for the plight of the Palestinians -- though very few Muslims believe that. We are certainly responsible for what we have done and will do to the Iraqis during the next four years of folly. God help us all.
Because we are the only superpower, there is little chance that our leaders will be indicted as war criminals or that an invading army will punish the American people the way we punished the Germans after the war.
Don't give me that stuff that the Iraq war is not comparable to World War II. That argument deliberately misses the point that a country is responsible for the deaths it causes because of an unjust war, even if the deaths are numerically small compared to deaths from another war. An unjust war is an unjust war and the death of innocents is the death of innocents. Where does one want to draw the numerical limit after which the unnecessary deaths of the innocent become a horrible crime? How many hundred thousand?
The United States has fought unjust wars before -- Mexican American, the Indian Wars, Spanish American, the Filipino Insurrection, Vietnam. Our hands are not clean. They are covered with blood this time, and there'll be more blood this time.
The one faintly bright spot is that our victorious wartime president, now that he has been re-elected, might be able to extricate himself from Iraq more quickly than John Kerry. The war will never end unless and until the American government or the American people say that it's time to get out.
Will that require four more years?
(And before Catholics write me hate mail saying that I'm a disgrace for attacking the war, they should ponder writing a letter to the pope who has made no secret of his opposition.)
mailto:agreel@aol.com
Maybe he should read this excellent, fact filled article about how Saddam was the ATM to Al Qaeda.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=15919
Greeley's position is that the moral decision was to leave Saddam in power.
Therein lies his disgrace.
Nor do I think his motivation for that position honorable or honest.
"How many more Iraqis must die for our revenge?"
I think we will settle when all the Saddam henchman, terrorists and insundry jihadis are dead and a democratic form of goverment has emerged.
I get it. Freeing a people from a brutal dictator and rebuilding their country = punishment.
Useless idiot alert
Thanks for the article.
Red6
You're more than welcome. Share it with friends via e-mail. The mainstream press won't get the truth out; that's why Free Republic is here.
Even if it were true, the very fact that you can make this statement is the reason we went in there. YOU IDIOT!
How many need to die?
That is entirely up to them.
I think any moral calculus of the war would have to take into account that Saddam was a murderous tyrannical thug who cruelly butchered his own people. Replacing him with a democratic constitution (and that is the goal toward which we are working) will benefit the people of Iraq greatly. If Andrew Greely had his way, the Iraqi people would still be near-slaves under the thumb of a human rights-violating tyrant today.
America mistakenly tried to stay out of WW II, America was drug kicking and screaming into it. This is similiar. We have been being attacked for many years by these terrorists and finally are on a mission of extermination. What is wrong with this guy? As usual, he suggests no alternative way to destroy the enemy. Is this guy an American?
Do we have to set a number? I'm against quotas.
LMAO!
The president exposed further the hypocrisy of the mainstream media with this statement yesterday:
from our president who spotted the hypocrisy of those who don't believe the Iraqi's are entitled to freedom:
"There is a certain attitude in the world, by some, that says that it's a waste of time to try to promote free societies in parts of the world. I've heard that criticism…But if you do not believe people can be free and can self-govern, then all of a sudden the two-state solution in the Middle East becomes a moot point, invalid. If you're willing to condemn a group of people to a system of government that hasn't worked, then you'll never be able to achieve the peace."
Mr...oh wait lets just call him Greeley, not sure hes man enough to be entitled to the MR.
Greeley should watch this, then tell us when his compassion for the death and suffering of people got lost.
http://iraqitruthproject.com/
He just doesn't get it. If this was revenge then Iraq would be not much more that a few smoking holes with a whole lotta sand. Instead our boys are going house to house to keep casualties down. Doesn't sound like "Jenghis Kahn" to me.
Revenge is vengeance. Freedom is compassion. Think about it Greeley before you open your pie hole next time.
God bless our troops wherever they may be.
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