Okay, fellas, have at the little brownshirt. Apparently he is another Canadian leftist who has a serious problem with Jews who own guns and want to defend themselves against Arab terrorism.
Anyhoo, I found his column a hoot and sent him the following letter:
Be Seeing You,
Chris
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Dear Mr. Salutin,
Some comments on yet another bit of anti-Americanism from our friends at the Globe and Mail....
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Four things the coming war against Iraq is not about:It is not about terror. Proof A: No connection has ever been shown between Iraq and al-Qaeda; in fact, there is long enmity between their leaders.
Bollocks. And I'm being polite here. The Atta-al Ani meeting is likely to have taken place in Prague in April of 2001. The fact that some in the CIA tried to pour cold water on the report is indicative of the fact that CIA had come to an erroneous conclusion and was attempting to cover its backside. Czech Intelligence has never disavowed Atta's presence in Prague, nor his meeting with our friend Colonel al-Ani of the Mukhabarat.
Ideological enmity does not preclude cooperation. In the Middle East, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Proof B: U.S. leaders have clearly used Sept. 11 as a pretext to attack Iraq. Bob Woodward says in his new book that Donald Rumsfeld was already calling for Iraq's inclusion in the war on terror on "the day after"; national security adviser Condoleezza Rice told The New Yorker she asked her staff "to think seriously about 'how do you capitalize on these opportunities [my emphasis].' "
I would hope so. Either Iraq's signature on the 1991 Ceasefire and its promise to abide by its terms of surrender mean something, or it does not. No amount of finding fault with the United States will change this. Iraq has gave us a casus belli some time ago. It's just that Bush has the courage to act on Iraq's casual breach of treaty, whereas the left's hero, Bill Clinton, was all talk and no action.
This is the way that power thinks.
Power does not "think". People "think".
Proof C (a deduction, but I find it the most persuasive argument): Attacking Iraq will increase the danger of terror attacks in the future. The misery of Iraqi civilians, especially kids, due to sanctions is already closely watched in the Arab and Muslim world. Casualties from bombing in the "no fly" zones are widely reported, though scarcely noted here. New, far greater death and destruction will raise further anger, and lead to more recruits for terror; it's elementary. Besides, even the CIA says Saddam Hussein is most likely to use biological or chemical weapons once he is attacked and cornered. You don't eradicate terror by creating more of it. Surely the American leadership knows this.
No. This is what you don't understand. The war in Iraq is designed to teach an object lesson to other terrorist-supporting Third World regimes.
The War on Iraq is inclusive of a larger ideological struggle loosely known as the "War on Terror". In point of fact, this war will prove to be the third great global war in human history, after all the statesmen have made enough mistakes to make a huge hash of things. In that sense, September 11th was the modern version of the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in the summer of 1914.
Our objective as Americans is to enter Iraq, destroy the capacity of the Iraqi army to resist, destroy the Saddam regime, and institute a measure of popular rule in that benighted country. We do this to prevent the Saddam regime from developing nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons in the hands of a mad hatter like Kim Jong-Il are bad enough, but as we can't do much about him right now, we have to dispose of the madman at hand. As a side benefit, we show the rest of the Arab world what happens to terrorist regimes that f#@k with us and assist terrorist outfits in the killing of our people.
For a time before September 11th a conceit existed among Arab intellectuals. The "Zionist Entity" could be destroyed by attacking decadent America. Once America was paralyzed, the Zionist state would fall into the hands of the Arab nation like ripe fruit from a tree. That is one reason why we were attacked. It has very little to do with those poor Iraqi chilluns and the grievances of the Arab street, a squalid body politic that will suffer any charlatan and countenance any mountebank, so long as the despot of the day puts the rhetorical boot in on the Jew.
As Condoleezza Rice pointed out a couple of years ago, "Power matters."
It is not about weapons of mass destruction. Proof A: North Korea, whose nuclear program is far more advanced than Iraq's, and which has the crucial delivery systems. Yet the U.S. has declared it will not attack North Korea. Evidently, having a real and credible WMD program exempts you from American attack.
No, it does not. We're focused on the Persian Gulf at this time. You would prefer us to open up a Two-front war when we're equipped to fight and win a One-front campaign? BZZZT! You lose. Go join the German General Staff and invade Russia. For the time being, we will have to use diplomatic pressure from the Chicoms, the Russians, the Japanese, and South Korea to lean on the little ass-clown. North Korea can be dealt with by naval quarantine and unrestricted submarine warfare on its shipping if necessary.
Proof B: Israel, which has had a large nuclear arsenal for 40 years that scares hell out of its neighbours. Security Council Resolution 687, paragraph 14, calls for removing all WMDs from the Mideast. The U.S. has never volunteered to enforce that clause.
Israel is a parliamentary democracy. The rest of the region is filled with gimcrack despotism's, oil principalities, Mad hatter regimes (Saddam, the Iranian theocracy) and other testaments to the Ninth Century. Israel needs nuclear weapons precisely because of the nature of the Arab dictatorships.
It is most instructive that a writer of the left finds fault with a democracy for attempting to see to its own defense, while at the same time chooses to ignore the nuclear efforts of opposing autocracies. Might it be because Israel is a Western democracy? HMO? Might it be because Israel is Jewish? Ah, now we're getting somewhere....
It is not about democracy. Proof A: Saddam Hussien, whose tyranny the U.S. supported with military aid, including WMD's, as detailed in Iraq's report to the UN, up to the time at which he defied not his own people but the U.S. Former UN relief co-ordinator Dennis Halliday says that, even after the Persian Gulf war, U.S.-backed sanctions continued to prop up the regime and "weakened the very people who think about democracy" there.
Where does one begin with this embarrassment of riches hidden in a run-on sentence.
The sanctions were designed to keep food going to the Iraqi people, not to the regime. The regime stole incoming foodstuffs to feed the Army. Sort of like our good friend Kim Jong-Il. Not every thing is our fault, Mr. Salutin. No one held a gun to Saddam's head and forced him to steal food and money. This reminds me of that vapid assertion by the left that Bush gave 43 million dollars to the Taleban. Actually, Bush gave 43 million dollars to the UN Food Aid program in Afghanistan, not to the Taleban. This point, among many, is lost on the left.
Besides, the spineless Europeans were giving him money under the table, anyway.
Proof B, C, D: Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, where the U.S. has far greater political and economic clout to press for democratic reform but has never done so. Proof E: Iran, which has limited but real democratic processes, and which made the "axis of evil" list nonetheless. Proof F, G: Turkey and Indonesia, Muslim countries with some level of democracy that got there on their own or, in Indonesia's case, despite U.S. support for its dictator. One could go on but one would run out of letters. The general point? Democracy is not something likely to be imposed by an invasion. Isn't that kind of obvious?
Give us time. September 11th taught us one thing. The Arab World is a dangerous and backward place that is having a dalliance with Islamic fascism. It is so doing because the squalid kleptocracies of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan, and the princely States give their people no alternative. This has little to do with us. We didn't invent the Arab body politic. That's something you need to understand. So we have decided that since the present nature of these regimes breeds the kind of individual you described, those regimes need to be changed. All of them. Including those backstabbing Saudis. This will be the greatest and salutary result of the application of American power and the imposition of a temporary American consular imperium in Iraq. Once American power is centered in the Fertile Crescent, we will be able to strike Al Qaeda at will, and anywhere in the Middle East, settle accounts with Hezboallah, and assist the Israelis as they hunt down and kill the members of Hamas. But that's only a side benefit. Once the Iranian theocracy falls, as it is due to (popular resistance to the regime is growing by leaps and bounds...), then everything changes, and the Arab world might have a chance, just a chance, to appeal to the better angels of their nature.
Finally, there's this howler, which proves that history can be a dangerous thing....
The general point? Democracy is not something likely to be imposed by an invasion. Isn't that kind of obvious?
Have you ever heard of Operation OVERLORD? How about Operation DOWNFALL?
In each case, democracy was imposed on fascist regimes by the sword. Overlord led to the collapse of Nazi Germany in the West, Downfall was the effort to destroy the Japanese regime in the Home Islands. Each effort worked. Each nation was occupied by the United States Army. Each nation became a working, thriving democracy. Your general thesis, on which your whole column appears to depend, is but a house of cards built on sand.
Such will be the fate of Iraq. I know that gives you pause, but we Americans have to be about the business of defending ourselves from evil. We've had help from Canada in this war (the sterling record of the Princess Pats in the battle of Shah-i-Kot is something every Canadian should be proud of), but if we can't count on M. Chretien this time out, so be it.
It is not about preventing damage to the U.S. economy, as George W. Bush suggested this week. This one defies rebuttal. He posits a nuclear, chemical or biological attack by unproven weapons through non-existent delivery systems, then worries about the effects on the economy rather than on human beings. (People lying in the wreckage screaming, Omigod, I lost my job!) It's the same sensibility he showed in cheerily approving 152 executions during six years as Texas governor.
Hey, you want to feed killers at taxpayer's expense for the rest of their lives? Go for it. Down here in Florida we don't mess around. You kill someone, you forfeit your liberty and perhaps your life. Now we used to have an electric chair up at Raiford State Penitentiary affectionately known as "Old Sparky". It has since been retired. Down in Texas, they use lethal injection.
Look, it's obvious that you as a left-wing Canadian don't give a rat's ass about the security of our people. You obviously don't care if a fifteen kiloton device is detonated in Downtown Manhattan at lunch hour, killing some 700,000 people in a single stroke. Since you don't give a rat's ass, we Americans are force to give a rat's ass instead (although it appears that at least some members of your Alliance Party appear to take the concept of border security seriously). We will defend ourselves, whatever the cost. Whether you choose to defend yourselves or not is your business. Given the number of Al-Qaeda infiltrators that have penetrated your laughingstock frontier security, I wouldn't be resting too easy if I were you.
So what is it about? Hard to choose: oil, domination, revenge, punishing an insubordinate client? Whew. At least we know what it isn't.
Strangely enough, it isn't about oil. If it were, we would have left Saddam alone as long as he pumped oil full blast. As it is, oil is a fungible commodity. The rest of your possible explanations are simply a catalogue of the childish interpretations of the political reality of this war by the Left. That sentence alone is one of the reasons the left is not taken seriously in my country anymore.
Addendum: I'm getting tired of reading in The Globe and Mail that criticizing Israel has become a cloak for anti-Semitism, as charged by Clay Ruby, Jeff Rose and Philip Berger, who call anti-Semitism "a powerful force" in the debate on the Mideast, or even a nuanced observer such as Shira Herzog, who claims that "some critics of Israel conveniently focus on Israeli wrongdoings to mask their blatant anti-Semitism." What I'd like is some specific examples. The former fret over analogies drawn between Israeli policies and apartheid, but those are made mainly by South African Jews who moved to Israel and were disillusioned, or blacks such as Desmond Tutu -- not obvious anti-Semites They refer broadly to chants at rallies or social slights being on the rise. The genuine anti-Semites, meanwhile, don't seem to require any masks or cover. David Ahenakew simply launched a classic anti-Semitic tirade. He included a few swift asides on Israel, but he clearly needed no camouflage. It's possible the process has worked in reverse: i.e., criticism of Israel has made anti-Semites feel freer to speak, but so far I see no problem making distinctions between them and the conscientious opponents of a particular nation's policies.
Oh, sure. Concordia college kicked out Hillel because they opposed the Sharon government. Please. At least the Nazis had the common decency not to hide behind self-righteousness as they were turning Jews into lampshades and soap. Tell your friends on the Left that they at least ought to stage a bookburning and boycott Jewish shops, if only for Old Times' sake.
Jew-baiting is Jew-baiting, no matter how you dress it up.
Gee, maybe the Canadian Left should be the first to reactivate the Hitlerjugend. Then at least you could be first at something. Have you folks ever considered restarting Strength Through Joy?
Be Seeing You,
Li'l Ol' Section9
North Lauderdale, Florida
