[CubicleGuy]

Are we prepared to mete out the same punishment to the citizens of Iraq, even though they had nothing to do with 9/11?

[LouD]

Are we prepared to mete out the same punishment to the citizens of Iraq, even though they had nothing to do with 9/11?

No, we're not. In fact, we have said specifically that we have no quarrel with the people of Iraq. Our military has taken far greater pains to avoid civilian casualties than any other military in the history of warfare, sometimes at increased risk to themselves.

Yes, some innocents will die - That is unavoidable. But innocent people die every day in Iraq, victims of their own government. And if we do nothing, they will continue to die. Saddam seeks weapons that no reasonable person can believe he should possess, and if he acquires them, many more innocent people, perhaps millions of innocent people, will be at risk.

We cannot, and will not, allow this to happen.

[piasa]

Are we prepared to let them suffer daily, eternally, to be deprived of safety in their own homes for as long as the Baathists remain in power, as we did with millions of now dead souls in the name of containment and do with North Korea today; are we prepared to watch them suffer for the leader's sake, that he may build temples unto himself and defy God; are we prepared to watch stupidly as he constructs the means to blackmail surrounding nations into silence and to carry out a deadly vendetta against the one nation who denied him Kuwait; are we prepared to let Hussein fund yet another generation of schoolbus-bombing terrorists; are we prepared to make Iraqis endure unlimited years of fearing police arrests in the night, mutilations, intimidation ; to fear that the words your child overheard and repeated could condemn you to being labeled an enemy of the state; to be an Iraqi in fear that your village may be the next to be exterminated or accused of being a rebel stronghold; to watch an entire culture be eliminated by seeing the eradication of its traditional wetland home; to be persecuted for your words; to be persecuted for your ethnicity; to be condemned to live in a land where the leader is willing to put even his own family to death for not bowing to his will; to wonder if the next mail you receive will include a video of your daughter being raped by a government professional; to be damned to be a silent witness, an accomplice, to murder or maiming for revenge, lest you too be murdered if you defend the defenseless; to live in a land that has children's prisons that even UN inspectors fear to describe lest the description incite people to war; to live in fear in a nation that punishes the young for thepolitical sins of their fathers; to watch a tyrannical government send agents worldwide to find and assassinate dissenters; to live in a country where the press is controlled in its entirety by the relatives of the leader-for-life, to know that there is none to help and none to hear if America does not do what others fear; are we prepared to never know what became of hundreds of captured Kuwaitis or one lone American pilot; to never know how many lie buried for Saddam Hussein's glory; to wonder if our officials shall be assassinated by this sadistic Hussein, to do nothing knowing that the next person the Baathists may kill directly or through terrorist proxy may be a thousand or tens of thousands of unwitting workers in other lands; to deny freedom and justice when we have the means to deliver it and end the suffering and daily dose of death delivered to the people in Iraq who do dare to defy Hussein for liberty's sake?

If you are willing to watch a mugger rob and murder for the sake of making peace with him at the expense of his victim, then begone. If you are willing to condemn those who seek liberty for the sake of those who do not, begone.

Those who are willing to sacrifice their liberty for the sake of safety (theirs or others) deserve neither liberty nor safety, and shall have neither.

And those who pray for peace at all costs always pray a two-faced prayer. For the victims of good-intentioned Utopians by far outnumber the victims of liberators.

As for prayer, it is sufficient to pray only that God's will be done in the battles ahead, be they diplomatic or military, and then do your best as a soldier or leader, trusting Him to deliver.

And that, my friend, is not a two-faced prayer.

I am continually astounded by those who preach peace because of the possibility that some few may fall to American bombs, but care not a whit about millions starved to death, hacked to death, tortured to death, gassed to death, burned to death, worked to death, buried alive, mutilated, deprived of freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom to bear arms, enslaved, deprived of property, prosperity and opportunity, deprived of heritage and history, reeducated, intimidated, extorted, threatened, libelled, ... and now they want us to look away so that those who do these things can get their hands on nuclear weapons too, and threaten to do all this to even more people?

No one cares.

Certainly not the people who cry out against war now.

They want all these things to continue indefinitely, worldwide, and don't care if eventually these things are imported to this country because we failed to stop it while we could. We have seen their type before. We see that type every time we see someone look the other way when a crime is going down.

No one cares, least of all those whose wisdom is no more than parrotted lines from tenured marxist professors.

No one cares except some "warmongering" Americans, a few gallant Brits, and some others who know such tyranny first-hand, as do our friends in Eastern Europe.

Pacifist activism is a murder-suicide pact for the benefit of tyrants, perpetuated by people who do not understand what it is to be without liberty or hope.