"Peace" Marchers Out of Step: Why the demonstrators should support peace

I HAD hoped that it would pour with rain during last Saturday's march for "peace."

Why? Exactly a week earlier in northern Iraq, a brave minister of the autonomous Kurdish government was foully done to death by a bunch of bin Laden clones calling themselves Ansar al-Islam.

Shawkat Mushir was lured under a flag of truce into a dirty ambush, in which he and several innocent bystanders - including an eight-year-old girl - were murdered.

There is already war in this part of Iraq, and on one side stands an elected Kurdish government with a multi-party system, 21 newspapers, four female judges, and a secular constitution.

In this area of an otherwise wretched and terrified country, oil revenues are spent on schools and roads and hospitals instead of for the upkeep of a parasitic and cruel military oligarchy.

The survivors of ethnic cleansing and torture and poison gas and chemical weapons - genocidal tactics which have cost the lives of at least 200,000 civilians - are rebuilding.

And they are fighting both the al-Qaeda forces and the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, which operate in an unspoken but increasingly obvious alliance. It's a sort of Hitler-Stalin pact.

In my opinion, these brave Kurds and their friends in the Iraqi opposition are fighting and dying on our behalf - and tackling our enemies for us.

It should be a cause for great pride that pilots of the Royal Air Force take a leading share in patrolling the skies over northern Iraq, protecting a decade-long experiment in successful regime change.

DURING the many years I spent on the Left, the cause of self-determination for Kurdistan was high on the list of principles and priorities - there are many more Kurds than there are Palestinians and they have been staunch fighters for democracy in the region.

It would have been a wonderful thing if hundreds of thousands of people had flooded into London's Hyde Park and stood in solidarity with this, one of the most important struggles for liberty in the world today.

Instead, the assortment of forces who assembled demanded, in effect, that Saddam be allowed to keep the other five-sixths of Iraq as his own personal torture chamber.

There are not enough words in any idiom to describe the shame and the disgrace of this.

I went to the last such "peace" demonstration in Hyde Park last autumn and found it was pretty easy to distinguish between the two main tendencies.

Among the first tendency - the animating and organising force - were an easily-recognisable bunch of clapped-out pseudo-Marxists who, deep in their hearts, have a nostalgia for the days of the one-party State and who secretly regard Saddam as an anti-imperialist.

They were assisted by an impressive number of fundamentalist Muslims, who mouth the gibberish slogans of holy war but who don't give a damn for the suffering inflicted by Saddam on their co-religionists.

Then came the sincere, fuddled stage-army of the good - people who think that a remark such as "peace is better than war" is an argument in itself. Their latest cry is that "inspections" should be given "more time". I am always impressed by sweet people who are evidence-proof.

The surveillance tapes recently played to the United Nations show conclusively, among other things, that the ranks of the "inspectors" have been heavily penetrated by Iraqi secret police agents, who now know where and when "inspections" will be.

So let's have "more time" for a lot more of that, shall we? And don't let's ask what Saddam wants the extra time for.

Just in the past few weeks, every stop-gap straw-man argument of the peaceniks has been shot down in flames.

Yes, dear, I am afraid that there are bin Laden agents taking shelter in Baghdad.

Yes, Mr bin Laden seems to think that Saddam's cause is, with reservations, one that a Muslim fascist ought to support. Yes, there are weapons and systems, found even by the bumbling inspectors, that Saddam had sworn he did not have.

Yes, sorry to break it to you but the Iraqi regime does have a special police department that inspects the inspectors.

And - are you sitting down? - the French are owed several billion dollars by Saddam for their past help in supplying the sinews of aggression against Iran, Kuwait and Kurdistan.

The Russian government, too, is seeking lucrative contracts in the Iraqi market and is being rewarded with such contracts for its slithery behaviour at the UN.

Meanwhile, 14 or so European governments, including most of those recently emancipated from Stalinism and also the only Muslim state in Europe (Albania), have signed a statement supporting the case for the removal of Saddam's wicked, conspiring, menacing regime.

I think I would prefer to have Vaclav Havel in my corner than the grotesque, corrupt, cynical dandy Jacques Chirac.

NOW, I cheerfully admit that the experience of finding itself on the right side in this region is new to Washington (and to London, for that matter).

And one must be vigilant in ensuring that the "regime change" argument is not just picked up and then discarded by the coalition forces.

But one has to distinguish sharply between those who have learned from past crimes and blunders involving Saddam, and those who have not.

And this test does not apply only to governments or States. The last time that the "peace" marchers assembled, they would have spared the government of the Taliban.

Thank goodness that such opinions no longer count, however many people may be persuaded to hold them.

Soon, the Iraqi people will have a chance to express their own opinion, which will be more interesting and more complex than the facile banners and placards that we have already grown bored with.

I desperately wanted it to absolutely pour with rain on Saturday's demonstration - heavy rain on the just and the unjust, and a touch of hard rain and hail on the silly who are being led by the sinister.

The Sum of all Fears (No, not the movie)

They are worried. They are nervous.
Their angst these days borders on full-scale panic.
Who's 'they?' The throngs of "anti-war" protesters who hit the streets over the weekend, that's who. Beneath the sign-waving and chanting, the roaring cheers as blustery speakers denounce the U.S. and Bush's threat to topple Iraqi military dictator Saddam Hussein, was fear -- mind-numbing fear.

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The numbness had little to do with sub-freezing temperatures which swept cities and towns across the mid-Atlantic states, the Northeast and beyond, dumping mounds of snow.
No, the numbness was fright -- not Mother Nature.
"Peace" protesters curl up in horror at the thought of yet another successful U.S. war of liberation, a la Afghanistan (A.N.S.W.E.R. and other groups behind the rallies vehemently opposed ousting the Taliban after 9/11.)

They know Saddam's forces are no match against the greatest -- and most lethal -- fighting force ever known to man -- the U.S. Military. They realize Saddam's army, against computerized tanks and smart munitions, against highly motivated, exceptionally trained men-at-arms, doesn't have a snowball's chance in hades. Saddam's forces -- scruffy, ragged, bedraggled and demoralized -- will be crushed.
That's what scares the hell out of the Left. Without the hope of massive U.S. casualties quelling their anguish, they know U.S. victory is all but certain, that Saddam's days are numbered. It's why those crowds clogging the streets of New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and Detroit, chanting anti-U.S. slogans, so vehemently oppose the war.

Take Mary Baxter, 31, of Cambridge, Mass. The software company employee joined anti-U.S. protesters at a rally near U.N. headquarters Saturday. But don't expect her to attend any Big Apple ticker-tape parades welcoming returning U.S. soldiers flush with victory from Baghdad.
"I came to go to the rally and be a part of a global voice against going to war against Iraq," she told New York Times reporter Robert D. McFadden, whose piece, From New York to Melbourne, Protest Against War on Iraq, reads like something straight out of the Iraqi Ministry of Information.

Ms. Baxter, Bush-hater, added that "the current administration has been escalating and destabilizing things. I'm disappointed that Colin Powell is going along with Bush, Cheney and the rest of them." The problem is evil Bush, you see, not peace-loving "president" Saddam Hussein -- no way.
Then there's Angela Tsang, another one who won't be attending Welcome Home victory parades for U.S. warriors, also quoted in McFadden's report.
"We see the war against Iraq as unjust," she says, adding, "we don't believe Bush's rhetoric." Saddam, not Bush, is a "president" we can trust, you see.
Tara Good, 21, a university Student, told the New York Post how her "mother was an active peace campaigner in the past, and she would be ashamed if I didn't turn up today."

Will Ms. Good -- or any of these "protesters" -- "turn up" at victory rallies on the streets of New York, flashing 'Welcome Home' signs in a national outpouring of celebration, honoring returning U.S. troops after Desert Storm II? Er, don't go betting the farm on it.
Mike Lamson, 33, of Alameda, Calif., couldn't wait to vent his anti-U.S. spleen on the streets of downtown San Francisco Sunday, scene of yet more anti-U.S. demonstrations. "I am honestly not sure how much it does to stop a war, but at the very least it makes you feel like you are speaking your voice," he told the New York Times.
The protesters were peaceful, however. In New York, they blocked intersections, clashed with police, kicking one in the head, bashing another in the face. A total of 8 NYPD cops were injured at the hands of "peaceful" protesters. Hundreds were arrested.

The campaign to oust Saddam, a fascist dictator who gasses women and children for sport, galvanizes the Left like nothing seen since the days of Vietnam.
New York Times writer Patrick E. Tyler sees in the "new power in the streets" a reflection of public opinion, insinuating overwhelming sentiment opposing the removal of Iraqi strong-man Saddam Hussein.

The media calls groups like A.N.S.W.E.R. a portrait of middle America, as mainstream as it gets -- but is it? Well, you be the judge:
-- A.N.S.W.E.R and its allies dismiss as 'fiction' charges that military dictator Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction. Americans, by overwhelming majorities, believe the opposite.
-- Favor lifting U.N. sanctions against Saddam's repressive regime without conditions -- again, a proposition only a tiny fraction of Americans would agree with.
-- Holds Bush to be illegitimate -- a thief who cheated Al Gore from the presidency -- and that Bush's real motive is to rule the world. Oh, and oil. Polls again show the fringe-of-the-fringe believe this sort of thing, but no one else.
-- Denounces the U.S. as a murderous, imperialist power, comparing it to NAZI Germany. Can't say I've seen any polls, but my gut tells me most Americans don't see their country as a murderous, imperialist power, nor draw comparisons to NAZI Germany.
-- Praises the "great Marxists of the twentieth Century" (their words). Need I say more?
Don't take my word for it. For details, check out David Horowitz's FrontPageMagazine, which Monday posted full-text a copy of a statement distributed at each demonstration. The statement originates from the World Socialist and the Socialist Equality Party.
So, how many people you know believe Saddam is innocent, want sanctions lifted without conditions, call Bush a murderous thug out to rule the world, call their country a murderous, imperialist power out to rule the world and lavish praise on the great humanitarian works of Lenin and Stalin? Patrick Tyler's buddies may talk like that, but I suspect not many of yours.

In short, A.N.S.W.E.R. and affiliates -- the main organizers of these events -- are no more "mainstream" than the Ku Klux Klan.

Besides, unlike his predecessor, this President doesn't conduct foreign policy based on the latest Gallup poll. Bush doesn't follow public opinion, he shapes it.

That's what leadership is made of, that's what George W. Bush is made of.
God bless our President, God bless our Troops, and God bless the United States of America!
Anyway, that's...
My two cents...
"JohnHuang2"

Thursday, February 20, 2003

Quote of the Day by areafiftyone

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