Posted on 03/08/2003 11:05:03 AM PST by knighthawk
To sum up: In going to war against Iraq, the United States is engaged in a unilateral, unprovoked attack on a sovereign country, whose regime it once supported. Not only is this in clear defiance of international law and the United Nations, it sets a precedent that can only invite other countries to do the same.
There is no proof that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. Even if it does, it poses no imminent threat -- certainly none to justify the incalculable risks of war: regional instability, Muslim resentment, terrorist reprisals, to say nothing of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilian deaths. And to the extent that Saddam does pose a threat, he is and can be contained, through a combination of sanctions and inspections.
That is the case against war, in all its essentials. Follow me now, as I attempt the world land-speed record for most points rebutted in a single column.
unilateral -- At last count, more than 30 countries had declared their support, including 18 from Europe and six from the Arab world.
unprovoked -- The present conflict is best regarded as a continuation of the Gulf War, which began with Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and ended with a ceasefire in 1991. The terms of the ceasefire, notably Saddam's immediate disarmament of all weapons of mass destruction, have never been honoured.
a sovereign country -- Iraq gave up its right to non-interference the moment it invaded Kuwait.
whose regime it once supported -- Beside the point. If anything, it rather argues for toppling Saddam, as atonement.
clear defiance of international law -- International law is anything but clear, being no more than an evolving consensus on what the world will or will not tolerate. But for the record, the 17 UN resolutions with which Saddam has failed to comply over the last 12 years all come under Chapter VII of the UN charter, the "force" chapter; several specifically authorize their enforcement by "all necessary means."
and the United Nations -- The UN is not a world government. The Security Council is not a Supreme Court. It is France, and Russia, and the rest: countries in ruthless pursuit of their own national interest. If they refuse to enforce their own resolutions, how is that supporting the UN?
sets a precedent -- This would hardly be the first time one country had been invaded by another (or rather, 30 others): Ask France. Or China. Or any number of other countries, none of whom bothered to ask the UN before invading, and on far less principled grounds. The notion that countries decide whether to attack one another by consulting precedent -- or international law, for that matter -- is one of the more charming fictions of the current debate. India has no need of a precedent for going to war with Pakistan, having done so three times in living memory. That it chooses not to do so now is entirely based on calculations of self-interest.
no proof -- Iraq confessed to producing and storing massive stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, though not until high-level defectors ratted them out. It has never, in 12 years, produced a scrap of evidence to suggest it has destroyed them.
no imminent threat -- A murderous dictator with a record of aggression, a thirst for revenge, a 30-year quest for nuclear weapons, and a list of terrorist clients as long as your arm. If that's not an imminent threat, what is? Or if you don't think Saddam's a threat to the United States, how about Israel? Or Kuwait? Or Saudi Arabia? Is it to be supposed, after all these years, that this self-proclaimed Saladin, with his dreams of an Arab superpower, now seeks the quiet life? What do you think he's hoarding all these weapons for?
incalculable risks -- Anyone can come up with a list of disasters that might conceivably arise, from any action. But until you attach some probability to these, they are of little guidance. It is not at all clear that the region would be destabilized by a quick and decisive war, or that the liberation of Iraq's 20 million Islamic citizens would inspire Muslim resentment, or that terrorists need an excuse to attack. It remains possible it could all go horribly wrong. But think about that for a moment. That George Bush is willing to take that risk, with all that it would mean, not only for the region but for his own citizens -- and, to be crass, his presidency -- not to mention the hundreds of billions of dollars in proven costs, to the treasury and to the economy, suggests how great he believes the risks of inaction to be.
hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilian deaths -- There is no basis to these forecasts. No one can say with certainty how many will die, on either side. But the choice is not between war, with all its costs, and peace. It is between war now, and war later -- or a nuclear-armed Saddam, which is the worst outcome of all.
is and can be contained -- If only. Sanctions, without which inspections are useless, collapsed long ago: Saddam is selling as much oil today, legally or illegally, as before the Gulf War. The first round of inspections were a farce, the second scarcely better, with a four-year gap in between. Finally, the inspections are only happening now because of the presence of American troops. The minute the troops go home, so do the inspectors.
WHAT PART OF THIS FUTURE EVENT DO THE LIBERALS & OTHER COUNTRIES NOT UNDERSTAND? WHY DO THEY WEAR SUCH BLINDERS?
The arguments that you presented in these three areas do not stand on their own, in light of the fact that the U.S. did not consider the dispute between Iraq and Kuwait terribly important at the time. Consider the following:
"We have no opinion on your Arab - Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960's, that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America." --- U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie, in a meeting with Saddam Hussein on July 29, 1990.
"Obviously, I didn't think, and nobody else did, that the Iraqis were going to take all of Kuwait." --- U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie, in response to a question from a journalist who repeated her original quote to Hussein, September 2, 1990.
In light of these comments, I'd say that for the U.S. to wage war against Iraq in 1991 on the grounds of "Iraq's violation of international law" with regard to Kuwait was an absolute disgrace.
It is very easy to stand there and state "Bush hasn't given us one good reason to go to war with Iraq" and then no matter how much evidence or logic is applied, withhold your understanding.
The antidote to this is to tell such a person that their judgement is not required, since the majority of Americans DO get it.
This is the one argument against war in Iraq, but not for the reasons you might think. I'd like to see some of the responses to that one, for reasons that will become clear after I see them.
This is not a war to avenge 9/11. It's a component of the war against international terrorists and the states that support them.
It's a much larger war, against a larger enemy, than just 9/11 and the specific al Qaida cells that carried it out. Similar to how WWII was not a war against the specific Japanese pilots who flew the fighter & torpedo planes at Pearl Harbor.
That's a great & simple point.
Is there any evidence that you can point to that the US knew that Saddam was planning to solve his financial dispute with Kuwait by invading it when Glaspie said those words on July 29, 1990?
Now read that quote again, and then the subsequent one from six weeks later.
The U.S. knew damned well that Iraq was going to launch some kind of military strike against Kuwait (for reasons that the U.S. actually supported, but would require a whole other thread for me to explain) -- we were simply surprised afterward by the magnitude of it. To then go back and use this "violation of Kuwait's sovereignty" as a reason to go to war against Iraq was a disgrace.
Some of the information related to the arrest of Khalid Sheikh that hasn't attracted a lot of attention really sealed it for me -- al-Qaeda is nothing more than a front for what has been a low-grade guerilla war effort staged by Iraq on U.S. soil over the last ten years. Starting with the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993.
It actually started with an unsuccessful bombing attempt in 1992 that hardly received any attention at the time, but that information was provided to me in confidence so I can't give any details.
...and the United Nations -- The UN is not a world government.
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This bears repeating... |
The UN is not a world government.
Sorry. That's for any hygiene-deprived, braided-armpit, ass-cheek pierced, terminally unemployed, and generally clueless, brainwashed, deluded socialist dupes who may be lurking...
When we go in and take Saddam and OBL and crush all the terrorist cells Clinton sat on his ass allowing while making domestic fluffy enviro leftist, fake caring of black people and the economy look good (with the dot.comers (and INVENTION? of the internet) allowing him in that era to have a strong-looking economy)
Clinton sat on his ass getting blow jobs in the oval office selling us out to China- and this President is stuck cleaning it all up and they dare block his every move-they will pay when they are all voted out and can't count pregnant chads and falsely claim black people were turned away from polls, to try to steal an election- sending in fake Jesse Jackson.
Clinton was making fluffy promises/deals w/ N. Korea, screwing us in the long run all awhile jacking off and attacking American militias and creating black churches being burnt and having innocent Elian taken at gun point, and school shootings to take our guns. And then he had the freaking audacity to invite red china to OUR WH and hang their commie flag and force our marines to stand attention to communisim and toast with champagne! Muchless his selling off the Lincoln bedroom to pay all of his rapist, legal expenses becaue he lied and it depends on the definition of IT or IS!
So now we try to clean up his white trash garbage and foreign relation atrocities while he sat in his underwear getting blown and his leftists commie demokratic party dares to stop us? He blew up and aspirin factory and bombed the Chinese Embassy and then blamed bad blueprinting and our military? (all to cover his selling us out TO China) And or China was going to re nig on one of the secrets echanges and not fill he and Hitlery's swiss acct. so he blew up their embassy like the dixie mob scum he is.
And then when we are at the bring of two theaters of serious war he does a freaking talk show and he and Carter bash the President. Hitlery only told off Sheen as she is running in 06 and is a lying,evil,corrupt witch that will stop at nothing to be President with Bill as the U.N. Koffi blow job leader.
These leftists have audacity and they are being exposed-more every second until then we will pay with events like 9/11. What did Clinton do when the towers were bombed, he went and bombed aspirin factories and then tapped our oil reserves so to not piss off Americans with high gas prices.What did he do when the U.S.S. Cole was attacked?NOTHING! Oh and not to forget RICH and all of the luicrous Clinton pardons, I have had it with these people.
I think you got it covered... ;0)
Well, AC, Canada was along for that ride.
And even if good ol' April really did say that, Pres. Bush (the Senior) gave Iraq a full six months warning that we'd changed our minds.
That's a half a year. It wasn't just the US. Mistakes are made -- and that time it was corrected.
You don't really think that the U.S. should have stuck by this incredibly stupid pronouncement, do you?
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