The Price of Amorality

CHUCKMORSE.COM ^ | March 25, 2003 | Chuck Morse

[Tailgunner Joe]

It's hard to concentrate at a time like this, a time when our American saviors are dying in the miserable sandstorms of Iraq. There is some solace however in knowing that at last, it seems, we have a President and a government that is, for the first time since Franklin D. Roosevelt at Casablanca, insisting on a total and unconditional victory against an enemy. President George W. Bush has made a stark moral case in this war. He has drawn a clear and concise contrast between American freedom and Iraqi tyranny as well as between American judeo-Christian civilization and that of radical Islam.

It does appear, however, that our troops are paying and will pay, G-d forbid, a deadly price for the amoral policy of the last Persian Gulf War of 1991. In that war, like every other war America has engaged in since World War II, American efforts were stymied by the amoral policies of the United Nations. Our troops are paying a price because the Iraqi people don't entirely trust us and for good reason. President George Bush Sr. hung them out to dry.

Unlike President Bush Jr., who has called for nothing short of total victory, Bush Sr. followed to the tune of a different drummer when he set policy for the 1991 Gulf War. He stated that policy in clear terms during a Sept. 11th, 1990 address to Congress:

"When we are successful, and we will be, we have a real chance at this new world order, an order in which a credible United Nations can use its peacekeeping role to fulfill the promise and vision of the United Nations founders"

By adhering to U.N. policies, Bush Sr., after brilliantly accomplishing the liberation of Kuwait, snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by not advancing on Baghdad at a time when doing so would have been relatively easy by all estimations made at the time. Saddam Hussein, in accordance with UN policy, would be "contained" rather than defeated. Thus was born another UN inspired stalemate.

In the aftermath of the Gulf War, Bush Sr. encouraged the Kurds in the north of Iraq and the Shiites in the south to revolt against Saddam Hussein. Bush Sr then betrayed these beleaguered populations by leaving them at the mercy of Saddam's genocidal forces. At the time, the Bush Sr. Administration explained away this perfidy by stating that if we were to help the Kurds and Shiites, we would be violating "the UN mandate."

The same thing happened in Korea. After liberating the entire peninsula from the forces of communist tyranny, UN mandates prevented the allies from knocking out the gathering communist forces over the Korean border in Manchuria. The result was a massive communist invasion, two years of attrition, a perpetual stalemate and state of war, and a Communist North Korea, which is now working at a breakneck speed to develop a nuclear bomb.

Vietnam was another one. Operating under the SEATO which is under the UN Charter, the US would follow "Rules of Engagement" declassified in 1995, that were set up in such a way that South Vietnam was eventually doomed to fall under the jack-boot of the Communist North. The result of that catastrophic defeat was tens of thousands of desperate boat people, a subjugated South Vietnam, and a Holocaust in Cambodia.

After victory in World War II, the peoples of the world looked to the US as the great liberator. To a large degree we frittered away that good will by "containing" communism and betraying allies to communism such as China, Korea, Cuba, and many third world countries. We compromised our moral compass when we allowed our assistance to small nations fighting against Communism to be compromised by amoral UN interests. Perhaps our conduct in Iraq today, removed from UN control and with its stated purpose the total and unconditional liberation of a people, will serve as a step toward ameliorating our sins of the past.

[My2Cents]

The son paying for the sins of the father.

[LiteKeeper]

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