Posted on 04/16/2003 2:40:33 PM PDT by Raven281
Rev. Michael Schuler: Is this war really won?
By Rev. Michael Schuler April 16, 2003
For the last week or so, much has been made of the fact that "coalition forces" (i.e., the United States and Great Britain) have defeated Iraq.
Predictably, those who initially supported the invasion have been gloating a bit. Their message in a nutshell is: "We told you so!"
Two political cartoons in Sunday's State Journal pilloried opponents of the war for their misjudgment. Numerous letters to the editor have argued that our quick victory over Saddam Hussein's forces proves that anti-war protests were ill-conceived. Photos of Iraqi civilians embracing U.S. soldiers and dancing in the street confirm our status as heroic liberators.
Personally, I find this sort of triumphalism rather remarkable. As I recall, the stated purpose for invading Iraq in the first place was to confront an imminent threat to the United States. Our objective was uncovering and removing weapons of mass destruction that the Iraqi regime supposedly was hiding from Hans Blix's teams of international inspectors. As of today, these weapons caches remain undetected.
If memory serves, liberation of the Iraqi people from their brutal, oppressive ruler was not considered important enough to warrant an unprecedented unilateral, preemptive strike. If the promotion of democracy and the overthrow of tyranny had been our high-minded objective, similar actions against Syria, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran, North Korea, China and perhaps two dozen other authoritarian regimes would be warranted as well. This is an argument I doubt would wash with most Americans.
Nevertheless, our forces have achieved a military victory and the president and his supporters are giddy with success. But when all is said and done, what does this conquest mean?
No doubt most Iraqis are jubilant (after 12 years of harsh sanctions, many are also looting and rioting). If I lived in Iraq, at this moment I, too, would be ecstatic - grateful to be alive if nothing else. In the early 19th century, Eastern Europeans lined the streets to cheer Napoleon's invading forces, mistaking them for freedom fighters. The Iraqi people's reaction to Saddam's fall is hardly astonishing.
Nor was the relative ease of the military operation. Most opponents of a preemptive strike never doubted that well-equipped, expertly trained U.S. forces would make quick work of Saddam's military (that the operation required three weeks was a bit surprising). Military success was guaranteed, but with it we may well have sustained a significant diplomatic, moral and economic defeat.
When all expenses are tallied up, this will have proved a costly victory. The goodwill, sympathy and support of most of the world's people have been forfeited. Tens of billions of dollars will have been spent, hundreds of billions worth of Iraqi infrastructure destroyed, and the world economy seriously depressed by months of U.S. saber-rattling. More than 100 U.S. soldiers have lost their lives in combat, as well as several thousand of their Iraqi counterparts. About civilian casualties one hears various estimates, but they are undoubtedly significant.
Countless priceless cultural artifacts and historic structures have been severely damaged or lost because of this invasion, and the cost of raising Iraq from the rubble will fall largely on our own shoulders (unless Iraq's own oil is expropriated for that purpose).
Having wreaked considerable havoc, one would hope that our government was now committed to a massive rebuilding program in Iraq. That was the plan for Afghanistan, one that we have reneged upon already. Since the White House became obsessed with Iraq, Afghanistan has descended once more into chaos. To put it bluntly, our recent postwar record does little to inspire confidence about the future of Iraq.
If we do keep faith with the Iraqi people and generously repair the damage we've caused, where will the resources be found? Congress just appropriated $80 billion for Iraqi operations. Will those funds be borrowed, added to a federal deficit already projected at more than $100 billion? How will these war-related expenditures affect the future of education, social services, domestic security, Medicare and environmental protection in our own country?
These are the sort of concerns peace activists have been raising from the moment an invasion of Iraq was proposed. Most of these concerns remain unaddressed and unsatisfied.
So - what have we really won in this war with Iraq? You tell me.
Rev. Michael Schuler is senior minister at First Unitarian Society.
email address tctvoice@madison.com
Published: 6:57 AM 4/16/03
And there you go.
I
Don't
Think
So.
Sounds like he wrote this two weeks ago with a lot of major - and WRONG - assumptions. And he, too, expected us to have found every ounce of WMD on the day we arrived.
What a ninny.
Michael
So it's somehow EXPROPRIATING Iraq's oil to pay for the rebuilding of Iraq? As opposed to the former use for Iraq's oil wealth, which was to build palaces for Saddam and torture chambers for his subjects?
Yet another display of abject moral depravity from the left.
Where thousands of long range missiles do not a WMD make.
One of these days we'll liberate that city as well.
LOL! Then I can finally go back to visit?
I worked in MadTown until about a year ago. I CANNOT imagine what it was like during the war. It was bad enough when George W was elected. The libs at work were the most elitist, sexist, racist, NIMBYs ever created. And the Cap Times makes the Wisconsin State Journal look absolutely conservative by comparison. </rant >
It had the owner with his head in his hands complaining that we was "not earning a fair profit" because the prices on his cars were too low.
I guess that sort of ad would resonate with the communist sensibilities in Madison.
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