Posted on 03/20/2003 12:35:54 PM PST by hope
Odds are good that as you read these words that Saddam Hussein is no longer a threat to the security of the United States. If not, then it is only a matter of hours before that statement will be true.
The invasion of Iraq caps a year of high political comedy that, in the final analysis, accomplished little for Saddam Hussein but changed the face of global politics well into the foreseeable future.
It has been a year of discoveries. The United States discovered that those with the poorest memories are those who carry the heaviest load of debt.
The Germans forgot the Marshall Plan, they forgot the Berlin Airlift, they forgot the Cold War, they forgot who engineered their reunification and they forgot who handed it to them for the asking.
The French forgot the doughboys from American farms who put down their plows and picked up their rifles and chased the Hun back to Germany in 1917-1918. They forgot the American machinists and autoworkers who turned their lathes and tool belts over to their wives in 1941 so they could eventually return to France and chase the Nazis back to Berlin. They forgot that "on Flanders Fields the poppies grow, between the crosses, row on row."
Instead, they sit as one of the Five Permanent Members of the Security Council, (an unearned gift from Washington at the end of World War II), denouncing American "imperialist expansionist" policies.
They forgot that all we asked of them in two wars was enough ground to bury the American dead who bought them that seat to denounce us from.
We discovered that not only do the Germans and French have pathetically short memories, they are also incapable of logical thought.
Both Paris and Berlin have been adamant in their contentions that there is no connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida, and that Saddam played no role in the attacks on America on Sept. 11, 2001.
Although al-Qaida was born out of the Afghan resistance to the Soviets, when Moscow pulled its troops out of Afghanistan, the al-Qaida movement began to fall apart.
But in 1991, the Saudi government requested U.S. troops be deployed on Saudi soil when Saddam failed to disarm according to the Gulf War cease fire resolutions. Osama bin Laden had a new cause, removing the infidel presence from holy Saudi soil, and al-Qaida was invigorated. It had its cause for a new jihad.
It was the threat that Saddam posed to the Saudi oilfields in 1991 that was responsible for establishing U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia.
The continued threat posed by Saddam's violation of the Gulf War cease fire necessitated keeping troops in place on Saudi soil. Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida was reborn in 1991 in reaction to the Saudi government's allowing infidel American troops in Saudi Arabia.
So the only reason al-Qaida went to war with Washington in the first place was to drive American troops off Saudi soil. Had Iraq not invaded Kuwait, American troops would have never been stationed there.
Had Iraq disarmed afterward, American troops would have been withdrawn. Had American troops been withdrawn, al-Qaida wouldn't have existed to attack us on 9-11.
We also discovered that Election 2000 isn't over. That was made apparent enough by the allegedly "anti-war" marchers, whose theme wasn't anti war at all. It was anti-Bush. A glance at the protest signs proved that.
We discovered that many of our own leaders were so partisan that they would give aid and comfort to the enemy if they thought it would give Bush a black eye.
Some even went to Baghdad to denounce Bush, while others contented themselves with denouncing American policy from the well of the Senate on the eve of war – even those who had voted to give the White House the authority to commit troops to Iraq a year ago, including Sen. Daschle.
We discovered there is a difference between being an American patriot and being an American partisan, since one cannot both support and oppose the same policies, based on who is in power.
The same politicians who were outspokenly anti war over the past few months were decidedly less pacifistic when Bill Clinton was bombing Iraq in 1998, and a lot less devoted to the U.N. when Clinton ignored U.N. objections to make war on Serbia.
If they were "just" wars then, then what is different about it now?
It has been a year of discoveries. Not the least of which is that we discovered that for all the diplobabble and globalspeak, when it comes to America's security, the only ones who really care about it are us.
That discovery will continue to reverberate long after the guns fall silent in Iraq.
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