Monday, August 22, 2005

Defending the Indefensible Iraq

How is the world ruled and led to war? Diplomats lie to journalists and believe these lies when they see them in print.
Karl Kraus (1874–1936), Austrian satirist

President Bush will interrupt his vacation to defend the Iraq war (god forbid), yes it is permissible in today's society to work from home or anywhere, but the president being on vacation for five weeks is symbolic of an out of touch president.

It’s hard to defend an unjust war such as Iraq. We are at war because of a deliberate and premeditated choice of our own government. The choice reflects a fatal turn in U.S. foreign policy, in which the strategic doctrine of containment and deterrence that led us to peaceful victory during the Cold War has been replaced by the Bush Doctrine to prevent war.

This administration has no interest in listening to opposing views. The unilateral rush to war should come as no surprise when looking at how they trashed the Kyoto environmental treaty, the A.B. M. treaty, and the treaty establishing the International Criminal Court and did so contemptuously and arrogantly, without offering compromises or remedies for their flaws, it defended the war on terrorism exclusively in the theological language of good versus evil, viewing any attempt to analyze terrorism politically as morally inadmissible; it undermined the power of the persuasive reasons for confronting Saddam (such as his consistent failure to disclose and dispose of his weapons of mass destruction) by mixing them with unpersuasive ones (such as his alleged cooperation with Al Qaeda); it created the impression that the U.N. effort to disarm Iraq has been a charade masking a predetermined plan to oust Saddam by force no matter what.

We have truly made Iraq a proving ground for terrorists to try out tactics and then bring them to other countries. We do not have enough forces to curtail random terrorist attacks in Iraq, we have poorly protected our troops with less than adequate equipment, we continue to call it a war because Bush wants to be known as a “War president;” unfortunately it is a war of his own making.

This president has no shortage of audacity, he is far worse than Bill Clinton who claim he did not have relations with that woman. Close to 2,000 soldiers have died in this senseless war. Bush’s father knew better than to take out Saddam, but Bush Jr. who always has to try to beat whom he views as a competitor, decided to consult a higher authority, and since that higher authority speaks privately, who can dispute what s/he told Bush Jr.

Now he is going to attempt to defend his futile and dying strategy to stay in Iraq this week. Of course, there will be those who will believe everything a president has to say, but truly, this is really an unnecessary mess that we are in from gas prices to military deaths. This president should be forced out of office early or at a minimum congress should do its best to neutralize him.

3 comments:

Jack Steiner said...

Misanthrope,

You and I disagree about a number of items regarding the war but I respect and appreciate your list because it is logical and not based upon emotion. And the reality is that so many of the arguments I read are just the opposite.

I don't have time to outline a long response but I do want to say that I think that the UN has been a joke and an impediment to truth.

The UNSEC was filled with members who were owed copious amounts of money by Saddam/Iraq and I do not believe that they fully cooperated in trying to make him cooperate with UN inspectors.

The Oil for Food program has proven to have to have been corrupt and there are numerous other reasons to believe that the UN's role in this affair is one of culpability and negligence.

I truly believe that had the body functioned as it should have the war might have been avoided.

If I have time later I may return, but again I appreciate your post and its focus on fact and logic.

The Misanthrope said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
The Misanthrope said...

Jack, thanks for the comments.

This is going to be a very busy week at the day job over here too.

I think that if this white house gang (whg) had kept the pressure on by exposing the UN, Russia, France, they could have turned world opinion in our favor. This gang is second to none in media control.

The main reason for going to war was that Iraq had something to do with 9/11 when that argument started to fall apart, it became Iraq had WMD, when the evidence was spotty at best, the whg changed their tune to saving Iraqi people. If there really was a reason for war beyond revenge of threatening Bush's daddy, or Cheney and Rumsfeld trying to prove they were right when father Bush didn't listen to them, rightly so, we would not need a laundry list of reasons just one, they attacked the U.S.

I also do not believe there were not visions of oil dancing in the neo cons heads. China is creating a tremendous drain on oil supplies for us. Opening up Iraqi oil supplies to us and other parts of the world would have helped keep prices down. Want we need to do as a country is focus on alternative fuels. This country has been known for its forward thinking, but now we just want to keep the status quo for rich oil companies. Also, let me add that the first bases our military set up during this war were named after oil companies.