| What
G.W. should
have said about why we
attacked Iraq |
I would have been much happier if G.W. had
the intellectual clarity
and moral courage to have told the American
people after 9-11:
"I will ask Congress
for either an overt declaration of
war, or at least a tacit one through
the approval of its funding, not
only on the stateless terrorists who
perpetrated
this heinous act, but on all nations
who harbor and/or help them, the
worst
among these including Syria, Iran,
Libya, and Saudi Arabia. No country
should be allowed to get away with
any such thing ever again, whether
they
harbor terrorists, support
terrorists, or actually come under
the control
of terrorists or terrorist
sympathizers. And we cannot
allow those
countries with nuclear weapons or
huge streams of oil income to remain
vulnerable to terrorist takeover,
for that would surely lead to
Armageddon.
We should not attack most of those
countries right now for various
strategic,
tactical and economic reasons, but
what we can do is scare the living
crap
out of them by showing we're not
just going to lob a few cruise
missiles
somewhere and go home. What we can
and must do is to pick an
illegitmate
government -- any rigidly
totalitarian government other than
Afghanistan's
-- somewhere in their neighborhood
and effect a complete and total
demonstration
of what will happen to THEM if they
don't cooperate fully in tracking
down
and stopping these terrorists once
and for all. Iraq not only
fills
that bill, but it just so happens to
be one whose leader has attempted
to assassinate an American
ex-president, and one for which the
Congress
has already passed a law, The Iraq
Libertation Act of 1998.
"Finally, if any government
anywhere STILL sponsors, nurtures or
harbors terrorists which endanger
the United States, or combines
weapons of mass destruction with any
barbaric
or insane ideology, we will stop at
nothing to bring that government and
that threat to a complete and
permanent end."
Update: The
transcript of the President's 2005
Veteran's
Day Speech is HERE. |
As the Wall Street Journal editorialized,
"The more we show we're serious
about challenging states that harbor
terrorists the more Pakistan and other
nations are likely to cooperate with
Washington in tracking down and turning
over the terrorists." And indeed they have.
As bad as the U.S. has gotten over the years,
becoming more and more
twisted by a government of the politicians, by
the politicians, and for
the politicians, it is still blindingly
obvious that it's a lot more humane
and civilized than anything those Muslim
fundamentalists or Baathist control
freaks can even think about, let alone have to
offer. If anyone's pacifism
has its roots in, or amounts to, beliefs that
"all cultures are equal,"
they hold their views as blind idealogues, not
far-sighted defenders of
liberty.
If anyone still doubts that I believe any
legitimate country has the
right to do any damn thing to any illegitimate
country any damn time it
needs to, I would refer him to this: "Just as
an individual must act unapologetically to
preserve his life, so must America.
America must proudly proclaim its right
and intention to protect its citizens,
their liberty and their property. It
must meet any
threat with retaliation that pre-empts
loss of American lives."
HERE
-- and to this: "Any doctrine of
group activities that does not
recognize individual rights is a doctrine of
mob rule or legalized lynching...
A
nation that violates the rights of its own
citizens cannot claim any rights
whatsoever. In the issue of
rights, as in all moral issues, there
can be no double standard." -- Ayn Rand,
here
|
THE
BUSH DOCTRINE
|
|
"I never regarded
WMD as the main reason to
go to war. The real reason to go to war was
(1) to establish a military
and democratic presence in the Arab world
(which we've done); (2) to make
an example of Saddam to intimidate other Arab
leaders (which we've done);
and (3) to cut off Saddam as a source of
support -- both existing and potential
-- for terrorists, which we've also done. The
WMD was a nontrivial issue,
and required for playing the UN game (which I
always regarded as a mistake)
but not, to me, the most important issue."
-- Glenn Reynolds, HERE
"The objective is to
scare the hell out of
the world, generally, and Islam in particular.
By means of a minimal effort
at wreaking maximum havoc upon Iraq in a very
short span of time, the United
States will demonstrate to her enemies and
allies alike that she is not
only the pre-eminent world power, she is in
fact an inconquerable power.
The anticipated benefits in the Islamic world
will be either an immediate
rounding-up of terrorists, or swift
regime-changes followed by an immediate
rounding-up of terrorists." -- Greg Swann, HERE
In October of 1998,
during the Clinton administration, the
U.S. House and then the U.S. Senate
passed The Iraq Liberation Act, which was
signed into law on Oct. 31st,
making it the official policy of the U.S.
government to seek regime change
in Iraq. The Senate vote was unanimous,
including every Democrat, even
Ted Kennedy.
"For
states that support terror, it is not
enough that the consequences be costly;
they must devastating." -- George W.
Bush, Dec. 11, 2001
Despite the insistence of
various Democrats, butt-covering
diplomats and other vacillators that it
had to be due to years
of international cooperation in (fruitless)
sanctions and diplomacy, Libyan
leader Moammar Gaddafi made it clear that
he decided
to disarm due to our terminating the regime
in Iraq, NOT
Afghanistan:
"I will do whatever the Americans want
because I saw what happened in
Iraq, and I was afraid,"
Gaddafi told Italy's Prime Minister
Berlusconi here&
HERE.
Gaddafi
urges rogue states: 'Follow my lead!'
HERE. |
||"We
are in a fight to the death."||
