| 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."||
