Well, with the appointments of Roberts and Alito, the SCOTUS is finally beginning to tilt toward a conservative majority. It’s unfortunate George HW Bush nominated Souter–if he’d gone with a conservative, then we’d have a lock on SCOTUS.
But I don’t consider myself a Republican, and when it comes to the executive branch in particular, I don’t see a great deal of difference between the Republican and Democratic candidates. Whoever gets to office will have to deal with Iraq, and if it’s a Democrat (which I agree seems likely), they’re not going make any major changes until Iraq is completely stable.
Hussein was a brutal monster. But, when Hussein was in power, most Iraqis who kept their mouths shut about politics (and, if attractive women, avoided the attention of Uday and Qusay) could have decent, safe, comfortable lives. There was work available, clean water in the pipes, food in the stores, health care. The war destroyed all that, and it will be years before Iraqis get anywhere near the level of safety and prosperity they enjoyed under Hussein. And for all of that, the human rights situation hasn’t improved by much. (Think in terms of Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms, particularly “Freedom from Want” and “Freedom from Fear.”) I think most of them would rather have it back the way it was than enjoy “freedom” under present conditions.
You haven’t really established that, nor could you at this point, since it is quite impossible to say for sure where Iraq will go in the future with respect to its level of democracy.
John’s point about 2.2 million refugees is not a small one; adding in the untold scores of thousands of innocents killed and maimed in the war, the count of people who’ve had their most basic human rights taken away is pretty gigantic. It’s an enormous displacement of people, equal to anything Saddam Hussein did. You’re trying to pretend the costs of the adventure don’t count.
There seems to be a belief among people who - and I am being a charitable as I can here - have never left the safety of their own countries that life under a dictator is an unmitigated hell for everyone. The truth is that under most tinpot dictators, most people are pretty much unaffected by politics. That’s how dictators stay in power; they make sure most people have it reasonably good. Ordinary people go to work, watch sports on TV, play checkers and argue over whose fault it is the kid’s getting bad grades in math. This should not be taken as an excuse for a scum-sucking bastard like Saddam Hussein, who is burning in hell if there is such a place, but it’s just not at all true that Iraqis are all better off now. By a lot of concrete measures they’re worse off. The U.S. invasion and subsequent civil strife have killed a huge, huge number of people, forced many more from their homes, and further impoverished the country. The abstraction of living in a country that’s officially sort of free does not make up for the REALITY that many Iraqis are dead and maimed, have lost their homes, have no jobs, and live in fear.
Since al-Qaida didn’t have a significant presence before the invasion, how can this constitute progress?
Well, no, that is not a relevant question at all. ANY country in the world could “Activate WMD programs.” There isn’t a functioning state on the face of the planet that isn’t capable of producing some chemical weapons, and dozens could produce nuclear weapons. What’s relevant is the LIKELIHOOD of it happening and then being used to threaten international security. Canada could produce oodles and scads of chemical weapons, nuclear bombs by the dozen, but nobody’s panicking over it because it’s not likely to happen, and even less likely Canada will nuke Tel Aviv. As any intelligence professional will tell you, it’s quite useless to just know capability. What’s even more important is intent, and Iraq had no intent of restarting a serious WMD program.
The fact of the matter is that Iraq’s WMD program had been long abandoned. This is not a matter of opinion; it’s established fact. Iraq, as a WMD threat, was not at all dangerous.
You’re so cute when you make your sweeping moral judgments. Of course the Iraqis are better off (and more free) than they were under Saddam. If you denounced Saddam during his rule, you were dead. Today, you can criticize the Iraqi government, and you won’t be killed. I’d say that change is terrifically good! If I were to use morality as a basis for my politics.
If he didn’t have the tools to make WMDs, then how did he kill all those Kurds with poison gas in Halabja? or chemical weapons against Kurds in Al-Anfal? And if Saddam was so opposed to terrorists, then why did he provide financial aid to widows of Hamas and Islamic Jihad “martyrs”? As for the animosity between AQ and Saddam, Iraq harbored Abdul Rahman Yasin, who helped make the bombs used in the first attack on the World Trade Center, and, even more damnable, they harbored al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al-Qaida in Iraq, in Baghdad. There were plenty of opportunities for SH and AQ to cement their relationship, and with America taking action against gathering threats throughout the world, we had to close down those opportunities (which we did–SH and Zarqawi are both rotting in hell).
Please show me a citation proving that these actions by Americans were part of our policy–as opposed to a few misguided soldiers acting without authorization. In contrast, such actions were Saddam’s official policy.
and what about Zarqawi?
In the field of war, sure, the enemy can engage with American soldiers (and other members of the coalition)… but they typically take the route of unlawful combatants, rather than facing us openly in battle. They’re one step up from the chickenshit terrorists, if you ask me.
Nonsense. Al-Qaida wants to establish a caliphate; they have no desire to see a democracy in action. There’s no way they’d consider Iraqi elections as anything but a blow against their dreams.
You call hired security personnel scum, but you praise the actions of terrorists and unlawful combatants? Interesting.
Lt. Col. Dan Wilson said that Fallujah was “the bright ember in the ash pit of the insurgency, and we needed to douse it.” And douse it they did–violence is down and the local security forces have stabilized the entire region. I’d call that a victory.
Iraq saw an almost 80% turnout for the 2005 elections. If that’s not a democracy, then what is the US with its 42.45% turnout in the 2004 presidenial elections? Even Muqtada al-Sadr seems to have realized that the political process is the only way to go.
It could only have been construed as an Islamist victory if an Islamist party actually took power. the United Iraqi Alliance is the majority party, and although most of the coalition is Shia, it also includes secularists like Ahmed Chalabi in addition to Kurds and Sunnis.
You’re citing an article about Syria from 2006. Now, I won’t claim that attitudes have changed in Syria since then…but how does that one country represent all democratic reform throughout the Middle East? And how does it cancel out the promising signs of free elections in other countries?
Like I said, the first four years were pretty hairy, but over this past year, the security situation has vastly improved in Iraq. I’d say that with the troop surge, we’re finally back on course. Sure, things could have been handled better earlier on, but we can’t change the past.
As for Bush being a monster, I’d like to know what you would do to secure America in the wake of 9/11.
Saddam systematically persecuted and massacred people who weren’t Ba’ath Sunnis. Since the majority of Iraq is Shi’ite and Kurdish, the majority of Iraq was living under the threat of oppression throughout his 24-year reign. The coalition provisional government, and the democratically-elected Iraqi government, do not systematically persecute anyone.
Ergo, it’s better for Shi’ites and Kurds to live in Iraq today, than it was six years ago.
For women, Iraq now is much less of a picnic than it was under Saddam. Iraq used to be the most progressive Muslim country in regard to women’s rights. Now the religious extremists are in charge and women’s rights are disappearing rapidly.
Do you happen to follow any news sources other than Fox News and The Weakly Standard?
We have to look at the bigger picture. When we were attacked on 9/11, we were determined to strike back against the enemy and deny them safe harbor. That was why we liberated Afghanistan from the Taliban. But we also had to consider the more far-reaching problem of why did Al-Qaida attack us in the first place? What was it that lead these young men to fly airplanes into our buildings?
The roots of the problem, it was determined, lay in the current conditions of the Middle East. So, if we could change those conditions, we could eliminate those factors that would cause people to join or support Al-Qaida.
This is what victory point #3 is all about. We’re in the process of transforming the face of a region that has suffered a great deal throughout the ages, and whose inhabitants have historically lashed out violently against the West. Most of their rulers have been dictators who haven’t allowed their subjects the chance to develop economically, technologically, or culturally–one of the major reasons why the Middle East lags so far behind the industrialized West (and has lagged behind since the Middle Ages).
By removing a dictator in one state, and allowing his former subjects to taste a Western-style democracy, then there is the chance that other regions in the Middle East will realize their own potential, and will transform their own governments in a similar manner.
Why was Iraq selected? Because this was a dictator who hated America (thus posing a constant potential threat), plus we knew from our recent history that we could easily overwhelm his depleted military.
There were also a few possible links with Al-Qaida, mainly through people like Zarqawi, who I mentioned above. But even without these connections, Saddam offered us, through his combination of animosity and weakness, a chance to put our vision for a future Middle East in action.
So, that’s what occupying Iraq has to do with 9/11: it’s one step in the journey towards transforming the Middle East and thereby eliminating both the terrorist groups themselves, and the injustice in the region which propels so many young men into the arms of Al-Qaida.
How, exactly, does giving even MORE angry Muslims cause to JOIN Al-Qaida count as a victory, then? Or are you so delusional with fever-dreams of the Great Bush riding his golden war chariot in the triumphal parade that you don’t realize that he’s actually made world opinion and goodwill toward the US much worse than it’s ever been?
While I agree with most of the Constitution Party’s platform, I consider myself an independent, and I usually vote Republican for lack any viable alternatives.
