Sept 11 had nothing to do with it, beyond giving them a phoney excuse to proceed. I think that if it had not happened, they would have found another reason.
I don't necessarily disagree with this point; but there is a reason these people felt Saddam had to be taken out. WMD are part of it; the Iraqi regime's human rights violations are another. But most importantly, we need a central repository of pro-American sentiment in the Middle East.
Did 9/11 give the administration an excuse? I think more likely, 9/11 gave it the impetus, the little push it needed to take serious action to deal with the problem of persistent anti-Americanism in the region.
Take, for example, this Middle Eastern reporting of the missle in the Baghdad market. At the very worst, this was a dreadful accident by the American military; but more likely, it was an Iraqi accident, perhaps an Iraqi intentional target. Yet every Arab news source is reporting it as though we targeted that neighborhood. Even YOU can't possibly believe this nonsense. America needs a voice in the region. While Kuwait is certainly pro-American, it simply isn't big enough or populated enough to be influential. Same with Qatar. Iraq, now THAT can make a difference.
These are bold moves that only a great leader could have made. It will be years before we know how well it worked. But someone HAD to do something. It couldn't just keep going the way it was.
I realize this is a difficult thing for someone to understand -- someone who is apparently opposed to war under all circumstances. War should always be the last resort; but it isn't always bad. A lot of good things can and often do come from wars.
At the very least this war will have eliminated a brutal dictator who has killed over a million people, including huge numbers of innocents. A nation of 22M people will have been freed -- people who literally were unable to fight for themselves. Large quantities of conventional weapons will have been eliminated, in addition to the chemical weapons which are sure to follow. And it would be pretty difficult to sustain an argument that eliminating Saddam could do anything other than help stablize the region. These people have an opportunity at getting their dignity back. This is the WORST CASE SCENARIO. It is difficult for me to understand what your complaints are about.
You predicted mass casualties. Nope. Not going to happen. The civilians who die are largely dying at the hands of Saddam, not the military. The Iraqi military will be largely dead. But if they were willing to fight for Saddam, they really NEED to be dead. So, that's working out. |
