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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bill who wrote (107599)	8/22/2005 11:55:08 PM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

You know, what's interesting is that the same arguments that are being made in favor of withdrawing from Iraq now could have been made almost verbatim about withdrawing from the European theater in WW II before D-Day. We had no stake in Europe. Hitler was no more threat to the U.S. then than Saddam was two years ago. Hitler had no weapons that could reach the US. If he had come to control all of Europe, how would that have hurt us? Why were we sending American boys to die on the beaches of Normandy? For the freedom of Europeans? Why did Europeans then have more right to have Americans die for their freedom than Iraqis do today? Were we in Europe to crush a tyrant who was perceived to be a potential future danger to us? Precisely why we went into Iraq. Simply change the name of the theater of war, and the exact arguments that are being made today about bringing the boys home would apply to WWII. Actually, they would apply much more strongly. There were far more American deaths in WW II Europe than we will ever see in Iraq. The world is a much smaller place today; militarily, Iraq is closer to the US today by far than Germany was in the 1940s, and with the threat of nuclear weapons Iraq posed a greater long term danger to us than Hitler ever did. More Americans died on one day in 1944 than have died in the entire Iraq war. If the US had not been united behind the principle of our obligation to help others, there could easily have been thousands of Cindi Sheehans in June, 1944. But America accepted then that as a powerful and freedom-loving country, we had an obligation to help others enjoy the benefits of freedom. What happened to us that we have changed so much? Fact is, if Grannie or Ionesco or Cindi Sheehan had tried to voice in pre was Iraq the views of government which they take for granted it is their right to voice here, they would have been bound, tortured, and killed without a moment's hesitation by a government which would not tolerate even the least dissent. Which in my view is a perfectly good reason for us to stay in Iraq -- to give the Grainees, the Ionescos, the Sheehans, and all the others in that country who want to criticize their governments the same right to do so that we enjoy. Unless they think that the right should only belong to them, and not to others. But if they do, I disagree with them. Period.