President Bush should have been right about Iraq. Let's forget all the reasons why the United States said it had to invade a sovereign nation (WMD, threat to the U.S. within 45 minutes and al Qaeda links). Bush wants us to forget, so let's humor him. Wealthy folks who don't have to earn a living can't take high doses of reality.
The round 2 revisionist reasons for killing lots of Iraqis and spending $87,000 million, while being unable to fund $40 million to upgrade the security of our sea ports, is that we are liberating them from Saddam and bringing them democracy. We were told they'd welcome us as liberators with open arms. Too bad they've only welcomed us with arms.
Somehow this simple irony hasn't played well in the press. After all, if an oppressed people under a tyrannical regime really wanted to be freed, they'd have been planning for a revolution like the Americans did when we kicked out the most powerful military in the world with a group of patriotic insurgents. I'm sure the British thought our heroes were treasonous terrorists since we even attacked non-military villages in the British countryside during our revolution. We certainly didn't fight the way they wanted us to.
So
when a powerful military invaded Iraq and dethroned their hated abuser, you'd figure the common
Iraqis would rise to the challenge and complete the overthrow of the Iraqi oppressors.
That's what Americans
did when we received aid from the Spanish and French in our revolution. I guess that's because we actually
wanted to be freed from the current regime. We wanted freedom, democracy and self-rule. We asked for military aid.
In Iraq, we don't see that. This isn't their Fourth of July. The common person isn't going after those remaining bad people. There's no Iraqi revolutionary force that joined U.S. forces to route evil and install freedom and justice. This speaks volumes. It's not like the bad Iraqis are hard to find. The U.S. is fighting in 10 different locations throughout Iraq in April 2004. The insurgents are dressed with hoods, are riding through the streets in pickups with RPGs shouting anti-American rhetoric. They are amassed on top of mosques and chanting in front of TV cameras, dancing on burned corpses. Why don't those freedom-loving Iraqis simply get off their butts and root out this enemy?
Could it be they weren't in a revolutionary mindset?
Could it be they didn't love Saddam, but didn't hate him so much that they'd fight to get rid of him (after all, they are clearly well armed to do so)?
Could it be they just hate having a foreign country invade their land, bringing death and destruction without any mandate or even request from the Iraqi people?
Oh well, poor George appears to be wrong in both rounds of reasons why we're there. Does he have another set of reasons why we're there that we'll hear about soon? Perhaps not, since the real reasons seem rather awkward for a rich oil tycoon family, whose father left Saddam in power and was a target for assassination by Saddam, and who had a cabinet full of Neo Conservatives who had the Iraqi invasion on their public agenda long before returning to the White House.
Too bad we didn't just spend $86,960 million and also increase the safety our nation's ports. Too bad we're wasting it all, since you know the $87 billion number is way too small since it was projected long before the much larger uprising against true foreign invaders.
Saddam is no doubt laughing at all this since he was quite clear in suggesting that it would take a strongman to control the various factions within his mixed up nation. It is ironic that Iraq was a safe place to live before the invasion, but it's a hellhole since we liberated them. We hated Saddam for his brutality in keeping his people in line, yet we seem to think our military is the only way to keep his people in line.
Here's a solution I can live with. Tell the Iraqis that we'll give them one month to settle down and stop the attacks against our troops. If the Iraqi people cannot control themselves, then we will leave. Don't construe this as putting our tail between our legs and leaving in shame. No, sir. This is serious and other countries need to learn that we're not going to help them and then suffer their ignorant hatred of us. If we leave because the Iraqis cannot control their own factions, then they can have at each other. Civil war may be exactly what that nation needs. After a civil war ends, the country may finally come together as one, instead of holding on to ancient tribal and ethnic animosity and divisions.
After all, the U.S. can easily return and take out any country's government. That's the easy part for us. Our military can remove any tyrant and can respond to any threat from a country against the United States. But it's extremely hard to remain there and hope that they will be our friends after such a defensive assault.
Unlike the MAD (mutually assured destruction) policy we had with the Soviet Union and their nukes, with these other countries, we can just stick with the YAD policy: your assured destruction. This means that countries that threaten us and attack us will be hit very hard and their governments will not survive. We won't be coming in to protect anybody, or trying to avoid mosques or concerning ourselves with offending some group or another. It won't matter what they think shouldn't be attacked. And most importantly, we won't be spending billions of our valuable aid to rebuild after we destroy their renegade country.
This is not a soft policy, but it is consistent. We leave all countries alone unless they attack us. Some will say we need to attack before we're attacked, but that can only be used when a threatening nation is making their threat clear before they attack. Pre-emptive attacks clearly are not the way to go without hard evidence. Iraq has shown the flaw in using soft evidence to mount such a case, and our legal system is well founded on the principle of innocent until proven guilty.
Iraq may have had WMD, and WMD may still be buried in the sand, but unless Iraq was threatening us, there was no need to attack them. Saddam may have even mellowed with growing prosperity in his country, had the U.S. allowed them to trade and become wealthy with their oil.
We shouldn't risk the lives of our troops except when it's absolutely necessary. The current occupation seems unnecessary since the U.S. shouldn't think it has jurisdiction in Iraq. It's time to give them their country back if they are not really going to demand we stay. Let the radicals "win" this small battle if the Iraqi people really don't want to be free from such a hateful existence. At least our soldiers can focus their energies on protecting us from meaningful, growing threats elsewhere in the world.
We may have to suffer a few blows from time to time, but that's the price of being a free nation. Just as we have to suffer the KKK's free speech, or allow a criminal to go free on a legal technicality, we need to realize that our collective freedom is worth more than any given situation's nastiness. The 9/11 attack was awful, but terrorism, like crime, is nearly impossible to stop. A country that could stop me from walking up behind you and whacking you over the head and killing you is a nation that would have to be so strict and repressive that none of us would even want to live there. But we don't kill each other this way because most people enjoy freedom rather than taking advantage of it.
Therefore, a better policy is to avoid unwise military incursions, selling arms to other nations, etc. Can you believe that we are about to sell weapons to Vietnam because relations have warmed? All those dead soldiers truly have died in vain. We need to stop arming other countries, including Israel, because this is one of the major causes of hatred for our nation. After all, if I were selling RPGs in your neighborhood, you wouldn't like it. So why should other nations like it when we sell far more powerful weapons to countries in their neighborhood? We just need to stop. If other countries amass their own weapons, then we can deal with them.
When a country does attack us or threatens us in no uncertain terms, then we should defend ourselves with all of our power and without concern for rebuilding them.
For those countries that abide by peace and free trade, we'll trade freely with them. Our markets and products are first class, and smart countries will learn by our example that freedom, democracy, peace and prosperity are possible and desirable. And those that violate the peace will learn the hard way that our power can be extremely destructive, too. You can't make peace and war at the same time.