The incomparable Steven Den Beste has moved from the blogosphere to the Wall Street Journal with this clear and precise piece on why we’re in Iraq and why we’ll stay until the job is finished.
In fact, the real reason we went into Iraq was precisely to "nation build": to create a secularized, liberated, cosmopolitan society in a core Arab nation. To create a place where Arabs were free and safe and unafraid and happy and successful and not ruled by corrupt monarchs or brutal dictators. This would demonstrate to the other people in the Arab and Muslim worlds that they can succeed, but only if they abandon those political, cultural and religious chains that are holding them back.
We are not doing this out of altruism. We are not trying to give them a liberalized Western democracy because we’re evangelistic liberal democrats (with both liberal and democrat taking historical meanings). We are bringing reform to Iraq out of narrow self-interest. We have to foster reform in the Arab/Muslim world because it’s the only real way in the long run to make them stop trying to kill us.
The cries against the war in Iraq were never about the actual merits of the case. Rather, the attacks from American liberals and the European nomenklatura were about "blood for oil" and other issues that had nothing to do with our actual purpose in the region. The debate over Iraq was muddled because the radical left was debating their view of our intentions, while the rest were arguing about the policy itself.
Furthermore, this war was neither unilateral, nor illegal, nor immoral. Unilateral war tends not to involve over 40 nations. Illegal wars aren’t backed up by UN resolutions. (And Resolution 1441 clearly supported our actions to disarm Saddam Hussein.) Immoral wars aren’t supported by those who know what oppression truly is – men of peace and moral conviction like Lech Walesa and Valcav Havel.
As Vice President Cheney just asked at the American Enterprise Institute a few moments ago "what would Iraq look like now if w had not acted?" We’d have thousands of Iraqis being executed, millions oppressed, a government funding terrorist activities in the Middle East. There certainly would not be a move towards peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians, and the Iraqis would not have the ability to govern themselves.
The arguments from the anti-war side are arguments from prejudice. They argue that America is bad, so the war was bad. They argue that it was an unjust war, when clearly the side of justice was the side of action. They argue that it will inflame tensions when inaction would be disastrous. They argue small things like 16 words of a speech while thousands of lives are what matter.
History will judge this action, not the critics. Thanks to the coalition, that history of Iraq will be written by free men and women.
I hope the government we make there stays secularized… after the last secular government the Iraqi people may not be willing to try that again.
Conservatives are desperately backpedaling to try to sufficiently justify a war that has failed on three fronts. It’s become twice as expensive as predicted and lacks any clear exit strategy. Weapons of mass destruction have not been found and much of the intelligence that existed suggesting that there was WMD’s has proven to be a figment of the imagination of neoconservative wishful thinkers. And the liberated masses ceased to dance in the streets mere hours after the alleged fall of the Hussein regime and began murdering American soldiers at a rate of seven to ten per week.
With this reality, it’s getting harder to slander dissenters as clueless and now “prejudiced.” No matter how much you guys proclaim your moral superiority and “being on the side of justice”, it’s becoming less convincing by the day as the body count and dollar count mounts with no sense of real accomplishment, at least none that’s being welcomed by the liberated peasants who American conservatives have developed a sudden and uncanny commitment towards after a decade of accepting their oppression and starvation.
And the liberated masses ceased to dance in the streets mere hours after the alleged fall of the Hussein regime and began murdering American soldiers at a rate of seven to ten per week.
7-10 per week is roughly 1-1.5 per day in a country that has a population of Population 22,675,617 (July 2000 est.) . Also, given the fact that Saddam emptied out his jails of *all* criminals…
Well, let’s just say that facts make it very, very, very hard for you to claim that liberated masses are murdering American soldies.
Mark. At 1-1.5 dead soldier per day in a country of 22.6 million – what’s your definition of masses????
“To create a place where Arabs were free and safe and unafraid and happy and successful and not ruled by corrupt monarchs or brutal dictators”+”but only if they abandon those political, cultural and religious chains that are holding them back.”
no particular comment on that part.it’s self explanatory!!
“We are bringing reform to Iraq out of narrow self-interest”
are you sure that oil is not part of it? not even a little bit?
“We have to foster reform in the Arab/Muslim world because it’s the only real way in the long run to make them stop trying to kill us.”
what if they were “trying to kill us” because we are trying to reform them?
There have been real accomplishments. Conditions in Baghdad are better than they were before the war. Iraq now has a governing council. Uday and Qusay are dead. Saddam Hussein is only one step away from capture. There’s no Mukhabarat secret police.
Americans have a short memory for history, but simply ask someone who was in Berlin in July of 1945 and ask them what real destruction is like. It’s going to take a long time for things to settle down in Iraq, but it could have been much, much worse.
As for the idea that the Arab world is rebelling against reform, that’s simply not supported by the facts. The reason why terrorism has flourished is because the world has been all too willing to maintain the bloody status quo in the region. Yossef Bodansky wrote a very long and very detailed account of the recent Middle East called The High Price of Peace. In essence, what he found is that it was our lack of resolve to push for real reform in the Middle East that led to the Islamist explosion, not what engagements we had.
Unless we push for reform from Palestine to Pakistan, the same root causes for terrorism will remain, and we will only pass on the violence of our day to the next generation. The time to act is now, and we must act boldly to combat terrorism on a worldwide level.
the left i’am being nice any way we as a contry work for your money & stand up for the ones can not talk a man to fish he will eat for life give a man a fish he’ll rely on for life you keep feeding him we all get screwed