One year ago today, the coalition began their rapid march across Iraq, beginning the liberation of the Iraqi people from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein.
One year and one day ago, a tyrant and his sons could rape, murder, intimidate, and terrorize twenty five million innocents.
Today, that leader can only terrorize the roaches in his cell, and the sons are burning in the deepest pits of Hell. The Hussein regime will never return. It has been destroyed completely and utterly.
For those who think that the world is less safe after the removal of the cancerous Hussein regime, here’s what’s happened since:
The predictions of war between India and Pakistan never materialized – instead the Pakistanis have been cracking down on terrorism while engaging in talks with India. Commercial air flights between the two countries have been resumed for the first time in years.
North Korea suddenly dropped demands to talk directly to the US and agreed to multilateral talks with countries in the region along with the US.
Libya unilaterally disarmed themselves of WMDs, including a highly-advanced nuclear program, thousands of chemical weapons, and production equipment.
The Iraq infrastructure now produces nearly 150% more electricity than before the war. Public health in Iraq is significantly better than before the war. The Iraqi hospitals, looted by Saddam, are now serving the Iraqi people with medicines they could not get before the war.
The Iraqi education system has been restored and revitalized. All 22 Iraqi universities are now open again. All Iraqi technical schools are open. New textbooks have been provided replacing the Ba’athist indoctrination that passed for education before the war.
Iraq now has an interim Constitution, and will have a sovereign government in only a few months.
The Iraqi people are beginning to become self-sufficient.
The people in Iraq most victimized by Saddam now have a political voice – the Shi’a, the Marsh Arabs, women, Kurds, Turkomens – all no longer second class citizens or worse, but treated as people with basic human rights for the first time in decades.
No more mass graves. No more random rapes. No more torture cells. No more funding of terrorism worldwide. No more Mukhabarat secret police. No more disappearances. No more looting of humanitarian aid.
As Richard Perle notes the events in Iraq have led to a safer world. While the terrorist attacks in Iraq are indeed terrible, they pale to the hundreds of thousands killed by Saddam in Iraq each year.
We are safer without Saddam Hussein. The Iraqi people are free. The insurgency will die down as the militants are hunted down, arrested, or killed by the coalition and Iraqi police. Iraq will be democratic because the will of the Iraqi people and the coalition will not tolerate anything less.
Those who argue that we’re less safe ignore the mountains of evidence to the contrary. Had we not liberated Iraq, at the very least Saddam Hussein would still be murdering and raping the Iraqi people. 25 million people would be held in a state of bondage beyond anything we can possibly understand.
History wil judge the events of the past year far better than the pettiness of the anti-war crowd. The Chamberlains of the world will be remembered as such, while those who stood on the side of liberation will have written a new chapter of freedom in the Middle East.
