atpcliff
Well-known member
- Joined
- Nov 26, 2001
- Posts
- 4,260
Hi!
While I don't approve of the way Bush got us into the situation that we're in (I wanted a UN coalition to go in and take Saddam out), I think that Saddam needed to be removed, and it seems to me the only way it could be done is militarily.
I am upset with people on the right and left that seem to me have no perspective on the war. Just like there is wide range of opinions on the war here in the US, there is a wide range of opinions on the war among the Iraqi population.
Some on the right say that ALL Iraqis are suffering under Saddam, and they will all welcome us with open arms once they are free of Saddam. This is not true. There are lots of people that are well rewarded by Saddam, who will fight to the end for him. There are also people that are Iraqi (or Arab) nationalists, and oppose the coalition as invaders. There are Iraqis (& others) outside of Iraq who are going back to fight the coalition.
Some on the left say that ALL Iraqis are suffering under the coalition attacks, they all want us to stop attacking Iraq, and they will be glad when we leave. This is not true. There are lots of Iraqis, both inside and outside of Iraq who are cheering the coalition on, wish we would be fighting harder, and have been wishing for years that we would've attacked sooner. If they are not openly supporting us now, as soon as they know Saddam won't come back and kill them, they will be supporting us at that point. There are also Iraqis who are currently, and have been, openly fighting with and trying their best to kill Saddam’s supporters to protect themselves (the Kurds-remember, they are Iraqi citizens also).
In 1991, in the aftermath of the Gulf War I, I read about a column by a female Australian reporter, who was initially against the first Iraq war. After traveling to Iraq and reporting on the war, she changed her mind. She wrote that she now felt that the only solution was to take Saddam out with force. The reason she changed her mind was she went into a building where Saddam's secret police had been holding fellow Iraqis as political prisoners. She found a pair of human ears, nailed to a wall, and a blood spot on the wall between the ears, where the dissident's head used to be.
Andrew Sullivan is a Salon.com columnist (& if you don't know salon.com, it is definitely NOT a conservative news outlet). His latest column is here:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/sullivan/2003/03/29/de_genova/index.html
An excerpt:
"...Let me take two comments this past week. In the Boston Globe, James Carroll explicitly denied any moral difference between the regime in Baghdad and the administration in Washington. He described the "shock and awe" air campaign as if it were the direct equivalent of 9/11:...
This lazy form of moral equivalence is not rare among the radical left in this country. But it is based on a profound moral abdication: the refusal to see that a Stalinist dictatorship that murders its own civilians, that sends its troops into battle with a gun pointed at their heads, that executes POWs, that stores and harbors chemical weapons, that defies 12 years of U.N. disarmament demands, that has twice declared war against its neighbors, and that provides a safe haven for terrorists of all stripes, is not the moral equivalent of the United States under President George W. Bush. There is, in fact, no comparison whatever. That is not jingoism or blind patriotism or propaganda. It is the simple undeniable truth. And once the left starts equating legitimate acts of war to defang and depose a deadly dictator with unprovoked terrorist attacks on civilians, it has lost its mind, not to speak of its soul.
9/11 and our current campaign against Saddam are, if anything, polar opposites. With overwhelming firepower and complete air command, the allies in Iraq could reduce Baghdad to rubble if they wanted to. Instead they are achieving what might be an historically unprecedented attempt to win a war while avoiding civilian casualties...On 9/11, in contrast, the entire aim of the exercise was to kill as many civilians as possible. For James Carroll to equate the two is a moral obscenity."
His web site is here:
http://www.andrewsullivan.com/
An excerpt:
“Friday, March 28, 2003
ANOTHER EPIPHANY: Another peace campaigner - also an Assyrian Christian - comes home from Iraq and his opposition to war: (Ken Joseph Jr. is an Assyrian, a minister and was born, raised and resides in Japan where he directs AssyrianChristians.com, the Japan Helpline and the Keikyo Institute.)
I wept with family members as I shared their pain and with great difficulty and deep soul searching began little by little to understand their desire for war to finally rid them of the nightmare they were living in.
...
"Life is hell. We have no hope. But everything will be ok once the war is over." The bizarre desire for a war that would rid them of the hopelessness was at best hard to understand.
"Look at it this way. No matter how bad it is we will not all die. We have hoped for some other way but nothing has worked. 12 years ago it went almost all the way but failed. We cannot wait anymore. We want the war and we want it now."
Eventually, fair-minded people will see the truth about this war and its profound moral justification. Read the whole thing at:” http://assyrianchristians.com/i_was_wrong_mar_26_03.htm
I can see why people don't want us to fight. They would prefer a peaceful, non-violent world. While I prefer peace, sometimes you have to fight against the evil actions of people like Hitler and Saddam. I really, really want the UN to have a military force to act in cases like this, and not to go in by ourselves, or with a small coalition like the one we have now. It is too expensive for us, and it exposes us to too much criticism, and too many risks.
I can also see why some Americans desperately want the war-some want to hit back for 9.11, for example. While it seems clear that Saddam didn’t directly have anything to do with 9.11, I believe someone needed to prevent him from further evil, despotic acts.
I would like both sides to have more perspective, and see what is good and bad in what we are doing. I hate it when the coalition kills Iraqi citizens, but I think replacing Saddam is better than not, and I think the only way to do it is with force, which means innocent people get hurt. I know that in the end the Iraqi civilians as a whole, and Iraq as a nation, will be much better off. I don't know if we (the US) will be.
Cliff
GRB
While I don't approve of the way Bush got us into the situation that we're in (I wanted a UN coalition to go in and take Saddam out), I think that Saddam needed to be removed, and it seems to me the only way it could be done is militarily.
I am upset with people on the right and left that seem to me have no perspective on the war. Just like there is wide range of opinions on the war here in the US, there is a wide range of opinions on the war among the Iraqi population.
Some on the right say that ALL Iraqis are suffering under Saddam, and they will all welcome us with open arms once they are free of Saddam. This is not true. There are lots of people that are well rewarded by Saddam, who will fight to the end for him. There are also people that are Iraqi (or Arab) nationalists, and oppose the coalition as invaders. There are Iraqis (& others) outside of Iraq who are going back to fight the coalition.
Some on the left say that ALL Iraqis are suffering under the coalition attacks, they all want us to stop attacking Iraq, and they will be glad when we leave. This is not true. There are lots of Iraqis, both inside and outside of Iraq who are cheering the coalition on, wish we would be fighting harder, and have been wishing for years that we would've attacked sooner. If they are not openly supporting us now, as soon as they know Saddam won't come back and kill them, they will be supporting us at that point. There are also Iraqis who are currently, and have been, openly fighting with and trying their best to kill Saddam’s supporters to protect themselves (the Kurds-remember, they are Iraqi citizens also).
In 1991, in the aftermath of the Gulf War I, I read about a column by a female Australian reporter, who was initially against the first Iraq war. After traveling to Iraq and reporting on the war, she changed her mind. She wrote that she now felt that the only solution was to take Saddam out with force. The reason she changed her mind was she went into a building where Saddam's secret police had been holding fellow Iraqis as political prisoners. She found a pair of human ears, nailed to a wall, and a blood spot on the wall between the ears, where the dissident's head used to be.
Andrew Sullivan is a Salon.com columnist (& if you don't know salon.com, it is definitely NOT a conservative news outlet). His latest column is here:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/sullivan/2003/03/29/de_genova/index.html
An excerpt:
"...Let me take two comments this past week. In the Boston Globe, James Carroll explicitly denied any moral difference between the regime in Baghdad and the administration in Washington. He described the "shock and awe" air campaign as if it were the direct equivalent of 9/11:...
This lazy form of moral equivalence is not rare among the radical left in this country. But it is based on a profound moral abdication: the refusal to see that a Stalinist dictatorship that murders its own civilians, that sends its troops into battle with a gun pointed at their heads, that executes POWs, that stores and harbors chemical weapons, that defies 12 years of U.N. disarmament demands, that has twice declared war against its neighbors, and that provides a safe haven for terrorists of all stripes, is not the moral equivalent of the United States under President George W. Bush. There is, in fact, no comparison whatever. That is not jingoism or blind patriotism or propaganda. It is the simple undeniable truth. And once the left starts equating legitimate acts of war to defang and depose a deadly dictator with unprovoked terrorist attacks on civilians, it has lost its mind, not to speak of its soul.
9/11 and our current campaign against Saddam are, if anything, polar opposites. With overwhelming firepower and complete air command, the allies in Iraq could reduce Baghdad to rubble if they wanted to. Instead they are achieving what might be an historically unprecedented attempt to win a war while avoiding civilian casualties...On 9/11, in contrast, the entire aim of the exercise was to kill as many civilians as possible. For James Carroll to equate the two is a moral obscenity."
His web site is here:
http://www.andrewsullivan.com/
An excerpt:
“Friday, March 28, 2003
ANOTHER EPIPHANY: Another peace campaigner - also an Assyrian Christian - comes home from Iraq and his opposition to war: (Ken Joseph Jr. is an Assyrian, a minister and was born, raised and resides in Japan where he directs AssyrianChristians.com, the Japan Helpline and the Keikyo Institute.)
I wept with family members as I shared their pain and with great difficulty and deep soul searching began little by little to understand their desire for war to finally rid them of the nightmare they were living in.
...
"Life is hell. We have no hope. But everything will be ok once the war is over." The bizarre desire for a war that would rid them of the hopelessness was at best hard to understand.
"Look at it this way. No matter how bad it is we will not all die. We have hoped for some other way but nothing has worked. 12 years ago it went almost all the way but failed. We cannot wait anymore. We want the war and we want it now."
Eventually, fair-minded people will see the truth about this war and its profound moral justification. Read the whole thing at:” http://assyrianchristians.com/i_was_wrong_mar_26_03.htm
I can see why people don't want us to fight. They would prefer a peaceful, non-violent world. While I prefer peace, sometimes you have to fight against the evil actions of people like Hitler and Saddam. I really, really want the UN to have a military force to act in cases like this, and not to go in by ourselves, or with a small coalition like the one we have now. It is too expensive for us, and it exposes us to too much criticism, and too many risks.
I can also see why some Americans desperately want the war-some want to hit back for 9.11, for example. While it seems clear that Saddam didn’t directly have anything to do with 9.11, I believe someone needed to prevent him from further evil, despotic acts.
I would like both sides to have more perspective, and see what is good and bad in what we are doing. I hate it when the coalition kills Iraqi citizens, but I think replacing Saddam is better than not, and I think the only way to do it is with force, which means innocent people get hurt. I know that in the end the Iraqi civilians as a whole, and Iraq as a nation, will be much better off. I don't know if we (the US) will be.
Cliff
GRB
