Was the War Justified?

"Compassion is the basis of all morality"
  Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 - 1860

A lack of concern about the "loss of life" says much about us as a civilization. It has a lot to say about us as animals who hear about the slaughter, but don't see it and therefore feel detached from it. If many Americans don't seem to care about it, it is because the dying and suffering is happening to someone else. But the public consciousness is being raised by public recognition that Americans and Iraqis are dying and some think that perhaps with a new president that can all be changed. But, it is unlikely that it will because terrorism is a world-wide phenomenon which poses a very real threat to our lives here in America, Europe and the Middle East. It won't go away by ignoring it. It won't go away with an Israeli-Palestinian solution to their conflict. It won't go away until this tactic of suicide bombing and roadside bombs and flying airplanes into building is defeated because our resolve to defeat them is greater than their irrational belief in jihadism and dying for Allah.

Even if Saddam had no direct association with Wahabee el-Qaeda type terrorists (and it is not my contention that he didn't), he did much to further terrorist activity. Saddam Hussein, supported terrorism by paying "bonuses" of up to $25,000 for killing Jews. And it is also estimated that he murdered and buried at least 400,000 Iraqis in mass graves. Saddam Hussein was a terrorist tyrannical dictator.

Everyone Lies

Barack Obama lies. John McCain lies. Hillary Clinton lied. Politicians lie. George Bush also lies. George Bush now says he takes responsibility for the failed intelligence. Whoa there Mr. Bush. While his handlers think it is better now to cop to a plea of responsiblity for the "bad" intel - he actually had the right intel. Hussein was supporting terrorism.

There was nothing wrong with the intelligence. The intel was clear about the threat from al-Qaeda. George Bush's mistake was he waited too long. We know he always intended to attack Iraq and he blamed it on WMD and then something else and then something else again.

As reported in the Wall Street Journal (Saddam's Terror Links - March 24, 2008):

"The redacted version of "Saddam and Terrorism" is the most definitive public assessment to date from the Harmony program, the trove of "exploitable" documents, audio and video records, and computer files captured in Iraq. On the basis of about 600,000 items, the report lays out Saddam's willingness to use terrorism against American and other international targets, as well as his larger state sponsorship of terror, which included harboring, training and equipping jihadis throughout the Middle East." "The rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the region gave Saddam the opportunity to make terrorism, one of the few tools remaining in Saddam's 'coercion' toolbox, not only cost effective but a formal instrument of state power," the authors conclude."

In the six months before 9/11 the FAA received 52 Intel briefings which warned that Al-Qaeda planned to hijack airplanes and fly them into buildings. The Bush administration blocked the release of the 9/11 commission staff study until after the election in 2004 which disclosed the coverup. The attack on 9/11 had nothing to do with Saddam and the intelligence was all but ignored. The problem was not taking the many warnings seriously enough. George Bush was not competent to protect the American public and even if well intentioned, and I'm not convinced he is, neither is Barack Obama competent to keep America safe. The best Intel is sometimes not enough. Ignoring intelligence is much worse.

No one is speaking about the scandal of not being aggressive enough. Instead the left is faulting Bush for his war with Saddam. Instead the Democrats want to bring the troops home which would make the sacrifice of those wounded and died to have been in vein. The real crime will be ignoring their loss by not finishing their commitment to stop terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan. The real crime is not crushing Osama bin Laden.

"Those who can make you believe absurdities 
      can make you commit atrocities."
            -Voltaire

Blood Lust

After 9/11 Americans were imbued with a feeling of blood lust - to get into war and kill Iraqis - because George Bush lied to them about Saddam's connection to al-Queda and WMD and of course, wanting to believe the president Americans flew the flag and rushed off to war. How eager American have been to go there and "do their duty" because George Bush told them so. Nobody wanted to believe their president would purposely lie to them.

"Our feelings are unleashed, not in proportion to the gravity of the facts, but in proportion to the meaning that is assigned to them; not so much in function of the real human cost, as of our sympathy for the victims. Would the (obviously fully justified) emotions called forth by the attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center towers in New York and part of the Pentagon in September 2001 have been on such a scale if this murderous devastation had been perpetrated somewhere in the Third World? Would the images of the disasters have received quite so much attention in the media?" (Andre' Versaille in "Retour sur le Territorie des Autres," as quoted by Mohn Mueller and Karl Mueller in their "Sanctions of Mass Destruction", in Foreign Affairs - 1999)

But Did Bush Really Lie?

We, Americans, generally get behind our president in time of war in spite of partisan differences. And knowing that did George Bush really lie to us about Saddam and the terrorists? According to this latest report, the accumulated data now available would seem to indicate otherwise.

Again from the Wall Street Juournal, "At the very least the report should dispel the notion that outwardly "secular" Saddam would never consort with religious types like al Qaeda. A pan-Arab nationalist, Saddam viewed radical Islamists as potential allies, and they likewise. According to a 1993 memo, Saddam decided to "form a group to start hunting Americans present on Arab soil; especially Somalia," where al Qaeda was then working with warlords against U.S. humanitarian forces. Saddam also trained Sudanese fighters in Iraq." "The Pentagon report cites this as "a tactical example" of their cooperation. When Saddam "was ordering action in Somalia aimed at the American presence, Osama bin Laden was doing the same thing." Saddam took an interest in "far-flung terrorist groups . . . to locate any organization whose services he might use in the future." The Harmony documents "reveal that the regime was willing to co-opt or support organizations it knew to be part of al Qaeda -- as long as that organization's near-term goals supported Saddam's long-term version.""

"For 20 years, such "support" included using Fedayeen Saddam training camps to school terrorists, especially Palestinians but also non-Iraqis "directly associated" with al Qaeda, continuing up to the fall of Baghdad. Saddam also provided financial support and weapons, amounting to "a state-directed program of significant scale." In July 2001, the regime began patronizing a terror cartel in Bahrain calling itself the Army of Muhammad, which, according to an Iraqi memo, "is under the wings of bin Laden.""

When the president lies to us that is a breach of the public trust. Killing Iraqis and sending Americans to their death is an awful burden and it is a terrible crime when it is done for power and profits. Those are the accusations and I too believed them. But anyone who discovers the truth is a fool to then deny it. This war was not about power and profit. Saddam Hussein was a serious threat and his regime a government sponsor of terrorism. On that basis the war was justified.

Again from the Wall Street Journal: "It's true that the Pentagon report found no "smoking gun," i.e., a direct connection on a joint Iraq-al Qaeda operation. Supposedly this vindicates the view that Iraq's liberation was launched on false premises. But the Administration was always cautious, with Colin Powell alleging merely a "sinister nexus" in his 2003 U.N. speech. If anything, sinister is an understatement. The main Iraq intelligence failure was over WMD, but the report indicates that the CIA also underestimated Saddam's ties to global terror cartels...The Administration has always maintained that Iraq is just one front in the war on terror; and the report offers "evidence of logistical preparation for terrorist operations in other nations, including those in the West." In 2002, an IIS memo explained to Saddam that Iraqi embassies were stockpiling weapons, while many of the terrorists trained in Fedayeen camps were dispatched to London with counterfeit documents, where they circulated throughout Europe."

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