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DECEMBER 16, 2003 – 11 people
opposed killed in one day. No, it is not the return of Saddam, it
is the Bush version of us Americans showing the Iraqis how things
will be better if they go along with us.
Now, make no mistake, many of the people
killed attacked our troops first. These were anti-American,
pro-Saddam rallies, rocket propelled grenades were launched, shots
fired.
But that not only doesn’t change the
point, it makes the point: Why do you think Saddam led as such a
brutal, iron-fisted dictator? We said all along he was so horrible
because he killed so many of his people.
Well, Saddam was presiding over a nation
that was 60% one extremist Muslim group, the other 40% a mix of
Kurds and Sunnis and various other groups each opposed to each
other, and, of course, opposed to any single government that would
be imposed on all of them. In addition to this, there are the
tribal rivalries within each group, cleric vs. cleric within the
religious factions.
And then there were the neighbors to
worry about, like Iran, who Saddam led – of course, with our backing
- an almost decade long war against.
Now, the central premise of what
President Bush claims we are going to show now – and which will make
this truly a victory – is how different things will be now that
Saddam is gone. In essence, Iraq will be governed American style,
with a soft hand and free elections that occur peacefully and which
everyone accepts the results of.
Nice thought, but it took all of a day
to show that Iraq is not America and there was a reason Saddam ruled
with an iron hand. We had to kill 11 people just today.
Don’t take this wrong, it is inexcusable
to kill innocent people. But the whole point was that Saddam
killing numerous Iraqis to bring the people of Iraq inline was
inexcusable, and that America says it can do it a different way.
And the Bush administration based their whole plan for what is about
to come on the “flower” doctrine (i.e. “They will greet us with
flowers.”)
If rocket-propelled grenades and bullets
are flowers, than the Bush administration is correct. But, unlike
in the rest of the press, we remind the world that much of the
reason people opposed invading Iraq preemptively was because they
saw the outcome wouldn’t be flowers but bullets.
The rest of the press takes the 11
deaths today in stride, somehow twist it to make it seem somehow
that we were even more justified and President Bush more re-affirmed
in his attacking of Iraq because we see now how bad the Iraqi people
who supported Saddam are.
Wait a second: Sorry, time to point out
that no one – no one – ever, under any circumstances, said we were
invading a whole segment of the Iraqi population. The problem was
just Saddam and a few henchmen.
In order to make any case whatsoever
against Saddam we need to show two things: 1) that he actually had
WMDs (if not, there is no justification for us having gone in,) and,
2) that we would – and can – rule Iraq with a gentler hand than
Saddam did.
How are we different so far? We have to
use killing to try and bring people in line. With Iran, we have to
threaten attacking – possibly with WMDs - to keep them in line. We
claim to have different plans, that this is temporary and that
elections down the road will make everything different.
But Iraq is not America. And Iraq has
never in its several millennia-long history lived as a Democracy.
Extremist Sunnis and Shiites and Kurds, living along a shared border
with Iran and Syria, have never shown a knack for playing nicely and
accepting rule by a single leader.
Even more, previously, America, under
Bush 1, showed that it understood this situation to be unworkable
without brutal force, which is why we gave Saddam his weapons to
begin with. We wanted the region stabilized, and making sure Saddam
could rule with a brutal iron-fist was the only way to make that
happen, by our own estimation.
And now, by our own estimation today, it
is no different. Killing 11 Iraqis was the only way to rule the
country today. The only way to keep Iran and Syria and foreign
terrorists from flooding the country is with a threat of massive
force, including potentially from America’s WMDs.
So wait a second. If all Saddam was
doing was keeping order by killing a bunch of the people within Iraq
and trying to keep Iran and Syria from invading by building – or
claiming to build – WMDs, then how are we different? Is our goal
and are our methods so different?
I tell you what. Let President Bush
declare we will absolutely never ever use WMDs against anyone who
invades Iraq or attacks American troops there, even if they use WMDs
to start things.
Sound ludicrous? Well, that is what we
were demanding Saddam do, somehow survive living wedged between Iran
and Syria without having any WMDs as a possible deterrent. So if we
fought this war because we said he should do that, then we should do
the same and say, “Attack us in Iraq if you will, Iran or others –
we will never use WMDs to defend ourselves.”
Even more, let President Bush declare
that starting this second we will never kill another Iraqi for the
sake of securing the nation and ensuring retention of power and
governing ability. That is what we said Saddam should have done,
not been so brutal in his rise to power, not used killing to bring
the Iraqi people in line and keep them there.
If what we are putting in is a regime
that will use deadly force for the foreseeable future to bring
people inline, and who will not give up its WMDs or pull back its
threat to use them if attacked – or even to attack first if we feel
threatened - then is what we have brought to Iraq really liberation
from Saddam, or just Saddam without the moustache but with a cowboy
hat? |
