Now that we're in Iraq, it is extremely important that we tie up all of our loose ends before we go. But you all well know that I never wanted us to get into Iraq; I was against the war from the minute I heard about the idea, and there were lots of reasons for it. One of them, one that I was honestly not too concerned about, has surfaced to become a boiling fester on the face of American foreign policy.
Some of you may be guessing to what I'm talking about, but for those who haven't, I'm talking about the recent surfacings of reports alledging that American soldiers have been torturing and humiliating Iraqi prisoners of war. My worry before the war was that even though the United States and its military are as a whole dedicated to human rights and human dignity, atrocities would be committed. I wasn't thinking specifically of prisoner torture--this could have happened in any number of ways: homes could be needlessly and senselessly destroyed, people could be rounded up and massacred in a reenaction of My Lai, soldiers could take the prettiest girls they found and do with them as they would, et cetera.
It is entirely possible that these other things I have said have happened or are happening right now, though I doubt it. Regardless of that, however, there are prisoners that have been subjected to the terrible sort of sadism that can develop within an army, and that is an atrocity. It is horrible enough that thousands are displaced, deprived, and destroyed in the course of war, but to throw this upon the fire is simply too much.
Throughout history, regular armies have treated their prisoners cruelly and with inhuman disregard. But the armies themselves are not entirely to blame; especially in situations of low morale, the psyches of people who have been fighting a difficult enemy--in this case the people of Iraq--with no end in sight are often terribly misshapen. Their morality is all too easily compromised, first in periods of seconds, then minutes, then hours, days, months, years, unto permanence. It is all too easy for one to become warped. By no means do I excuse the soldiers, their commanders, or the civilians who played a part in this, but the fact is that in war, people in an army can do things they would never do otherwise.
I am certainly no pacifist; the articles of that doctrine are far too narrow-minded and foolish for my liking. I can understand, for example, a country attacking its neighbor who has surplus food and refuses to trade or loan any to that country while the people of that nation are starving. But I hate war. There are extremely few instances when I have seen human aggression accomplish something; I'm not referring to defensive actions here, but rather to the attacks that prompted them; one could argue that the world would have been horrible if Hitler consolidated his power and tortured the Jews in secret while starting no wars, but the fact is that Hitler would never have come to power if he did not have big plans for using it. If there were a world where Hitler tried to become chancellor without intending to expand the Fatherland, I would be quite surprised to see it. Saddam Hussein himself made an advance, but his was just to little Kuwait, and he was expelled very quickly. One may use my previous argument and say the Hussein would have attacked someone else again, but that man was not stupid. He may have been a vicious dictator who was not loath to sending many of his own people to their deaths, but he coveted something more than his desire to hurt, and that was his power. He realized that to keep that power, he would need to keep Iraq out of the way of everyone else--this entails not attacking anyone anymore.
This war was wrong from the start. Aside from the fact that we have still not found any real caches of biological, chemical, or strategic weapons, Hussein was not going to attack us even if he had them. I may well be the only one in the United States who feels that way, but I sincerely doubt that he would have started shooting even if he had bullets, powder, and a revolver to put them in. I forsee very few circumstances where preemptive strikes on a country could prove worthwhile in the long run, and I definitely do not consider this to be one of them. Many will cite the fact that Saddam Hussein was an evil man and his departure will bring great things to Iraq. Well, I have a view that few people seem to share with me on this as well:
Saddam Hussein was indeed a poisonous villain as ruler of Iraq, but he was a force of stability in a country with three major ethnic groups that do not get along. The most direct analogy I can see between this and history happened relatively recently. A man by the name of Josip Broz Tito was supported by the Allies at the end of World War II to lead the new nation of Yugoslavia. Unfortunately, the man turned out to be a quite ruthless when dealing with the various peoples of his country, which was modeled after the Soviet Union even to the point of having member republics (Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Macedonia). Under his massive thumb, he was able to keep quarrels between the different groups in his country and nationalism in general suppressed. However, when Tito died in 1980, the country quickly unraveled and the things that Bosnia and and its capital in Sarajevo are synonymous with today began to happen. A similar situation existed in Iraq before we entered. The consquences of letting Hussein's life end while he was in power and having Iraq likely fall into disarray would be great, but Yugoslavia's republics have been able to recover a great deal over time; the same would likely happen with Shiite Iraq, Sunni Iraq, and Iraqi Kurdistan. However, I have many doubts that trying to forcefeed the idea of democracy to a people who hardly understand it, and carrying an American flag while doing so is going to minimize the damage; rather, I believe it will exacerbate the situation greatly while giving other nations and their people another reason to hate us.
Oh, and I hate the acronym "WMD" and the phrase that it represents. Just thought I'd put that on the record. Hasta la byebye.
Some of you may be guessing to what I'm talking about, but for those who haven't, I'm talking about the recent surfacings of reports alledging that American soldiers have been torturing and humiliating Iraqi prisoners of war. My worry before the war was that even though the United States and its military are as a whole dedicated to human rights and human dignity, atrocities would be committed. I wasn't thinking specifically of prisoner torture--this could have happened in any number of ways: homes could be needlessly and senselessly destroyed, people could be rounded up and massacred in a reenaction of My Lai, soldiers could take the prettiest girls they found and do with them as they would, et cetera.
It is entirely possible that these other things I have said have happened or are happening right now, though I doubt it. Regardless of that, however, there are prisoners that have been subjected to the terrible sort of sadism that can develop within an army, and that is an atrocity. It is horrible enough that thousands are displaced, deprived, and destroyed in the course of war, but to throw this upon the fire is simply too much.
Throughout history, regular armies have treated their prisoners cruelly and with inhuman disregard. But the armies themselves are not entirely to blame; especially in situations of low morale, the psyches of people who have been fighting a difficult enemy--in this case the people of Iraq--with no end in sight are often terribly misshapen. Their morality is all too easily compromised, first in periods of seconds, then minutes, then hours, days, months, years, unto permanence. It is all too easy for one to become warped. By no means do I excuse the soldiers, their commanders, or the civilians who played a part in this, but the fact is that in war, people in an army can do things they would never do otherwise.
I am certainly no pacifist; the articles of that doctrine are far too narrow-minded and foolish for my liking. I can understand, for example, a country attacking its neighbor who has surplus food and refuses to trade or loan any to that country while the people of that nation are starving. But I hate war. There are extremely few instances when I have seen human aggression accomplish something; I'm not referring to defensive actions here, but rather to the attacks that prompted them; one could argue that the world would have been horrible if Hitler consolidated his power and tortured the Jews in secret while starting no wars, but the fact is that Hitler would never have come to power if he did not have big plans for using it. If there were a world where Hitler tried to become chancellor without intending to expand the Fatherland, I would be quite surprised to see it. Saddam Hussein himself made an advance, but his was just to little Kuwait, and he was expelled very quickly. One may use my previous argument and say the Hussein would have attacked someone else again, but that man was not stupid. He may have been a vicious dictator who was not loath to sending many of his own people to their deaths, but he coveted something more than his desire to hurt, and that was his power. He realized that to keep that power, he would need to keep Iraq out of the way of everyone else--this entails not attacking anyone anymore.
This war was wrong from the start. Aside from the fact that we have still not found any real caches of biological, chemical, or strategic weapons, Hussein was not going to attack us even if he had them. I may well be the only one in the United States who feels that way, but I sincerely doubt that he would have started shooting even if he had bullets, powder, and a revolver to put them in. I forsee very few circumstances where preemptive strikes on a country could prove worthwhile in the long run, and I definitely do not consider this to be one of them. Many will cite the fact that Saddam Hussein was an evil man and his departure will bring great things to Iraq. Well, I have a view that few people seem to share with me on this as well:
Saddam Hussein was indeed a poisonous villain as ruler of Iraq, but he was a force of stability in a country with three major ethnic groups that do not get along. The most direct analogy I can see between this and history happened relatively recently. A man by the name of Josip Broz Tito was supported by the Allies at the end of World War II to lead the new nation of Yugoslavia. Unfortunately, the man turned out to be a quite ruthless when dealing with the various peoples of his country, which was modeled after the Soviet Union even to the point of having member republics (Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Macedonia). Under his massive thumb, he was able to keep quarrels between the different groups in his country and nationalism in general suppressed. However, when Tito died in 1980, the country quickly unraveled and the things that Bosnia and and its capital in Sarajevo are synonymous with today began to happen. A similar situation existed in Iraq before we entered. The consquences of letting Hussein's life end while he was in power and having Iraq likely fall into disarray would be great, but Yugoslavia's republics have been able to recover a great deal over time; the same would likely happen with Shiite Iraq, Sunni Iraq, and Iraqi Kurdistan. However, I have many doubts that trying to forcefeed the idea of democracy to a people who hardly understand it, and carrying an American flag while doing so is going to minimize the damage; rather, I believe it will exacerbate the situation greatly while giving other nations and their people another reason to hate us.
Oh, and I hate the acronym "WMD" and the phrase that it represents. Just thought I'd put that on the record. Hasta la byebye.
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