Posted by
Rick on Saturday, January 06, 2007 9:55:04 PM
Well, Tom, let me take these moments to explain to you WHY we attacked and invaded Iraq. Certainly, if a knucklehead like I am can figure this out, certainly someone as smart as you can see beyond the points you will read in this short note and make intelligent conclusions from them on your own. At the beginning, this note WAS not this long, but more points came to light as my tiny brain tackled all these issues.
In short, we attacked and invaded Iraq because Afghanistan has no access to oil and a democracy in Afghanistan is going to need all the financial and military help it can get from any fellow oil-backed democracies in the area that it can get, and it is better if the other supporting democracy is another Arab democracy – not a Persian one. No infant democracy, like Afghanistan's, would be able to withstand the attacks that Saddam's Iraq, with its oil-funded weapons, would be able to unleash on it had we, in the western world, made no effort to redirect its population towards democracy. Remember that S. Vietnam collapsed like a house-of-cards once we pulled out of there. It too had no oil, i.e. no manner of self-sufficiency!
If you consider the geography of the area, Iran is stuck between Afghanistan and Iraq, and if you put a thriving democracy on each side of Iran, you may get a freebie, eventually.
After all, Afghanistan is too poor, comparatively speaking, to defend itself against the likes of the unfriendly Arab/Persian nations on its boarders like Iran, for example. The LAST thing any self-appointed, or even “elected” in Iran’s case, leader is going to want is a democracy nearby because his people will see for themselves the freedoms under which this democratic country's citizens will be living and thriving and want these freedoms for their families and themselves.
In fact, this Iraq option WAS the path of least resistance (death) for everyone involved, but especially for the U.S.
Let me explain.
The libs are still wishing that GWB attacked and invaded only Afghanistan because that country would become a house of cards (again, like S. Vietnam was in the early ‘70s) that any leader over there with an oil-funded military could collapse (like the N. Vietnamese did to ARVN with Soviet support), and then liberals would be able to blame all the death and destruction during the subsequent collapse of Afghanistan on Bush as well. That's a two-for-one deal for them, and NO democrat is going to ignore THAT kind of deal.
Those wounds from Vietnam are still smarting for the liberals. The libs opposed the invasion of Iraq, after voting for it, because they realized that once Iraq goes democratic, its oil will KEEP it democratic. Libs came up with lame accusation after lame accusation like "no blood for oil!" or “W is fighting his daddy’s war” or referred to him as “Bushitler” or asked, "Where are Saddam's nukes?" to argue against Bush's Iraq invasion plan.
If we could count on a larger and more "stable" nation like Saudi Arabia, for example, to defend tiny, poor, defenseless Afghanistan, then we would be better off, but THAT is not going to happen! The people in Saudi Arabia are wearing the same shackles around their necks, ankles, and wrists as are all the other Arabs and Persians living in the area. The LAST thing the Saudi leaders want to do is to let their people get a whiff of the freedom under which we, in the western world, live and thrive. Now you can dig up Saddam’s cure body-by-body to the affliction of "freedom" in '91 and '92 after H.W.’s (daddy’s) Persian Gulf War in Iraq’s desert.
Of the THREE countries that GWB coined as the "Axis of Evil" (Iraq, Iran, and North Korea), the lowest-hanging fruit on the terrorism tree was Iraq, and thus, Iraq was the easiest-to-pick, i.e. defeat militarily. Afghanistan did not make it onto this list because President Bush knew that the Taliban leadership would be a pushover for the U.S. military, as it proved to be. Remember that Afghanistan has no oil. Sure, there are still attacks in Afghanistan now and then, but the "war" in Afghanistan ended shortly after it began due to the disorganized nature of the Taliban's command structure and the wealth of the country. The citizens of that country are thriving now and very grateful for the removal of the Taliban’s shackles. The media will never explain that in the U.S., however.
Thanks to the conflict with Saddam's Iraq 20 years ago, Iran's army is too strong of a foe, still, to defeat easily, and there would need to be too much collateral damage, i.e. destruction of civilian infrastructure, to take down the Iranian leadership. On the other hand, attacking a communist little guy like North Korea is just as foolish because his much bigger and older brother (China) is RIGHT next door, and no Chinese leader, much like leaders in the Arab/Persian world, is going to permit a fledgling democracy to grow and flourish on his country's doorstep either.
The Chinese people will rid themselves of their communist shackles when they begin to understand and see that the great big world outside their doors is passing them by. The China "problem" will solve itself on its own. Will it be bloodless? It will not be. As it is written in the Declaration of Independence, freedom is the natural state for all humankind. No need for us to throw any fuel on that Chinese fire or to poke at it with a stick.
Thus, there is no way to defend an infant democracy either in North Korea or Iran easily. Liberals made NO effort to save S. Vietnam from the communist noose. Defending either of these two options would translate into a greater need for body bags for our soldiers, marines, pilots, and sailors. Sure, establishing a democracy in Iraq is going to have problems! Infant democracies ALWAYS have problems – present company included. You have the same manner of trouble-makers from Syria and Iran pouring over the borders into Iraq and Afghanistan to stifle these efforts. The Sunnis are nothing more than a cancer in THIS situation. Convincing them to align with the Shia and Kurd populations is the trick that GWB has yet to pull from his hat.
What saved the U.S. in the early 19th century from many of the same troubles that Iraq is having today is that the U.S. is not as landlocked as Iraq is, and that the neighbors to the north and south did not have the financial power of oil to make the pursuit of liberty and freedom difficult for the U.S. citizens back then. If you will, imagine the Mexicans to the south or the French Canadians to the north trying to overthrow the U.S. back then as a "favor" to the British. Granted, the French hated the British, and the Mexican military did not exist back then. The British TRIED to fix the issue with the War of 1812 but they failed to make an impact and sailed back home with their tails between their legs.
No, this conflict not another Vietnam, yet. GWB did his best to insure of this by demanding those elections for the Iraqi people THREE times since the invasion back in the spring of ’03, and the Iraqi people responded by going to the polls while under fire from Iranian/Syrian/Baathist terrorists to cast their votes and to elect their future. If you ask me, there are people in Vietnam who are wishing that the liberal leadership of the U.S. Congress treated them the same way 30/40 years ago. No liberal was going to let a mass of “uneducated” Vietnamese vote and decide its own future back then in the mid-to-late ‘60s.
All libs were and still ARE FDR wannabes! You can bank on that. Give me ONE example where one liberal has ever thought otherwise! Remember, the libs gave us Vietnam – the wunderkinds of Kennedy and Johnson, et al, are to blame for starting and exacerbating the conflict in Vietnam, respectively. Did either of those goons or their administrations ever consider letting the S. Vietnamese vote for their future? Both had FDR dreams, but THAT can be put onto the back burner for now. It is an affliction in which the 60 years since have seen no cure, and leading democrats still fall victim to these same seductions today.
Sure, war is hell. You saw the hell in that short video. Would you want to be responsible for explaining to the parents of the soldiers, whom those terrorists would have killed, just why their sons are dead now? It's always easier to shoot an enemy from miles away than to shoot him up close. In the modern world, one no longer needs to see the whites of his target’s eyes before he shoots.
This was why those terrorists hid that gun. They hoped to draw the soldiers closer to them so they could take a few soldiers/marines with them, and only dead terrorists wave white flags in the dead of night to surrender. Remember, Clinton set an unfortunate precedent in that short war in Kosovo in the ‘90s simply by dropping bombs from 15,000 feet. Would you have the cojones to tell these soldiers' parents that the U.S. military made a mistake by letting those armed terrorists live long enough to get a bead on their sons and to take their sons with them before more of our soldiers could get a round or two into them?
Not likely.
Sure! This conflict is going to take a while. GWB told us as much before any U.S. soldier/marine fired that first shot or pilot dropped that first bomb. Since no liberal has ever written a book on how to build a democratic nation successfully and MORE importantly DOESN’T want President Bush being the FIRST to write this best seller, there are going to be setbacks and obstacles.
BTW, nor has a conservative written this book, but you don't hear too many conservatives bitching about the job that President Bush is doing in Iraq/Afghanistan. The libs can't STOP bitching about his performance. GWB is going above and beyond his call as president of THIS country to GIVE the people of Afghanistan and Iraq a stable footing on which they can build their nations and societies and become active participants in the progress of the modern world. The Democratic cornerstone is the toughest, always, for a leader to lay. Thank the Good Lord that we had George Washington! Any despot can build a nation on his own! The list of those is long. It took us TEN years if not longer, after WWII, to do it in Germany and Japan to moderate successes, but there are still U.S. soldiers in those countries.
Will we ever leave Iraq and Afghanistan? Well, looking at what the liberals in the house and senate gave us with Germany and Japan ex-post-conflicto, we may be in the mid-east for generations since we’re still in those two countries. The liberal congress of the 40’s and 50’s didn’t set the bar very high. Now we have liberal control of Congress again, but the President DOES have his veto pen.
Do you want your children living in fear of terrorism, my friend? Mac may be a little on the young side to remember 9/11. In fact, many libs out there hope children like yours will FORGET about the terror generated on that bright September morning in New York.
Another thing your “friends” don’t want you to realize is that it is SAFER to live in Iraq than it is to live in most large cities in the United States. The mortality rate is lower in Iraq than it is in most of America’s largest cities. Do you need me to say that slower? Sure! These Iraqis hate one another, and a better idea MAY be to split them according to these lines, but let’s give unifying them an honest and whole-hearted shot first rather than killing those whom we don’t like as Saddam was wont.
On another front, is the Earth getting warmer? Well, YES. It is. Is there anything we humans can do about it? Nope. It is getting hotter on Mars too, my friend. Perhaps your “smarter” friends haven’t explained that to you yet, or perhaps, they don’t see a reason to explain that to you since it would complicate their issue and make them look foolish as well. Maybe you will buy their explanation that solar winds are pushing the CO2 gases from our orbit, since the Earth's atmosphere is so dense with these, into the orbit of Mars, and thus, it is getting hotter THERE as well.
The sun is getting hotter, and those earth-warming clowns must believe that the sun’s output has remained a constant over the last thousand years for their silly explanations to make sense. In the last picture you see traffic in China! Urban planners here in the States would be crucified if this happened anywhere here. Riddle me this, Batman. Why did the Kyoto Protocol exclude China? Traffic congestion (pollution) like this demands China’s participation in the Kyoto process. India needs to be involved too.
Let’s get back to global warming. The sun's output is as dynamic, if not more so, as the wind here on the earth is. But then, again as your friends like to say, “It always depends on what your definition of "is" is.”