America the Terrorist?

If I were President, I don't know how I could end the war in Iraq.


Way back when, in the scary days at the end of 2001 when America was still reeling from 9-11 and we were starting to deal with the realization that the world had changed forever I already knew it was wrong. As President Bush rallied the troops and tried to build up support for military action in Iraq, I told those around me that it was a mistake.

You need to look at 9-11 from Al Qaeda's point of view to understand why it happened. In their minds they weren't throwing the first stone in this battle, they were fighting back. For thousands of years life has been largely the same in the middle east. Small tribes of nomads wandering the desert, trading at the oases and living a simple but satisfying life. But now, in the waning days of the 20th century they find their culture under attack. Bombarded by American television and American influence, the newest generation of Arabs want their MTV, Coca-Cola, Big Macs and I-Pod. How are you going to keep Omar on the farm after he's seen the big city? American companies, having saturated the local market can no longer grow their business in the United States. Coke and Pepsi aren't going to find any new customers in the U.S., but their stockholders demand continued growth, so they look outside of our borders for new customers. Many nations around the world are Americaphiles and gladly absorb our culture and long for more. But insular Arabia looks on the invasion of American culture as an attack on their own. Not every country wants to move from the third world to the first; not every country wants progress. No country should be dragged into the 21st century kicking and screaming. Our desire to grow American business was perceived as an attack on their very way of life. Al Qaeda wasn't attacking us, they were striking back, telling us to leave them alone.

It was a cowardly and dastardly attack by Al Qaeda that killed over 3,000 Americans that day, and if the United States had dropped half a dozen tactical nuclear warheads on Southern Afghanistan and flattened those mountains where the terrorists were hiding into a pile of glowing rubble, the world would have shook its head in disapproval but they would have understood our response and accepted it. But that's not what we did.

We turned our focus to Iraq in some bizarre attempt to explain that Saddam Hussein had sponsored the terrorism and posed a greater threat to the world. Bush tried to marshall support in the United Nations for joint action against Iraq and was almost universally denied. With the exception of Great Britain and a few other nations that might uncharitably be described as U.S. lapdogs, the rest of the world refused to accept our arguments for action against Iraq. In an unprecedented move, Bush unilaterally decided to send U.S. troops across the borders of a sovereign nation in agression.

Unprecedented, I say, because you could make the argument that the U.S. has always been drawn into war against our will. Certainly in the 20th Century we were never guilty of striking first. The Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor is unambiguous, and although we might have been able to stay out of World War I a little longer than we did, German actions against us would have made our entry inevitable. In Korea, Vietnam and Kuwait we went to the defense of Democracies under attack. We've acted in concert with the United Nations to protect peoples around the world. Our secret actions to bring about "regime change" are not above reproach (Nicaragua, Panama, Grenada, Iran (remember the Shah?)), but don't rise to the level of waging all-out war. In the 19th Century the examples aren't as clear cut. The Mexican War was a border dispute that got way out of hand. We probably shouldn't have had a war-ship in Havana harbor at the start of the Spanish American War, but Cuba nearly borders on the U.S., too.

The United States, as the last remaining Super-Power, needs to be big enough to let the other guy strike the first blow before we strike back. Yes, we were struck on 9-11, but not by Iraq. We knew who was responsible for those terrorist acts, and it wasn't Saddam Hussein. If we had dropped those nukes on September 13th, we would have been striking back. Even when we eventually sent troops into Afghanistan to try and root-out Osama Bin-Laden we were striking back. But we weren't striking back when we sent troops into Iraq in March of 2003, some 18 months after 9-11, it was a pre-emptive action to protect us against some perceived threat of attack.

Perceived threat? Pre-emptive action? What a dangerous precedent to set!

I truly believe that George Bush was sincere in his belief that Iraq might have nuclear weapons. To deny that you would have to believe that Bush was looking for some way to write a more favorable account of his presidency, to be remembered as the strong president who led America back to safety and security, not the one who presided over it's downfall into fear. But even allowing for his sincerity in his reasoning for invasion, if the perceived threat of nuclear attack from another nation is justification for pre-emptive attack, shouldn't we have invaded North Korea first? It's indisputable that North Korea has nuclear weapons and long range missiles capable of delivering them. They have a long history as a rogue nation and are the leader of the Axis of Evil. So, President Bush, why haven't we attacked them? Maybe it's the willingness of China to act in protection of North Korea that discouraged our action there, where Iraq had no such ready and powerful protector.

Our invasion of Iraq in opposition to the United Nation's vote sent a message to the world. The United States was no longer the great protector of the world, we were now the biggest bully on the block. Crossing the borders of a sovereign nation in aggression with the expressed intent of overthrowing a sitting government to protect ourselves against some imagined future attack let the world know that no one was safe. If we could invade Iraq, what's to stop us from invading Venezuela? Uganda? Indonesia? Now that we've set the precedent that pre-emptive action is justified, how can we protest when China, Russia or North Korea use the same justification?

In addition to being unprecedented, it was poorly thought out. Even back then I could see that there was no good way for this to end. The modern nation of Iraq was carved out by the League of Nations after World War I and bound together disparate people within its boundaries. Both Shi'ite and Sunni Muslims have large populations there. Think of the difference between them as the same with Catholics and Protestants; They don't get along together too well. For better or worse, Saddam united them into one powerful country under his violent and despotic rule. Iraq was more modern and western-leaning than most other countries in the region, which are predominantly fundamentalist Moslem nations. The majority of the population in Iraq are Shi'ites, and like the Shia' of Iran, would favor a fundamentalist state. What did Bush think was going to happen when he overthrew Saddam? Did he not see that the majority of Iraq's peoples, free from the liberalizing influence of Saddam would choose to live in a fundamentalist Moslem state?

As we quickly overthrew Saddam's government and the future threat of attack from Iraq was no longer an issue, Bush's message changed. Saddam Hussein had been a brutal and violent dictator and the Americans were there to give freedom and democracy to the people of Iraq.

Well, who said they wanted freedom and democracy? How was it our job to give it to them? There's no doubt that Saddam Hussein murdered tens of thousands, maybe even millions of his own citizens. That's brutal, no doubt. But if the Iraqi people were so repressed, if they longed for freedom from this brutality, why didn't we merely support them in rising up in rebellion against their oppressor? Freedom doesn't come cheap. It's payed for with the lives and blood of those willing to stand up against injustice. That's how America payed for its freedom. What's the value of freedom when it is given to them? When they didn't pay the cost themselves? Is it any wonder that they aren't banding together in patriotism under their new flag? All that is holding the promise of democracy together in Iraq is the continued presence of the U.S. military; when we eventually leave the country will naturally devolve into the fundamentalist Islamic state that it wants to be, and they'll be no great friend to the United States, their "liberators." Once started, there was no good way for this to end.

If I were President, I don't know what I would do in Iraq. We'll only leave the country worse than we found it.