CNN.com – Bush: U.S. will succeed in Iraq or troops will leave – Mar 21, 2006
“We are doing the right thing. A democracy in Iraq is going to affect the neighborhood. A democracy in Iraq is going to (inspire) reformers in a part of the world that is desperate for reformation.”
In all the leadup to invading Iraq, where was all the talk about democracy building? Where was the talk about “freeing Iraq”? There was none. The entire justification for the preemptive invasion of Iraq were WMD’s and ties to terrorism. Now after finding no WMD, after finding out the intelligence for WMD was faulty at best and manipulated at times, after uncovering that Iraq had no ties to terrorism and Bin laden actually despised Hussain, now all the rhetoric is about freeing Iraq.
That’s not what we bombed the hell out of their country to do. And now our invasion has destabalized the country, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are dead, thousands of American troops, and the U.S. is LESS safe now than it ever was before, because we’ve turned a previously non-threatening country (to us) into a hotbed of terrorism and training ground for terrorists where before there was none. Is that success?!
There’s no denying Hussain and his sons were psychotic murderers. Three years ago I was certain the world and Iraq are better off without them. But are they? I know we’re not. After 9/11 and before Iraq, we had the support and sympathy of the world. Even a Parisian newspaper declared “We are all Americans” after 9/11. Even if Hussain did have WMD, he certainly wouldn’t have used them against as, as no country would attack us, because they know in 17 seconds their country would become a parking lot. So yes, the battle is against terrorism, not disctatorships. In fact, not that I support dictatorships by any means, but terrorism flourishes more in democracies where people are free than in tightly controlled dictatorships. Hussain was killing his own people, but not at the rate of 100,000 in three years! In any case, it’s up to the people of Iraq to free themselves, not the American Empire to do it for them.
And so I say again, where was the freedom building rhetoric three years ago? Would Americans have support the Iraq invasion if that was the reason we had been given back then? I don’t think so.
And so three years later, Bush has squandered the worldwide support and sympathy we once had after 9/11. We’re now hated by countries and people that before respected and admired us. We even had the support of moderate Muslems after 9/11. And now even those moderate Muslems despise us. We’ve created instability in the Middle East. We’ve created a new source for terrorism where before there was none. We’ve killed thousands of innocents and our own soldiers keep dying and getting hurt. And it’s all so we can spread democracy to a country that didn’t ask for it? So we can start a civil war in a country that we bombed back to the Middle Ages both in material goods and services as well as religious and political mindsets? So we can make us a target for more terrorism and anti-American hatred? So we can spend hundreds of billions of dollars on this invasion instead of spending it on our own schools or healthcare or even providing our FBI agents with e-mail accounts as they do REAL work protecting us from terrorism instead of creating the cause for it?
Is it worth it? Is that “success”?
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