printA regular reader recently asked me if I know of other writers “like yourself,” as he put it, “who get the Islamic threat, but are also principled Old Rightists, who’ve been against the war on Iraq all along.” He explained that the Arabist American Conservative and like-minded libertarians were just too whacky for his liking.
I replied: only Paul Sperry.
And so it came as no surprise when on the day my column, “At Least Saddam Kept Order,” came out, I received a note from Paul, “Great minds think alike…” (Someone has to pat us on the collective shoulder occasionally.) Paul’s column, “Iraq and the Christian Conscience” echoes my sentiments exactly:
“Bush turned Iraq into the most violent place on the planet—3,700 civilians killed last month alone—and he removed from power and put on death row the only person who can restore order there, the guy who after all the prewar demonizing turned out to be a toothless tinhorn, more a threat to his dentist than anyone else.
Did you know that more innocent Iraqi civilians—mostly children—have been killed and maimed under President Bush than under Saddam Hussein? It’s true. As a Christian, I am absolutely repulsed by this statistic. You don’t hear that one on talk radio, for good reason….
I also cringe every time I hear a minister preach or pray about us ‘fighting for freedom’ in Iraq, or fighting to ‘liberate the Iraqi people.’ Please, the Iraqi people never invited us to invade and occupy their country, and they don’t even want our form of freedom (they enshrined Islamic law in their ‘new and improved’ constitution). Here’s another statistic you won’t hear on Rush Limbaugh or Fox News, and it’s from the State Department’s own recent survey in Iraq: 91 percent of Sunnis in Iraq want us to leave, and 74 percent of Shi’ites also want us out.
Another poll found that more than 3/5 of Iraqis say they back attacks on U.S. troops!
The inconvenient truth is, there is nothing noble or heroic about the war Bush and Cheney started in Iraq. It was political, not strategic. It had nothing to do with 9/11. We were sold a bill of goods. As a Christian, I cannot support a lie, especially one that continues to grind up other people’s kids for no good reason (while still not protecting us from the true threat from Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda Central, as opposed to the backbenchers and second-string wannabes in Iraq).
Did Bush, a supposed ‘born-again Christian,’ lie us into war? I’ve read the prewar intelligence estimates. I don’t believe as some do that Bush knew Saddam didn’t have WMD and attacked him anyway. No, Bush didn’t know Saddam didn’t have WMD, but he knew better than to say he had ‘proof’ that he did. The intelligence community had no such proof—the NIE dossier was full of caveats regarding WMD. Yet Bush and Cheney told us they had solid proof. They misled us…
But in the case of the alleged prewar al-Qaeda connections, they did know better—and they just plain lied to us. They said Saddam and Osama were collaborating and implied that Saddam was behind 9/11. The prewar Iraq dossier, the NIE, said exactly the opposite—no collaboration, no ties to 9/11 or any anti-American terror anywhere in the world, ever. Bush and Cheney knew that and deliberately lied to the public. (And Cheney’s still lying.)…”
Read the entire column. Being an impressive “shoe-leather investigative journalist,” as I called him in my review of his recent book, Sperry always packs his work with facts.
Mercer, I’ve suffered a lot at your hands over this Iraq mess but have to say I appreciate your making me think instead of react. [I’ll never forget you saying you’d rather fight the Republican Guard, than suffer Mercer’s ministrations vis-a-vis Iraq. You add spice to this blog.]
I still have no qualms about crushing a human cockroach like Sadaam but not at the incredible expense in human life as is being spent in Iraq and the incredible expense, politically, of presiding over a giant failure. General MacArthur once said “Never give and order you can’t enforce”. That’s what we have done in Iraq and it’s going to be a real mess getting out.
Some thoughts here: We can’t get out of Iraq and then hibernate from the world and become the appeasers and boot lickers that so many of our empty suits and talking heads of government and MSM would have us to do. There’s a saying in my part of the country: “If you see a snake, kill it.” If we see a snake of a North Korean or Iranian nuclear weapons lab or factory or some such, bomb it to dust. If the UN and New York Times and other American hating orgainzations don’t like it, tough beans. If we need to commit ground forces for the same reasons, commit them but finish and get out. Don’t try to make third world countries into little clones of the USA. They don’t think that way and we’re kidding ourselves if we think they do.
In short, don’t back down. There are too many out there who, because of our apparent weaknesses and lack of resolve, see this as the time in history to destroy us. If, for our own well being, we need to kick some behinds, then do so without apology. But we need to stop trying to turn the world into little Americas. They don’t want it, don’t understand it, don’t know how to operate that way and don’t really like us anyway.
You can add me to the list of non-Arabist Iraq war opponents. Here
I argued against the Iraq war because it strengthened Iran and increased the threat against Israel by replacing Saddam Hussein’s regime (who while being anti-Israeli too, was also anti-Iranian)
with a government openly allied with Iran. A Iraq allied with Iran is far more dangerous than a Iraq devoting much of its energy to limiting Iranian regional influence
[Excellent; thanks for introducing yourself here. But you have to admit, this is a rarity in libertarian circles, these days. They’ve adopted the rhetoric of the radical left.–ILANA]
“91 percent of Sunnis in Iraq want us to leave, and 74 percent of Shi’ites also want us out.”
But, didn’t Jorge tell us that he was a “uniter, not a divider” (along with being “the decider”)? It would appear that on this rare occaision, Imam al-Dubya was actually being truthful.
Good point about the leftist type rhetoric employed by war opponents in the libertarian camp, Ilana. The same applies to the Buchananite wing of the conservatives, with its own anti-Israel spin of course. The real tragedy of this mess from a political aspect is that the voices of principled opposition like yours and Mr. Sperry’s were completely drowned out by the insane screaming of leftists on the one hand and Bushevik jingoism on the other.
Perhaps if there had been a real debate instead of a shouting match about the validity of this war from parties whose positions were fraudulent, the immense tragedy we are witnessing could have been avoided.