Greetings all!
This post comes at the end of a brief hiatus due to AP exams, and with those now over I can return to normal scheduling. This time, I take on a topic heavily debated on the domestic front in all of its aspects: our current war, and the war we recently ended. Our 21st century moves against nations have been heavily criticized the world over, from Germany to Indonesia. At home, it has been the Democratic party which has led the charge against our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. However, said party has gone soft in its rhetoric, with members often stating that the Afghanistan war was inevitable due to the September 11th attacks. This is unacceptable. We cannot listen to any person that would voice support for our actions thus far. In this post, I will make the case as to why both of our wars were and are illegal, and what the effects of the Bush presidency have had on our own sense of democracy in accordance with American foreign relations. This seems to be coming at an opportune time, as Bush and other leaders at the time have finally been convicted of war crimes in absentia in Malaysia (http://tehrantimes.com/opinion/97842-bush-finally-found-guilty-of-war-crimes). This week's quote comes from Robin Gibb, a co-founder of the Bee Gees who recently died, and a man whose music I love dearly.
I'll be starting my case with the Iraq War, because its illegality is far easier to determine. Let's begin with the notion behind the war: preemptive strike. George W. Bush had determined that due to the antagonism of Saddam Hussein in the past and the dangers he presented both for the region and the world, he was justified in invading Iraq in order to bring an end to dictatorship and recreate a nation through democracy. Little did Bush realize the hell he would release by removing a stable dictator. All the hate and division that Hussein was able to repress were allowed free reign with the end of Ba'ath rule, and we were nowhere near prepared for such a situation. The instability that followed the deposition of Hussein and our occupation have caused over 100,000 deaths, both military and civilian, on the part of all nations involved (http://www.iraqbodycount.org/). The main reasoning as to why these deaths would have been justified was the presence of "weapons of mass destruction", or WMDs for short. Due to Iraqi non-compliance with U.N. demands to end weapons enrichment and construction, both the American and British governments had been led to believe that Iraq likely had dangerous weaponry on hand that could be used to attack other nations. In accordance with breach of U.N. Resolution 687, president Bush justified the armed forces authorization of Resolution 678 to be revived. We were wrong, and admitted so here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/oct/07/usa.iraq1.
Yet that didn't stop us, as Bush further argued that our fight was just because it was based upon the removal of an "evil" dictator. The contradictions here go beyond comprehension. How we as humans define evil is subjective, because the psychology of each person is different. Some may define evil through the light of dictators, while others may define evil as someone who leaves the seat up. This idea of setting up enemies in an axis is far off the beaten road of reality, a world where nothing is quite that black-and-white. While certain leaders throughout history can be proven to be nothing more than horrors upon the memory of humanity, there will always be a catch. Stalin caused millions of deaths and caused an irrevocable perversion of communism, but I still credit him with completing the industrialization of the Soviet Union. Yet, we cannot justify or bemoan such leaders based on one quality of their leadership alone. Because Hussein was not evil in his entirety, we cannot say that Iraq was ever "evil". Moving on from that, to what extent does our promotion of democracy go? The Cold War ended over two decades ago, and we no longer have a single major enemy in this world. We are considered by many to be the lone superpower, with friends galore. However, there will always be those that oppose us. Just as the aforementioned Cold War proved, you cannot destroy an idea. No matter how many die, their words and beliefs will move among their followers, and they will reach fresh ears and faces which will follow suit. This is proven by me, a Trotskyist in America, a nation that tried to destroy communism fervently for decades. Trotskyists were persecuted in Russia as well, yet we live on. The same will be true of terrorism, unfortunately. The idea that martyrdom against a great evil guarantees salvation will continue for a few reasons. First and foremost, terrorism will live on because we haven't treated this world well since WWII ended. We committed countless deaths against an ideology simply because it was different than ours, and as a result through time people rose to fight us. We've killed over 12 million people (http://www.the-philosopher.co.uk/whocares/popups/warcrimes.htm), so it's natural that a resistance to us would follow. While communists like me do not physically attack the U.S., the same is not true of terrorists. Why? Religion plays a role here.
The idea of black banners is something that comes nearing the end of the Qur'an. It is said that with the coming of the Mahdi, the Islamic form of a Messiah, an army of those waving black banners in his support will follow him, a sign of the end times in Islam. While only a small part of a book of the past, these passages detail what would become the driver for many terrorists. As terrorism had grown throughout history, Osama Bin Laden had become the head commander of Al-Qaeda, a group dedicated to destroying America and all states keeping it from power. Bin Laden gained support by claiming that he was indeed the Mahdi, and that in order to unite the world through Islam and create universal peace Muslims must follow him and do as he said, with no amount of service being off the table. And as with any idea, fools and idealists would follow him despite the falsehood of his statements. This created the main reason the Iraq War became so long and costly; with the fall of Saddam Hussein, Al-Qaeda was given an opening to a nation where new supporters would be easy to find. Hussein had personally detested the group due to its religious ties which he felt would only strengthen Iran, a regional rival. With Hussein deposed, violent militants caused massive amounts of sectarianism in Iraq for years. While military action and occupation has prevented them from taking over completely, it was the invasion itself which allowed for Al-Qaeda to gain strength. Disenchantment with the West and increasing desperation in a damaged nation have allowed Al-Qaeda to sow fundamentalist seeds. While a certain degree of religious revivalism is to be expected in nations that free themselves from secular dictators (as in Egypt and Tunisia), the current situation in Iraq is far more dangerous and intolerable. As such, our war on terror in Iraq is a hypocrisy, because we have not only pushed terror by our own means as in Abu Ghraib (http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/news/international/countriesandterritories/iraq/abu_ghraib/index.html), but we have fostered Iraqi terror as well.
Lastly, our war in Iraq was based in the hypocrisy of democracy by force. While the Afghanistan War can be argued for as retaliation, Iraq cannot. Iraq did not launch the September 11 attacks, and did not harbor the terrorists that planned them. True, Iraq was antagonistic to our policies most of the time. However, they had never launched a direct strike against America. Iraq invaded Kuwait, so an international coalition pushed them out in 1991. I'm certain that Iraqi soldiers attacked American soldiers here, but they were not the ones who started the war. For most of them, not shooting would have meant getting shot by the enemy or tortured by the Iraqi government. Turn back time a few more years, and we actually supported Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, by giving them weaponry while simultaneously declaring limited support for Iran as part of our double-containment policies (http://www.iranchamber.com/history/articles/united_states_iran_iraq_war1.php). Over 1 million people died here, and by the end of the war both nations had discovered our double support and hated us in a justifiable sense. We had, after all, tried to eliminate the power of both nations for profit. At any point in history past this war, should we have expected Iraq to be compliant or friendly to us, well that is just forgetful and wrong. So let's look at some of the ways Bush justified our invasion with non-compliance. Bush said Iraq would not succumb to internal investigations; this had happened over and over again in the past. Why had we not invaded before if this was our reasoning? Bush said that Iraq was using chemical weapons on its own people and was developing/had WMDs; Iraq certainly was using those chemical and biological weapons, after all we did provide them. It is more cost effective to use high-tech weaponry given by a stronger nation than to spend years developing said weapons yourself. As for the WMDs, Iraq had none, and no real plans had been made to get them as I have already shown. And finally, Bush said it was worthwhile to remove a dictator. This is the worst reason of all. There have been countless dictators throughout the years, yet many of them were either supported by us or personally installed by us. I'll take Saudi Arabia here, because it is within the region. We support a radically conservative religious king who rules a nation where women can't even drive, yet we invade a nation nearby because it supposedly has weapons for terrorism? We know that Saudi Arabia has weapons; they even helped in the Persian Gulf War. We know that Saudi Arabia has terrorists inside the nation; it's inevitable for the country where Islam was founded. Yet we have never declared them an enemy. Saudi Arabia is not a democracy; it is a clerical kingdom, which rarely represents policies that are any better than Iran. But we do not invade them to establish democracy. Why is this? Why would our support of democracy be selective, especially when we claim it as the most important principle this world has ever known? If we're going to support democracy, shouldn't we react against anything that is not democratic? Is it right to bring democracy to a nation which has not asked for it, especially if by doing so we ensure hundreds of thousands of deaths and years of instability?
Most of these questions are rhetorical and have no answers, except the last one, in which case the answer is no. True, democracy can be great. But many responsibilities must be met by the citizenry for it to work at all. At least two-thirds of the population must vote and do it with knowledge at hand, otherwise the government of the nation no longer represents a will of the majority of the people and no mandate is created. The populace must be aware of their rights, and practice them correctly and often. The people must be willing to compromise, or democracy will falter and eventually fail. And lastly, the people must desire democracy; otherwise, resentment for a new system will manifest in radicals which will dissent and attack against the new government. Iraq was not ready for democracy; the country is one of multiple ethnicities which for the most part have not had their days in the sun. Much of the nation has been repressed so long, they can't remember what it was like before Hussein. Without seeds of democracy in place, Iraq was thrust into a freer world which they quickly binged upon. In time, I am certain Iraqis will learn and determine what is right for them. But by proscribing our medicine upon them, we can never know whether Iraq would have wanted democracy, and whether it would have succeeded. Because our system was imposed by military force and has been marked by instability, violence, and suffering, much of Iraq will likely look upon democracy with disgust. And therefore, all hope for a peaceful and democratic Iraq has been shattered, at least for now. Only time heals a wound such as this.
And now, I will move on to Afghanistan, a more contested war in my terms. It is easier to justify this war as retaliation for the September 11 attacks, after all the Taliban-led government did harbor the terrorists who pulled it off. But once again, our history contradicts our actions here. Recently, the man who was convicted of planning and executing the Lockerbie bombing, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi died in Libya, his home (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-18137896). The Lockerbie bombing was a terrorist incident committed by the Libya government, along with others like the UTA 772 incident and the LaBelle Disco bombing. Yet we have never invaded Libya. We performed bombing in the 1980s, but never an invasion. We despised Libya and Gadhafi, mostly due to his rejection of capitalism and America in order to foster a "third universal theory". Even in the throes of revolution last year, we simply provided bombs to NATO. No matter how often governments support or tolerated our enemies in the past, we rarely invaded solely for those reasons. During the Cold War, we invaded multiple nations just to get rid of communism, yes. But Afghanistan was the first time we invaded a nation for harboring terrorists. The Taliban is an especially interesting case, because we helped to train them during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (http://www.cdi.org/terrorism/afghanistan-history-pr.cfm). As such, we provided the money, weapons, and intelligence the Taliban needed to take over Afghanistan and, later on, harbor terrorists that would attack us. This brings me back to an old adage: "don't go asking for a fight". It is too bad that we did. I'm not saying we deserved the September 11 attacks in any way; that is false and the attacks were horrible. But to anyone that honestly thinks those moments were an absolutely unpredictable shock, you are wrong. To think that nothing like this would ever happen in spite of our past actions is naive. Lastly, the government of a nation is not responsible for the actions of a few crazed men that live there. The Oklahoma City bombing happened on our own territory and was carried out by men born and raised under our government, yet we do not blame ourselves for these things. The same standard should be applied to Afghanistan. I agree that the Taliban is not the best form of government, and that Afghan life before the invasion wasn't all peaches and cream. But by toppling and persecuting the Taliban and reigniting the instability that Afghanistan was beginning to remove, we showed that we as a nation are not to be trusted and that we are not a good influence. There's a reason much of the world doesn't like us, and invading Afghanistan is a prime reason. You cannot justify so much death and suffering if retaliation against a few is your only back-up. For those wondering, here's a link to the death and suffering we have caused (although it is somewhat dated at this point, http://www.historyguy.com/war_in_afghanistan.html#.T7raj9wV0n0).
That is all for this week, and I hope I have made my case well and that perhaps some of you will consider changing your opinions on these wars as a result. My email at zerospintop@live.com is open to questions and comments, along with my Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ accounts. Commenting here is also encouraged, although I advise avoidance of random swearing and other forms of non-serious discussion. Thanks, and this is SuperJew McLovin, signing off.
Lastly, our war in Iraq was based in the hypocrisy of democracy by force. While the Afghanistan War can be argued for as retaliation, Iraq cannot. Iraq did not launch the September 11 attacks, and did not harbor the terrorists that planned them. True, Iraq was antagonistic to our policies most of the time. However, they had never launched a direct strike against America. Iraq invaded Kuwait, so an international coalition pushed them out in 1991. I'm certain that Iraqi soldiers attacked American soldiers here, but they were not the ones who started the war. For most of them, not shooting would have meant getting shot by the enemy or tortured by the Iraqi government. Turn back time a few more years, and we actually supported Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, by giving them weaponry while simultaneously declaring limited support for Iran as part of our double-containment policies (http://www.iranchamber.com/history/articles/united_states_iran_iraq_war1.php). Over 1 million people died here, and by the end of the war both nations had discovered our double support and hated us in a justifiable sense. We had, after all, tried to eliminate the power of both nations for profit. At any point in history past this war, should we have expected Iraq to be compliant or friendly to us, well that is just forgetful and wrong. So let's look at some of the ways Bush justified our invasion with non-compliance. Bush said Iraq would not succumb to internal investigations; this had happened over and over again in the past. Why had we not invaded before if this was our reasoning? Bush said that Iraq was using chemical weapons on its own people and was developing/had WMDs; Iraq certainly was using those chemical and biological weapons, after all we did provide them. It is more cost effective to use high-tech weaponry given by a stronger nation than to spend years developing said weapons yourself. As for the WMDs, Iraq had none, and no real plans had been made to get them as I have already shown. And finally, Bush said it was worthwhile to remove a dictator. This is the worst reason of all. There have been countless dictators throughout the years, yet many of them were either supported by us or personally installed by us. I'll take Saudi Arabia here, because it is within the region. We support a radically conservative religious king who rules a nation where women can't even drive, yet we invade a nation nearby because it supposedly has weapons for terrorism? We know that Saudi Arabia has weapons; they even helped in the Persian Gulf War. We know that Saudi Arabia has terrorists inside the nation; it's inevitable for the country where Islam was founded. Yet we have never declared them an enemy. Saudi Arabia is not a democracy; it is a clerical kingdom, which rarely represents policies that are any better than Iran. But we do not invade them to establish democracy. Why is this? Why would our support of democracy be selective, especially when we claim it as the most important principle this world has ever known? If we're going to support democracy, shouldn't we react against anything that is not democratic? Is it right to bring democracy to a nation which has not asked for it, especially if by doing so we ensure hundreds of thousands of deaths and years of instability?
Most of these questions are rhetorical and have no answers, except the last one, in which case the answer is no. True, democracy can be great. But many responsibilities must be met by the citizenry for it to work at all. At least two-thirds of the population must vote and do it with knowledge at hand, otherwise the government of the nation no longer represents a will of the majority of the people and no mandate is created. The populace must be aware of their rights, and practice them correctly and often. The people must be willing to compromise, or democracy will falter and eventually fail. And lastly, the people must desire democracy; otherwise, resentment for a new system will manifest in radicals which will dissent and attack against the new government. Iraq was not ready for democracy; the country is one of multiple ethnicities which for the most part have not had their days in the sun. Much of the nation has been repressed so long, they can't remember what it was like before Hussein. Without seeds of democracy in place, Iraq was thrust into a freer world which they quickly binged upon. In time, I am certain Iraqis will learn and determine what is right for them. But by proscribing our medicine upon them, we can never know whether Iraq would have wanted democracy, and whether it would have succeeded. Because our system was imposed by military force and has been marked by instability, violence, and suffering, much of Iraq will likely look upon democracy with disgust. And therefore, all hope for a peaceful and democratic Iraq has been shattered, at least for now. Only time heals a wound such as this.
And now, I will move on to Afghanistan, a more contested war in my terms. It is easier to justify this war as retaliation for the September 11 attacks, after all the Taliban-led government did harbor the terrorists who pulled it off. But once again, our history contradicts our actions here. Recently, the man who was convicted of planning and executing the Lockerbie bombing, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi died in Libya, his home (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-18137896). The Lockerbie bombing was a terrorist incident committed by the Libya government, along with others like the UTA 772 incident and the LaBelle Disco bombing. Yet we have never invaded Libya. We performed bombing in the 1980s, but never an invasion. We despised Libya and Gadhafi, mostly due to his rejection of capitalism and America in order to foster a "third universal theory". Even in the throes of revolution last year, we simply provided bombs to NATO. No matter how often governments support or tolerated our enemies in the past, we rarely invaded solely for those reasons. During the Cold War, we invaded multiple nations just to get rid of communism, yes. But Afghanistan was the first time we invaded a nation for harboring terrorists. The Taliban is an especially interesting case, because we helped to train them during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (http://www.cdi.org/terrorism/afghanistan-history-pr.cfm). As such, we provided the money, weapons, and intelligence the Taliban needed to take over Afghanistan and, later on, harbor terrorists that would attack us. This brings me back to an old adage: "don't go asking for a fight". It is too bad that we did. I'm not saying we deserved the September 11 attacks in any way; that is false and the attacks were horrible. But to anyone that honestly thinks those moments were an absolutely unpredictable shock, you are wrong. To think that nothing like this would ever happen in spite of our past actions is naive. Lastly, the government of a nation is not responsible for the actions of a few crazed men that live there. The Oklahoma City bombing happened on our own territory and was carried out by men born and raised under our government, yet we do not blame ourselves for these things. The same standard should be applied to Afghanistan. I agree that the Taliban is not the best form of government, and that Afghan life before the invasion wasn't all peaches and cream. But by toppling and persecuting the Taliban and reigniting the instability that Afghanistan was beginning to remove, we showed that we as a nation are not to be trusted and that we are not a good influence. There's a reason much of the world doesn't like us, and invading Afghanistan is a prime reason. You cannot justify so much death and suffering if retaliation against a few is your only back-up. For those wondering, here's a link to the death and suffering we have caused (although it is somewhat dated at this point, http://www.historyguy.com/war_in_afghanistan.html#.T7raj9wV0n0).
That is all for this week, and I hope I have made my case well and that perhaps some of you will consider changing your opinions on these wars as a result. My email at zerospintop@live.com is open to questions and comments, along with my Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ accounts. Commenting here is also encouraged, although I advise avoidance of random swearing and other forms of non-serious discussion. Thanks, and this is SuperJew McLovin, signing off.
this was fantastic reading!...excellent journalism!!!!.......thank you for your well researched and fact based opinions!...looking forward to your next posting, maybe something to do with professional basketball (NBA) in the U.S.?
ReplyDeleteSorry, there will never be a post on any sport of any kind. But thanks for reading.
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