War with Iraq.
I've been trying to wrap my brain around that one for a while.
I just don't get it.
Am I that ignorant of world affairs? What little bit of information do I lack that would make going to war with Iraq make sense?
I've read about Saddam Hussein's roots and his rise to power. His story sounds depressingly similar to any ruthless ascendance on any continent in any century. In fact, his path to power reminds me a bit of Abraham Lincoln's: one failure after another. He took part in a coup attempt that fizzled. Then he participated in a plot to assassinate Iraq's prime minister, but that was discovered and he ran away. A few years later, his political party gained power and he returned to marry his cousin and breed. After a few months, his party was toppled and the authorities tossed him in the clink to spend a few years until his party once again turns up like a bad penny. Then he manages to wiggle his way to head of state. He celebrates by having dozens of his rivals killed. OK. So he sounds less like Lincoln and more like Hitler, Idi Amin, or Stalin. Quite a pedigree. I think that few sane people would deny that Saddam is a bad man on a grand, historical scale. He takes torture and death for dissenters as a given. He uses chemical weapons against populations. He has a talent for sticking his dork in it (Iran and Kuwait) and nearly getting it chewed off.
But do we need to go to war with him? Do we have any alternatives?
Some people might ask "What other evidence do you need?" But I have to be circumspect. If the United States tried to whack every homicidally psycho leader we'd have more Viet Nams and Somalias than you could count on your fingers and toes. The rest of the world might dislike us a bit more too.
I don't want to fall into a cycle of concession. I am no Neville Chamberlain. I know that we can never have "peace in our time" with Saddam. He is vicious and tenacious. He cannot be trusted. Some would call him a rabid dog, but that would be a mistake. One glance at history and it's clear that he's all too human, the bad sort of human, the genocidal, egomaniacal sort of human. Portraying Saddam as a hydrophobic canine is too simplistic. You shoot a rabid dog like Atticus did in To Kill a Mockingbird. Afterwards you have a dead dog that you have to dispose of carefully, not a world full of outraged and nervous nations, and an Iraq full of violently opposed factions with no murderous thug to frighten them into getting along.
So what about the sanctions? It looks like he's happy to allow his people to suffer while jingoistic Arabs keep him afloat. No dice there.
So does Iraq have weapons of mass destruction? To me, that's like asking "are men butt-raped in jail?" Still, I have yet to be shown hard evidence. All I hear are people who seem to be making it their best interest to attack Iraq. Yeah, the world would be a different place if the Great Powers of the West had squashed Hitler before he had a chance to practice blitzkrieg in Spain. If the bastard were to nerve gas all of Israel, we would have our justification too late and too many people would rejoice.
Most disappointingly, what I don't hear is this sort (or any sort) of circumspection on the part of the folks in power. What I hear is a constant, monotonous drumbeat of rhetoric, as if they are trying to convince themselves and everyone else that they are on the verge of doing the right thing. This reminds me of something my dad often reminds me about: "A lie repeated often enough becomes the truth." J. Goebbels. I also found: "The rank and file are usually much more primitive than we imagine. Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitious." -Joseph Goebbels. These are uncited quotes. I take them with more than a few grains of salt, but I think they get the idea across.
We are good because we love freedom. They are bad because they do not love freedom. We must go to war with the bad people. Oookay. Yeah. Mmm-hmm.
Pakeha
P.S. For anyone who cares like, say, Trond in deepest darkest New Zealand, the nick "Pakeha" is because I'm 50% Kiwi. My dad was an American sailor who made off with a wholesome Kiwi gal in the sixties. Much to the chagrin of most of the surviving family in New Zealand who were certain that American sailors were after one thing, they are still happily married. Also, I'm interested in the power that people invest in words like honky, nigger, cracker, wog, slope, gringo, gook, wop, haole, mic, hebe, kraut, abo, gai-jin, etc. ad infinitum.