Journal ArthurDent's Journal: War! What is it good for?!!?!
There's an anti-Vietnam war song that claims that war is good for absolutely nothing. Now, the Vietnam war probably at one point became that way and it unfortunately was long before our men were called home. You could make a case for it never being good for much in the first place.
That was then, this is now. The problem then was the spread of an ideology. The problem now is much more immediate. The problem is the threat of a lunatic dictator sitting a gold mine of oil having the ability to hold the entire world hostage to his maniacal whims.
We know the following things about Saddam Hussein beyond doubt:
1. He has total control over the opposition within his borders. If you think there is another choice on the ballot besides him that doesn't have deadly consequences, then I have a real estate proposition for you regarding a highway overpass in Brooklyn. Further, at this point it has pretty much been proven that no one has the ability to seize power.
2. He has weapons of mass destruction that he is not going to show to any inspector. Inspections are a farce. What makes you think you could find something that I hide for you in the state of California in a reasonable amount of time? That doesn't even take into account the fact that the things that the inspectors are looking for are *mobile*. Given those kinds of odds and you'll never find anything.
3. He has the will to use chemical and biological weapons. He did in the war with Iran, and he did on his own people to consolidate his power. What in the world makes anyone think he won't use them now?
4. He will single-mindedly ruin his own people in pursuit of WMDs. Do you think for a second that sanctions stopped him? They only ruined the Iraqi people. He has been selling oil. While the supply he has to work with is limited, it is more than sufficient to create an even deadlier force the longer things continue.
In short, he has the will, the means, and the opportunity to deal huge damage on a whim to whomever he wants, including us. He has no intention of disarming, and the litany of peaceful methods that we've tried to force him to disarm have failed.
Are we going to wait around for Saddam to use these weapons? Will we repeat our mistakes with Al Qaeda and wait for Saddam to attack first?
I can hear the complaints but they don't fly:
1. What about North Korea? Why not attack them under the same arguement? I'll tell you why. They are not sitting on top of the world's richest oil reserves. If they actually had capitol, they'd be more dangerous. They're also not crazy, just so culturally foreign to the Western mode of thinking that they are difficult to understand. Their motivation is to try to get out from under their own bad situation while maintaining their power over their own country. With that understanding, the situation should be able to be solved diplomatically.
2. If I hear one more person refer to Bush as the oil lobby's lap dog I'm going to hurl. This is *not* about oil, it's about pulling the gun out of the hand of a disturbed man who is holding hostages. To say that this is only about Iraq's oil is a cop out to a conspiracy theory.
3. What about the UN? Do we need world consensus? Well, when a person holds a gun to the head of another person do we need to pass a law through Congress to disarm the hostage taker? No. We take drastic measures to disarm him. This is the same thing. We need to take drastic measures to prevent something else terrible from happening. Remember, we're not the only country that is going to make this attack if we do make it. It will be a coalition, just not including Germany and France and anybody else who is not smart enough to come along for the ride.
Now, I like peace as much as the next guy, but this is an imperfect world. Sometimes we need to have a war to sustain peace. This is one of those cases.
War! What is it good for?!!?! More Login
War! What is it good for?!!?!
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