worth the trip 🙂

There is a thread happening at Ms. magazine discussing recent events in [[wp:Iraq]]. Specifically, there is much … well, gloating is one word… that it looks like there are no large [[wp:WMD]] plants to be found. The usual rhetoric started cropping up about the war – they were against it of course. Somehow extreme feminism, anti-capitalism, environmentalism and so on are all tied together.

Anyway, I have posted my thoughts on this before, but I re-wrote some of it to put up there. I doubt they will like it much. Obviously there is some intimately tied feminist<->anti-war  agenda that I will run afoul of, but I’ll put my two cents in here anyway.

ed. note: the MeFi thread on this topic was pretty long and had a few decent posts.

Posted by Soulhuntre 0n 05.15.2003 @ 20:01

As one of those who supported the war I am ambivalent about the lack of WMD findings. It isn’t really an issue for me… and it never was. War is a undertaking that always needs to be considered carefully and only decided upon when the reasons are overwhelming .. but there are often multiple reasons for every way. This one is no different.

In no particular order:

• Saddam and his government were supporters of the terrorists and extremists who seek to do the US harm. Without this support, the threat of terrorism is somewhat reduced.
• In absence of compelling geopolitical reasons to support a dictator; taking one out of action when possible is a good thing in and of itself.
• The WMD program in Iraq was a credible possibility and a credible threat. This threat could no be ignored.
• After 8 or more years of broken treaties and continue hostilities after the first Gulf war, it was clear that Iraq would not hesitate to employ a WMD once militarily significant quantities were available.
• Driving a wedge into block of anti-US religious fundamentalist states in the region is a very, very good thing. As danger from that area increases in the wake of 9/11 (and it has increased) something needed to be done to begin to break up the growing power block in the middle east. As Iraq was widely believed in the area to be the “top contender” to confront the US and a model others emulated in their own dictatorships – the swift and easy manner in which it was dispatched will give pause to others.
• Increasing our access to strategically important resources (i.e. oil) in that region is a good thing.
• Securing an additional long term base of operations in the region is a good thing.

Basically, the next real danger for the US lies in the Middle East. With Europe impotent and the USSR a memory we have only China, North Korea and the Middle East as serious threats to continued US survival as a major power. The invasion of Iraq is an important first step in reducing the Middle Eastern threat.

As China is too strong militarily for direct invasion, I expect that we will destroy that threat as we did the USSR. Simply make it too expensive for them to exist as our enemy. The US creates wealth and innovation at a rate that systems liek China and the USSR (not to mention N. Korea) simply cannot match. In the end we will win a stalemate against any such regime.

In short, the Iraq war was about much more than the WMD threat – but that credible threat did indeed dictate the timing. That the labs and factories were moved is no shock… a good biochemical weapons lab fits in 4-5 18 wheeler vehicles and could have gone to Syria weeks before the war. If they never existed at all – so much the better.

I’m probably what most here will consider a hawk. I LIKE living in the sole remaining global superpower. I think the most important thing a nation has to do is survive… and to do that it needs to act to eliminate credible threats when it can do so.

This war was basically a win-win. Casualties were extremely light, the objectives were achieved and a LOT less people (including women) will be tortured, raped and killed in the next year because of it. I am missing how that is a bad thing.

• Isn’t less torture in the world inherently a good thing?
• Isn’t less rape in the world inherently a good thing?
• Isn’t less murdered children in the world inherently a good thing?
• Isn’t less EVIL in the world inherently a good thing?

I don’t support much of the panic since 9/11. I HATE the Patriot acts (I & II) and I detest the loss of domestic freedoms in the name of security. I am appalled at much of what is happening to the court system and immigration systems in the wake of the attacks. I think bad people are trying to use our fear to remove our rights and increase their own power. I do NOT agree with everything that the Republican party, and especially this president, has to say.

All that being true, I think this war resulted in dramatically good things..

No one with any familiarity with the issues involved in WMD development should be really surprised they weren’t found, or think that means they were never there. Hell, the whole POINT of cutting short the inspection process was that it is trivially easy to hide this stuff… that not finding it isn’t proof it wasn’t there. The only way to be sure was to remove the political organ that would use it.