So, it looks like the ordinance is once again falling on Iraq. The ultimatum's expired and Bush is going through with what he promised.
I don't think I've mentioned before on here what I think about the war, probably because I'm so tired of arguing about it with other people. But I'm basically in support of it. I have no doubt that it's justified - I'm not going to even bother arguing that. If you must have some justification, go to this forum thread on EvilAvatar.com and search the text for the word "Rantage." Read his post. Now, we should be more or less through with justification.
I don't think, though, that the thought of invading Iraq would have actually occured to me as a particulary good idea. I understand that it's connected in some way to the war on terror, but the connections are, well, only connections - Iraq and terrorism aren't one and the same. I suppose that this is something like a general leeriness towards preemptive attacks. Nobody was even thinking about Iraq, and then, all of a sudden, Bush brings to the national dinner table the proposal of waging a war. The support for the war doesn't come from any new information, for the most part - we've known about his WMD programs, torture of prisoners, etc. for years and years. But it is odd to let the Iraq issue sit for a dozen years and then start dropping bombs again.
It would have been best if Bush Sr. had followed through originally, but Desert Storm was simply giving Iraq a sound whack for invading Kuwait. Clinton said that he felt Iraq was a definite danger to the US (it's true!), but there was no public support for anything like that and he didn't have the gumption to rile anybody up. Iraq probably should be given a slightly less forgiving whack sometime, and I'm glad Bush is finally delivering one. It's just been so long since Iraq was in the news that it seems like this war came out of the blue, when it's merely been on a back burner (the flame of which might have gone out entirely should another president be in office) for over a decade.
But now that it's been brought up, I think I support it. The threat that Iraq poses does not seem entirely real to me; then again, the attacks on September 11th seemed to be unreal as well - not unreal in the sense that I felt like this was too terrible to be happening, but unreal in the sense that there was a complete lack of connection between me and the burning towers I saw on the news. As I said before, I doubt that, if the idea of war with Iraq had randomly come to mind a year or so ago, I would have seen any reason to support it. I doubt that I would have pushed for a war on my own (no, I'm not jumping on any pro-war bandwagon; I'm just saying that I wouldn't have seen anything to start a war over beforehand).
But now that it's been brought up by the President (whom I believe to be substantially more competent than many think, and who is at least clear-thinking), and evidence has been presented, there's no way to reasonably oppose it. The justification is there. We can go and do this, and I don't think I'd feel bad about having supported it. The only uncertainty is some nagging part of me that asks what's been done that's worth starting a war over. I try to silence it with the perfectly reasonable answer that we don't want to wait until Hussein has a nuke, but it remains strident in a low-profile way... again, there's some kind of hesitation towards preemptive action which isn't bothered by the demands of logic. In most cases, that hesitation is a good thing - preemptive strikes on flaky grounds can quickly turn a "good guy" country into a rogue state. But here, I think the grounds are firm enough to support what Bush is calling for.
I'm still unable, though, to grasp what's going on in any fashion other than intellectually. Cruise missiles have already struck Baghdad, yet it still seems to be taking place in some alternate universe. Sometimes I wonder if humans are truly capable of grasping what's going on outside their house, or on the other side of the wall, or in a country they've never seen. Can anyone really have true knowledge of a thing they never see for themselves?
posted on Thursday, March 20, 2003
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