The events in North Africa and the Middle East, especially in Libya, makes me wonder: what would be happening now in Iraq if we hadn’t arrogantly invaded it?
In 2003, I was one of those who believed that there was no easy way to get rid of Saddam Hussein and his regime. There was no opposition party; all the possible rebels had been gassed and murdered by Saddam’s military, no other nation in the Middle East wanted to get involved in a war with them, and Hussein certainly wasn’t old enough to die very soon of natural causes.
But war? A war started by America, as the only way to get rid of Hussein? I couldn’t buy that. There was no humanitarian crisis or oil shortage or threat to Israel great enough, in my opinion, to justify America becoming an aggressor nation.
However, rich, corrupt, power-mad immoral men like Cheney and Wolfowitz and the rest of that gang decided that war would be a perfect cover for their plan to transfer billions of dollars from the US Treasury to private interests and criminals. Expending our military hardware and erasing the lives of several thousand American soldiers helped cover up the real crime. And the devastation visited upon a modern industrialized country, reducing it to a ragged war zone with little or no security?. Well, that never entered into Cheney and company’s considerations. “So?” as Dick would grunt.
The only answer, it seemed to me, was to wait until conditions and attitudes change, and see if there was another way – without massive military intervention.
Read More