This War is a Sham!

I thought that the duty of the American government is to ensure the safety and well-being of Americans, and ensure the long-term security of the United States... not to liberate oppressed people around the globe.

Waging preventive war, whether you couch it in terms of "disarmament of WMDs" or "liberating oppressed populations," makes it way more likely that other states will balance American power in the future. It’s Nye’s paradox of power: the US is so strong that we make others nervous. So, they have to make sure to allay the nervousness of others by seeking consensus on their actions, lest their actions prompt them to turn the nervousness into balancing behavior. Being as strong as the US is means that they have to exercise their power that much more judiciously, and have damn good reasons for flexing their military muscle. This thing in Iraq ain’t a good enough reason, by far (and, just in case someone wants to paint me with a partisan label, that also goes for the previous administration’s use of force to protect Kosovo in 1999, and its use of force in Haiti some years earlier).

It’s a slippery slope when you start justifying war on humanitarian grounds. It’s a road paved with good intentions, and we know to where those kinds of road lead. I feel for the Iraqi people; however, I feel for Americans and the families of the soldiers (as should their government, since that’s what its constituents pay them to do). But this war is not about freeing the Iraqi people from Saddam’s tyranny. If this were the case in this conflict, the US would have to come after a lot more countries after Iraq whose people are suffering as a result of a brutal dictator (see any central African country), including a few of our so-called allies. It really bothers me that the US government would have to kill people in order to give them their freedom. I am almost positive a family member of a victim of an ’errant’ US bomb will wholeheartedly agree with me.

There are obvious fallacies to the US’s efforts into eradicating terrorism, one of the myriad of reasons the US administration has given in order to justify this war. The military efforts in both Afghanistan and Iraq have, in turn, produced a whole new generation of ’terrorists’. Children who have lost family members in bombs, will form a base of a disenfranchised people, who like any other sovereign population in this world, will become vehemently against a foreign occupation force. The hatred of the US will run so deep, that Osama Bin Laden will have a field day in recruting new members.

Is Saddam a threat to his own people? Most definetly. It is no secret how he ended the Kurdish and Shi’ite insurgencies. Is he a threat to his neighbors? Possibly. His military is now only a fraction of what it was during before the first Gulf War as a result of UN sanctions. Is he a threat to global stability? The jury is certainly still out on that one. The Iraqi military, obviously, has no means to attack the United States or any other country. Will they give ’Weapons of mass destruction’ to terrorists? I seriously doubt anyone individual or group has the methodology to launch a large weapon against the US.

Most of the world will not be sorry to see Saddam out of power, but I remain unconvinced that the world will be safer as a result. If the US continues to attack countries unprovoked, where they eventually draw the line? Iran? Syria? North Korea? They’ll be fighting wars for the next couple of decades. Unfortunately, other then oil companies fighting for untapped reserves in Iraq, there is no winner. There will never be in times of war.