US Iraq War (written 3/6/2003)
What started my curiosity was the sense that I was getting that what seemed to be inevitably coming forth, i.e. “War” was some how not feeling like a war, however wars feel like. War I thought was something that kind of came upon you without you really wanting it, but that if you didn’t engage in it you’d be sorry you hadn’t. Is that what we have here? In this situation we’ve almost been given a program guide to take us through what is to come about. It has seemed to me that what we really have is a nation accommodated police action, yet without all the appropriate reasons put in place. That is to say the “world” seems to collectively agree that Saddam Hussein is bad, but we’re not really sure what good is or better how we might attain good. So we have one nation obsessed with the idea that we should all be agreeing that we know we have a bad, so let’s all support the removal of it, yet our neighbors won’t go along. And now “we’re” looking or sounding . .. bad!
This reminds me of the time where as a child, being a year older than the rest of the kids on my block, I felt I had some responsibility to both be the coolest and the fairest. This all came to greater awareness, when a “new” kid moved onto our block. He was perceived and perhaps truly was tougher than any of us, and we had more than a little resistance to letting him play with us. Of course my own self-perceived aggrandizement was challenged, and I felt threatened. Somehow I came up with the idea one day that this menace had to be dealt with. I goaded a couple of other kids to wait in front of our apartment house, while I would go meet up with this new kid and coax him to come over to where the rest of our little group was and collectively, we would all proceed to beat him up. Well the plan seemed to be going well, when the new kid and I arrived back in front of our house, but the other kids were either gone or not willing to carry out the dirty work. Now I was up against it, and though later in life I became acutely aware of my dislike or fear of fighting, in this case I guess the fear of looking stupid was greater, so I literally closed my eyes and started swinging at this kid. In a very short time, I only but heard his crying, and I opened my eyes to see him gone. I’ve never had peace about that incident. Well is President Bush in the position now to start the swinging while the other nations have run off? And do we really need to start swinging? Somehow these seem very similar choices. At the very least, perhaps this is an example of how a current news event sparks thoughts for each of us individually of how we perceive justice or the lack of it.
There’s another parallel in all this. The briefings by Collen Powell utilizing intelligence photos and audiotapes remind me of my attempts to convince the other kids that this whole conflict is necessary. Both sets of reasons were pitiful. I feel bad for Collen Powell who seemingly has gained an immeasurable amount of respect, given his humble well-chosen word style communication, dating back to the gulf war of ’91. Is that the best the CIA could equip him? It has seemed to me that George Bush set him up! And sadly even Collen Powell himself has allowed himself to get caught up in this reactionary avalanche. What did we expect . . . . from the world when we present a picture from thousands of miles in the sky and claim it’s a truck with chemical or biological weapons on board? Or we offer up an audio tape, of what could have been anyone, and plead to other nations to assume we’ve caught them red handed; “You must see what we see!” How sad, and how sad we look. Saddam Hussein proclaimed in documentaries is portrayed as a clever power hungry thug. Thanks to our nation's stupidity, Saddam Hussein has not had to be clever, only patient, for we’ve ensured his longevity. I can’t imagine that we will actually go to war, . . now .. . at least not in any rational way. We’ve already lost the war from a public opinion standpoint. Now we’ll likely have to assume a major burden of lives and money lost and worst perhaps of all continued targeting from distorted justifiable religious zealot terrorism. I believe the bible speaks of the end times and a surprise initiation. Is this the surprise? I know I’m at least ashamed of the manner we’ve engaged this challenge.
Getting back to the idea of War vs. what I would call a police action. It seems we could have taken a number of different paths, though I do believe the presence of our forces in the gulf region has brought some necessary actions to bear. We should have downplayed the labeling of this whole affair as a war. For the UN to be empowered (save its own face) it needed to have the appropriate labels for its actions to be supportive. Member nations of the UN were not likely to be supportive of a war, especially given the obvious gains the US would assume from it. Rather the US should have been working to change the rhetoric to a world police action, and raised human rights charges against Saddam Hussein. I’d even go so far as to say that we might have brought about the indictment of so-called dictatorships themselves in the modern era.
Consider this with me. What if we had been lobbying already for a time to the UN that the role of a dictator in ANY country in the present age is inappropriate and counterproductive to world socio-economic causes? Had such a course been travailed, we might have had grounds for charges against Saddam Hussein, whereby his entire mode of operation might have come under scrutiny and indictment. He might then be tried for crimes against humanity. Instead we have now, the perceived idea around the world and within the US, that in reality, this is about George Bush attempting to vindicate his family’s name, and perhaps worse is the perception that this all is an imperialist show of power!
I find it curious that since at present we already have inspectors in place within Iraq, with a measure of compliance from them, how an attack is justified. Again why not carry forth a more police oriented sense to its conclusion. If it’s regime change then again, put Saddam Hussein up for charges against humanity, and declare that a UN force will be taking the country over and if no resistance is met, no so-called war will transpire. Appeal to the people of Iraq, that a regime change will be forth coming, sanctioned by the UN, and only resistance will be cause for bloodshed. Such would put the onus on the Iraqi’s.
So what if war is avoided? How can we back out now and save face? If we have more intelligence, it needs to come forth . . fast. Otherwise we need to free Collen Powell from the shackles of tagging along with Bush into an impossible stance. We need to back down, and respond to the call of the people. If later a terrorist attack is shown to come from Iraq equipping some extremist group, well then we will have the onus again. But for now we’ve lost it, … though we didn’t have to. President Bush’s need to appear strong for our nation, in some sort of Truman / Roosevelt-like order, is going to bring about some complexity. We can’t back down well, but we can back down, for at least a later date. And we need to! Alternately pray that we can do whatever we think we’re going to do cleanly and swiftly!
What started my curiosity was the sense that I was getting that what seemed to be inevitably coming forth, i.e. “War” was some how not feeling like a war, however wars feel like. War I thought was something that kind of came upon you without you really wanting it, but that if you didn’t engage in it you’d be sorry you hadn’t. Is that what we have here? In this situation we’ve almost been given a program guide to take us through what is to come about. It has seemed to me that what we really have is a nation accommodated police action, yet without all the appropriate reasons put in place. That is to say the “world” seems to collectively agree that Saddam Hussein is bad, but we’re not really sure what good is or better how we might attain good. So we have one nation obsessed with the idea that we should all be agreeing that we know we have a bad, so let’s all support the removal of it, yet our neighbors won’t go along. And now “we’re” looking or sounding . .. bad!
This reminds me of the time where as a child, being a year older than the rest of the kids on my block, I felt I had some responsibility to both be the coolest and the fairest. This all came to greater awareness, when a “new” kid moved onto our block. He was perceived and perhaps truly was tougher than any of us, and we had more than a little resistance to letting him play with us. Of course my own self-perceived aggrandizement was challenged, and I felt threatened. Somehow I came up with the idea one day that this menace had to be dealt with. I goaded a couple of other kids to wait in front of our apartment house, while I would go meet up with this new kid and coax him to come over to where the rest of our little group was and collectively, we would all proceed to beat him up. Well the plan seemed to be going well, when the new kid and I arrived back in front of our house, but the other kids were either gone or not willing to carry out the dirty work. Now I was up against it, and though later in life I became acutely aware of my dislike or fear of fighting, in this case I guess the fear of looking stupid was greater, so I literally closed my eyes and started swinging at this kid. In a very short time, I only but heard his crying, and I opened my eyes to see him gone. I’ve never had peace about that incident. Well is President Bush in the position now to start the swinging while the other nations have run off? And do we really need to start swinging? Somehow these seem very similar choices. At the very least, perhaps this is an example of how a current news event sparks thoughts for each of us individually of how we perceive justice or the lack of it.
There’s another parallel in all this. The briefings by Collen Powell utilizing intelligence photos and audiotapes remind me of my attempts to convince the other kids that this whole conflict is necessary. Both sets of reasons were pitiful. I feel bad for Collen Powell who seemingly has gained an immeasurable amount of respect, given his humble well-chosen word style communication, dating back to the gulf war of ’91. Is that the best the CIA could equip him? It has seemed to me that George Bush set him up! And sadly even Collen Powell himself has allowed himself to get caught up in this reactionary avalanche. What did we expect . . . . from the world when we present a picture from thousands of miles in the sky and claim it’s a truck with chemical or biological weapons on board? Or we offer up an audio tape, of what could have been anyone, and plead to other nations to assume we’ve caught them red handed; “You must see what we see!” How sad, and how sad we look. Saddam Hussein proclaimed in documentaries is portrayed as a clever power hungry thug. Thanks to our nation's stupidity, Saddam Hussein has not had to be clever, only patient, for we’ve ensured his longevity. I can’t imagine that we will actually go to war, . . now .. . at least not in any rational way. We’ve already lost the war from a public opinion standpoint. Now we’ll likely have to assume a major burden of lives and money lost and worst perhaps of all continued targeting from distorted justifiable religious zealot terrorism. I believe the bible speaks of the end times and a surprise initiation. Is this the surprise? I know I’m at least ashamed of the manner we’ve engaged this challenge.
Getting back to the idea of War vs. what I would call a police action. It seems we could have taken a number of different paths, though I do believe the presence of our forces in the gulf region has brought some necessary actions to bear. We should have downplayed the labeling of this whole affair as a war. For the UN to be empowered (save its own face) it needed to have the appropriate labels for its actions to be supportive. Member nations of the UN were not likely to be supportive of a war, especially given the obvious gains the US would assume from it. Rather the US should have been working to change the rhetoric to a world police action, and raised human rights charges against Saddam Hussein. I’d even go so far as to say that we might have brought about the indictment of so-called dictatorships themselves in the modern era.
Consider this with me. What if we had been lobbying already for a time to the UN that the role of a dictator in ANY country in the present age is inappropriate and counterproductive to world socio-economic causes? Had such a course been travailed, we might have had grounds for charges against Saddam Hussein, whereby his entire mode of operation might have come under scrutiny and indictment. He might then be tried for crimes against humanity. Instead we have now, the perceived idea around the world and within the US, that in reality, this is about George Bush attempting to vindicate his family’s name, and perhaps worse is the perception that this all is an imperialist show of power!
I find it curious that since at present we already have inspectors in place within Iraq, with a measure of compliance from them, how an attack is justified. Again why not carry forth a more police oriented sense to its conclusion. If it’s regime change then again, put Saddam Hussein up for charges against humanity, and declare that a UN force will be taking the country over and if no resistance is met, no so-called war will transpire. Appeal to the people of Iraq, that a regime change will be forth coming, sanctioned by the UN, and only resistance will be cause for bloodshed. Such would put the onus on the Iraqi’s.
So what if war is avoided? How can we back out now and save face? If we have more intelligence, it needs to come forth . . fast. Otherwise we need to free Collen Powell from the shackles of tagging along with Bush into an impossible stance. We need to back down, and respond to the call of the people. If later a terrorist attack is shown to come from Iraq equipping some extremist group, well then we will have the onus again. But for now we’ve lost it, … though we didn’t have to. President Bush’s need to appear strong for our nation, in some sort of Truman / Roosevelt-like order, is going to bring about some complexity. We can’t back down well, but we can back down, for at least a later date. And we need to! Alternately pray that we can do whatever we think we’re going to do cleanly and swiftly!
No comments:
Post a Comment