Selective Pro-War Liberators

For the pro-war crowd, if Bush is right on Iraq now, then what do we do about his father who helped provide Saddam with the base of his chemical and biological weapons program through the Reagan/Bush Administration? Do we just go to war and pretend that Hussein appeared out of nowhere and let his enablers and sugardaddies off? Or do we do the consistent thing and prosecute those Presidents and Vice Presidents who, since 1963 illegally and perilously provided training, money, military technology, intelligence and other assistance to Hussein on his rise from revolutionary to dictator?

Without U.S. interference in Iraq from 1963 – 1979, Saddam wouldn't have risen to power. Contrary to neocon illogic, this stuff doesn't happen in a vacuum. If removing Saddam is important enough for American men and women and Iraqi men and women to die over, then it is, consequently, important enough to hold those Americans who conspired to create this problem responsible. To do anything less diminishes the case made by those in favor of an immediate war.

After Iraq, if we are to be consistent about getting rid of threats, and everyone in favor of this war claims that to be the issue, then we should naturally topple Zimbabwe, where Mugabe has been a major security risk to his neighbors and the world for several years. Let's not forget communist China, North Korea, Cuba and barely together Pakistan (only an ally in most narrow sense of the world), Saudi Arabia (where 90% of the Al Qaeda hijackers were from, consequently none were from Iraq), and Turkey which has been brutally oppressing their Kurdish minority for generations and endangering it's shared border with Iraq.

Which brings us to the other argument for war: we're doing it to liberate the Iraqi people. Of course, while we're at it how can we ignore the oppressed Roma in Slovakia? Naturally, we have to topple Sudan and end it's brutal slave trade. Well, what about the women in Saudi Arabia? Or the still oppressed (but only slightly less) women of Kuwait? What about those African nations where brutal female sexual mutilations are still performed on children? Don't these women and little girls rate freedom too?

What gives with the double standards on who gets freed and who gets left behind? It seems a little substandard for the pro-war crowd to claim this is a war of liberation, when they aren't crying out for military-style justice anywhere else. Of course, neo-con illogic is kind of like that.