Alex Bellotti Jr writing for Veterans Against the Iraq War on Why Is My Son Being Sent To Iraq?
Since the end of major combat, our young men are still dying over there, and I can’t really comprehend why. I don’t know why President Bush sent our men there in the first place. I don’t know why the president was so dead-set against letting U.N. weapons inspectors finish their job there. I want to know why.
I know all of the officially stated reasons: Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and would use them; Saddam Hussein was a cruel and evil dictator who murdered tens of thousands of his own people; he had to be removed from power to make the world safer. But when Donald Rumsfeld, as a special envoy for the Reagan administration, traveled to Iraq in 1984, the United States was eager to improve relations with Saddam, despite his use of chemical weapons against his own countrymen, the Kurds, and in spite of Congress’ condemnation of the use of those weapons. Where was our concern about a safe world then?
The pro-war crowd sure loves to cluck endlessly about how we had to take Saddam out because “he gassed his own people!!!!!”
Of course, to the neo-cons, LINOs and chickenhawks, it doesn’t matter that our current Secretary of Defense was making nice with Saddam AFTER he gassed his own people. They downplay this disgusting courting of a brutal dictator, while simultaneously accusing the anti-war crowd of coddling a dicatator. Ain’t that rich?
These folks didn’t care about the previous Carter, Reagan and Bush Administration’s coddling of a dictator then, but they suddenly want him gone now? In part, for the exact same offenses they’ve ignored in the past? Fascinating.
These folks care now because this is about so much chest-thumping, flag-waving and nationalistic cowardice by men and women who have not, and never will wear a uniform or put their own bodies on the line. They don’t really care about the gassing of Iraqis by Hussein. There references to Hussein atrocities amount to a steaming pile of hyper-emotional bluster meant to portray the anti-war crowd as insensitive to the suffering of the Iraqi people. These are same caring folks who have made excuses when our troops have slaughtered Iraqi civilians over the past year. See, when Saddam kills innocent civilians – bad, bad, bad. When coalition forces kill innocent civilians – okey-dokey pokey. These folks didn’t care about the devastation on the Iran and Iraq populations during their brutal war in the 1980s. They didn’t care that our government artificially extended that war, increasing the death and destruction. They didn’t care that Saddam was our buddy from 1958 up until he invaded Kuwait in 1990 (after basically asking for our permission to do so). Now, they suddenly care.
Sure they do.