Tuesday, February 22, 2005

Bush was right?

Michael Totten, quoting a few weak-minded liberals, suggests that people were wrong to oppose invading Iraq, and that Bush was right. Mark Brown, of the Chicago Sun-Times, said a couple of weeks ago, "After watching Sunday's election in Iraq and seeing the first clear sign that freedom really may mean something to the Iraqi people, you have to be asking yourself: What if it turns out Bush was right, and we were wrong?" Totten quotes Jeff Simmermon ,who was moved by stories Iraqis who were voting in the U.S. "You may think that you have felt dumb before, but let me tell you something: until you have stood in front of a man who knows real pain and told him that you are against your country's alleviation of his country's state-sponsored murderous suffering, you have not felt truly, deeply, like a total f*cking moron." He also quotes an Iraqi saying, "almost all Iraqis in America will vote Republican for the rest of their lives."
I don't know about Brown or Simmermon, but I didn't oppose the invading Iraq becuase I didn't think that Saddam was bad, or because I oppose self-government in the Middle East. I opposed it because Saddam wasn't a threat to the U.S. (even if he had turned out to have a few chemical weapons). Also, I am convinced that invading a country that didn't threaten us, while tying down and over-extending the military, doesn't enhance national security.
As to whether "Bush was right;" that argument doesn't hold water for anyone with access to google. I remember the fear mongering from the Bush administration from the fall of 2002, including talk about "aluminum tubes." Who can forget: "we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud"? I also remember something called the "Axis of Evil." We invaded the weakest member even as the other two are well on their way to aquiring nuclear weapons.
Also, I am more impressed by Iraqis who plan to return to their country instead of staying here and voting Republican.

2 comments:

Clark said...

Obviously I did. Everything Kerry says, except the parts about Saddam being evil, are utter nonsense. The Clinton quote is about as bad. Saddam didn't even go down fighting--He preferred international public humiliation.
Iraq may blossom into a wonderful liberal democracy, but the Iraq invasion can't be justified by the claim that it eliminated a threat.

Glaivester said...

By the way, a lot of people ask "didn't Bill Clinton think that Sddam was a threat, too?"
My answer: no, he didn't. He said he did, but he's as big a liar as Bush.

"You say Bush lied. Was Clinton lying when he said that Saddam had WMDs?"

Gosh, Bill Clinton, lie? Golly gee, what are the chances?