War and Pretend Peace

Sometimes I am described as someone who "likes the war". As if by some supreme logic that someone who supports war is someone that enjoys it to any alternative.

Sure I would enjoy the alternative. In a perfect world, a jew, Adolf Hitler, Osama Bin Laden, and a slav would all enjoy a beer on the patio together. To those that do a little bit of thinking this seems as probable as a bunch of dogs playing poker.

The only way to really sort out the world's issues is to move everyone over the age of ten to the moon. This would leave the young humans left on the planet largely unaware of religion, borders, etc. Additionally it would leave what is left of humanity without many means of killing each other.

But this Lord of the Flies scenario does not necessarily mean that the culture that would develop would be any more healthy, tolerant and peace-loving.

For these reasons and many more, we must sadly forget about forging a utopian society using the next generation as guinea pigs.

So what's the alternative?

Well, it is most likely a little bit of war here and there. A lot of people seem to be the modern equivalent of Neville Chamberlain and thinking we can all sit down and drink a beer with people that would like to see us dead. In the meantime, they also bitch about the battles we did not fight, such as Rwanda, Darfur and Lebanon as the most recent example.

In addition to the Chamberlains, we have the Duchovnys, the people that think George Bush is something like a wiser version of Satan, that has been a part of a conspiracy dating from before 2000. Yes, the man they like to deride for his inability to form proper sentences has devised a master plan to fuck the world over. Good job on the thought patterns there.

Why Iraq?

An Intelligence Failure

Yes, it must be said that this story begins with an intelligence and PR failure. WMD's just weren't there.

What our ("our" as in the entire western world) so-called intelligence services failed to see was that if Saddam was to admit that he was effectively emasculated, somebody would have killed him. So of course the guy is not going to let the UN run in there and show the world (and the citizens that hate him) that he does not have jack shit to kill them with.

But the public relations department ran with it. How else would you convince the common folk to go to war if there was not a clear and present danger? The problem was that eventually everyone figured out the war did not go down as advertised.

The Bush administration sold a bunch of people a vacuum and told them it would do their laundry. A vacuum has many uses, but it needs to be accurately described in order to not create a bunch of unhappy customers.

It is not about oil

The Iraq war is about oil as much as it is about Pez.

If you think about just who is producing oil, Iraq seems like small peanuts in the global oil market. Especially when you consider that there is happens to be oil in other places as well. So shut up about the war being about oil.

But we need to scream and yell at Bush about something, don't we?

Yes, sure. If you want to have an arguing point that pushes Bush in a bad light, you could say his motivations for war were mostly grown out of a hatred of Hussein passed on from his father. It would indeed be foolish to get the army after a guy just because you do not like the way he looks. At the same time, it does show consistent and predictable policy, however insane it was.

We could have had peace! We could have just sat here!

It's not like it's the first time this has happened...

Everybody seems to forget Saddam is a total meathead and just generally a bad guy that we've tried to kill before.

Saddam had started a war with Kuwait ages ago and was going to legitimately get booted out of power. Even Saudi Arabia and Canada participated in that one. In the end it was decided to leave it up to a coup. It is unfortunate we did not kick out the government when everyone was on-side. Oh well.

Nobody likes us. This mess was started by being friendly to asshole dictators.

Osama does not like America cause it's cozy with the Saudis. Iran does not like America because it was cosy with the Shah. Maybe now is the time that somebody actually tries to support some half-democratic patched together governments in the mideast instead of the usual jerks that we make deals with?

The battles we do not fight haunt us later

Think Darfur. Think Rwanda. Hell we were only there half the time when all that shit in the Balkans was going down.

Now with all that shit going on in North Korea, people everywhere are wondering why we did not take care of that crazy bastard of a ruler in the 1950's when we had the chance.

In an alternative future where we did not invade Iraq, maybe in 50 years people would wonder why we decided to tolerate Saddam Hussein for as long as we did? The dude is sitting on a shitload of oil and he was already known to spend his money on weapons and palaces. What the hell would he have spent it on if we dropped the embargo and actually traded with the guy?

As the Trojans who let the horse in the gates quickly found out, do not expect free gifts from people that hate your guts. Germany, one of the largest critics of the Iraq war, is finding bombs on its doorstep anyways. This in some respect debunks the myth that if you stay out of the mideast and appease the crazies, crazies will cease to bother you.

While it is lamentable that the reasons put forward to pursue war in Iraq do not adequately put America in its desired role as a just combatant, it could be said that history shows a story of a definitely unjust adversary. A story of a dictator that squashed dissent in ways unheard of even in China.

The leaders of the insurgency have not been much better. What would be a legimate movement has actually been led by a bunch of foreigners, the first being Abu_Musab_al-Zarqawi, known for blowing up his fellow Jordanians.

Was the leader of the Free French from Poland? No. Should the leaders of the Iraqi insurency be muslim extremists from other countries? No. But if news can be trusted, that is what is happening. And that's bogus.

If you want to sit around, smoke up, vote NDP and watch the western world get picked apart by crazies funded by crazies, taught by crazies and harboured by crazies, so be it.

Otherwise, screw pacificism.