2003-03-24|1:53 p.m.
First off, I want to apologize for referring to Saddam Hussein simply as Saddam. You were absolutely correct. From now on I will only refer to him as Hussein.
But that might still not be enough for some people, it seems. Maybe I should only refer to him as Evil Man, every time he comes up, since I don�t seem to be expressing my recognition that he is in fact not a �swell guy.�
My last entry has made me quite unpopular especially amongst my friends. In the last entry sits this comment:
�running the risk of sounding incredibly ignorant, i am going to attempt to address this one. i have to say this: i don't feel that this conflict (war) is completely wrong. i honestly do not think that saddam hussein is a swell guy that actually does nice things for the iraqi people. do you? and regardless of our own foreign policy vices, i don't go through life believing that our elected officials are all inherently ill-intentioned. how can you capture the truth m? it doesn't exist on one side or the other...�
Along with the IMs that I have received from friends, there was also an email from another friend:
�diaryland won't let me post a comment, but i wanted to say at least that--well, even though the US has a bloodied past, that doesn't make it alright for Iraq's brutal present. you and i weren't around for the native american genocide (thankfully) and neither was president bush (though i bet his forefathers were). so if we can do better today, we should, but we can't sit around and blame andrew jackson for why we won't help people. should we have let europe continue its genocide of the jews because we killed the native americans? i don't want war--living in LA now, i am petrified of war, if even just for my own sake. But the great dilemma about the "decapitation" operation is not should saddam be removed or not--there is no question about that. a man that dips his people in chemical baths, assembles public hangings, and pushes living people through meat grinders, however free people are said to be, cannot be in power. no�the dilemma is: are we the people to remove him? i don't know. on tv, they were interviewing an Iraqi community in Michigan who said the West put saddam in power. i don't know if that's true or what exactly went on, but they were calling for the west to take him out for putting him in. what i want to say is don't let america's slippery history make saddam seem not so bad. do you really believe that?....�
I have to clear some things up first and foremost. I do not think that Hussein is a �swell guy.� Nor do I believe that by recognizing our past injustices do I make his crimes �seem not so bad.� I did in fact mention that he was a bad person THREE times and also recognized three popularly known crimes of his regime. It�s a huge mistake to assume that anyone anti-war is also pro-Hussein, which is simply the biggest fallacy that pro-war people are taking advantage of.
My purpose in talking about the US�s past crimes was specific: there is a broader problem going on than just the Iraq situation right now. You know and I know that the US is continually financing and otherwise supporting despotic regimes worldwide, to satisfy immediate needs without regard to long-term consequences. This happens over and over again, and Iraq is just another in a long line of instances. And now George W. Bush wants to make a pre-emptive strike. What I am suggesting is that maybe the pre-emptive strike we need is to not support these kinds of guys in the first place, and therefore not kindling the murders and resentments that happen over and over everywhere the US has done this.
And I know that Hussein exists right now, and a lot of the reasoning involves �eliminating the new Hitler.� Well, if you remember, we didn�t join WWII to save the Jews. We didn�t join the war for years after it began, and only then because we were attacked by Japan. Germany had a pact with Japan and declared war on the US, and thus we entered. It is first a dangerous leap to assume we were on a crusade to save the Jews from a tyrant, just like it is a dangerous leap to believe we are fighting in Iraq to save Iraqis. Allies weren�t unaware of the Holocaust, and you can bet individuals fighting the war wished to free people as it is with the best intentions of our current troops. NONE of this excuses the war at the level of our political leaders, however, and that has nothing to do with a misguided belief that all politicians are �inherently ill-intentioned.� The fact is, politicians should NEVER be ill-intentioned. Any acceptance of this is a problem, this whole idea that �politicians will do as politicians do,� as with �boys will be boys,� is entirely destructive.
And if you really still insist on giving the US credit for WWII, which I don�t entirely disagree with anyway, how does that now give us a free ticket to be the arbiter of �good� and �evil� worldwide (see comment in last entry from Special K)? The French fought in WWII, but their opinion on this is moot. As did Canada. As did Germany. (Oops, that last is a bad example, maybe). Just like you can�t argue that the US�s past crimes don�t mean that Americans now can�t recognize what�s wrong in the world (which wasn�t what I said in the previous entry), you can�t say all American efforts are justified based on past instances of good will.
So I brought up El Salvador as just another example of this constant screwing with people that backfires EVERY SINGLE TIME. Earlier I mentioned how politicians choose methods such as war to satisfy immediate problems. I�ll provide you the explanation: presidents want to be re-elected, and successful short term fixes reflect positively on them enough to get that re-election, and the negative aftermath shows up later for other presidents to have to clean up. So now this president finds he has a mess to clean up, and again turns to a short term fix, and another president will have to clean up that mess. The cycle lives on. I�m not necessarily being entirely critical of the democratic system, but I do believe it is the people�s responsibility to make themselves aware of this flaw, and do the best they can to temper it with informed decisions. In this case, the present war, our president has chosen just another short term fix to clean up the results of the last one (the family legacy).
Where you understood me clearly is in my belief that this war is completely wrong. I know a lot of people believe that the ultimate good of saving Iraqis is all that matters. The thing is, our government doesn�t care at all about saving Iraqis. That is not why we are there with tanks and bombs. We are there so the businessmen who run this country right now (i.e. the Bush cabinet) can establish formal claim to the second-biggest oil holdings in the world, without having that pesky middle-man in the way. What government will be in place when the war is through? It�s definitely going to be someone in the US�s interests, as happened in Nicaragua, Panama, pre-Castro Cuba, the Philippines, Iran, Iraq, the currently still-devastated Afghanistan, and the list goes on and on. And those who suffer from this, of course, have always been and will be here: the people.
And you might be right that Iraq will still be better off under the American regime than the Hussein regime, but only for the survivors. I just wonder if the dead will feel satisfied with knowing they could have shared this freedom with the rest, but we decided it just wasn�t as convenient for us to do things the right way.
Also, I want to thank people for responding to what I have said and will say honestly and straightforwardly. I�m glad you can see this as an open forum for discussion, and I would encourage anyone not to hold back. I appreciate it.
Lastly, I want to say thank you to Michael Moore for having the courage to express the truth in the face of opposition and zealotry. And I wholeheartedly agree. Shame on you, Mr. Bush!