Are we safer now that Saddam is in custody?

baldguy

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Mon Jan-05-04 08:36 PM
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Are we safer now that Saddam is in custody?

There are people who acknowledge that Bush lied to America about the Iraq war: lied about Saddam's WMDs, lied about the threat posed by Iraq, lied about the connection to Al Qiada, and lied about the costs involved – both monetarily and in human lives. Yet they still support the war. They say "The overthrow and capture of Saddam Hussein has made America safer and made the world safer. Isn't it better that this homicidal maniac is no longer in power? Isn't it a great step forward in the war on terrorism? Hasn’t Bush made us safer?"

Saddam is now in custody, yes. But, the world is not a safer place. The primary threat from Al Qiada is still there - Bush has done almost nothing to stem the tide of anti-American hatred surging through the Muslim world. Unbelievably, he has even added to it. After the attacks of Sept 11, America had the entire world behind us, willing to support us in nearly anything we did to destroy the Evil Doers that murdered 3000 people. Bush has totally squandered that outpouring of compassion and support. With his arrogance he has alienated our historic allies to the point where they look upon the warnings generated by our intelligence services as a way for the Bush administration to score political points domestically. And they'd be right. For the Bushies there's no distinction between policy and propaganda. The vast array of non-partisan gov't apparatus that has been carefully built up over the last fifty years, which was meant to provide professional, objective analysis on any number of various domestic and foreign areas of expertise. - has been co-opted to solely to support the narrow domestic agenda of the NeoCoservitive-Industrial Complex. And to hell with literally everything else.

Saddam is no longer a threat, yes. But, he wasn't a threat before the invasion. Saddam can no longer hatch plots with Osama. But, he wasn't doing that before the invasion, either. He can no longer indiscriminately murder his people. But, when he was doing that Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr were supporting him; they looked the other way and gave him more arms and money. Also, there have been more Iraqi civilians killed in the last several months since the invasion than in the prior twelve years since the first Gulf war. Iraqi civilians have more to fear from Bush Jr than they did from Saddam.

Bush has been distracted from his primary purpose as Commander-In-Chief - that is to protect American citizens from harm. His main objective as Commander-In-Chief should be to fight the very real terrorist threat which America and the civilized world must face together. But the NeoConservitive-Industrial Complex has other ideas. They've been planning the Iraq War for the last ten years with PNAC. The drums for war were beaten by the Right-Wing media. The fires of hatred for the Arab world were fanned by the "Christian" conservatives. War-profiteering corporations needed a pliable gov’t to involve with their ghoulish trade. The manufacturing of a war fell right in with their needs. And Bush is beholden to all of these groups for his current position.

I don't mean to excuse the behavior of Saddam. He is an evil man. However, there are many evil men in the world today, and it is the nature of the world is that evil men tend to seek power. If you need a boogey man to put on display to the world as an excuse for flexing our military muscle - there are better examples than Saddam Hussein. In Africa, in Central and South Asia, and yes - even in the Middle East.

I believe that the world IS a better place without Saddam in power. The United States created this monster, it's only fitting that we should be responsible for removing him - cleaning up the mess we made. But. . . There are better ways to remove filth which don't necessitate soiling yourself in the process. That would have been to act through the United Nations - maintain the UN Sanctions, support the UN weapons inspections, and negotiate with Saddam to get him to step down voluntarily in favor of democratic reforms. This most likely would have taken years - those who are impatient, with unrealistic expectations of diplomacy, would not have liked that. They prefer the quick, unsanitary way in which Bush acted.

In all our history, the better angels of our nature have abhorred the idea that we - as a nation dedicated to individual freedom - would descend to the level of barbarians and demean ourselves and our ideals by attacking a country which is weaker than us, which has not provoked us, which has done no harm to us or our allies, and which we had been able to keep in check indefinitely. Iraq was such a country. And we have destroyed it. Isn't it understandable to any rational person that people in the Arab world would want the American people to pay for the crimes of our present leader, just as Bush has made the Iraqi people suffer for the crimes of Saddam?

No, removing Saddam from power has not made America a safer place.