Ding Dong the Witch is Dead

Ding, dong, the witch is dead! As a final note to 2006, Saddam Hussein was executed, therefore freeing Iraq from tyranny. Or so we were told. Honestly, I think the world is better off without the man. I’ve always believed that, and I never supported this new war in Iraq. Go figure. But this was a major event, a fitting end to a tumultuous year. And it got me thinking. What are my true feelings on the Iraq situation? Thanks to the miracles of the internet (thank you Gore) I am able to express how I really feel to the whole world. Or whoever reads this.

I have a few problems with this war, and have from the very beginning. What right did we have to be there in the first place? This is an interesting question. Do we have the right to police the world? Is it right for the only nation to ever use a nuclear weapon on another country to complain about other countries building nuclear devices? Do we have the responsibility to stop mass slaughter of innocents and the oppression of normal people? Do we have the right to topple a government, a nation, without provocation? (Of course, this last question excludes any lies, excuses, rationales, etc. that people may use to help them sleep at night.) These were the questions I was debating when we first entered Iraq. It’s not all black and white, and the consequences for our actions are very, very real. No, we shouldn’t just sit around and debate for long periods of time. No, we can’t just sit around and watch as atrocities are committed against innocents. We do have a responsibility. But that isn’t necessarily a call to arms. There are many avenues that were ignored or rushed through or never explored. I don’t claim to be an expert in politics or history, so I’m not a hundred percent sure about what I’m talking about, but I know how I feel and how I deal with people. I’ve seen what works on a personal level, and that’s all I really know. But what the Bush administration tried prior to the war in Iraq, from what I saw, was not what works on a personal level, and can therefore not work on a political level. This is the way I feel about the war. I don’t know why it was started. I don’t believe it was a war for oil. I don’t believe it was to finish his daddy’s business (this idea seems too childish, even for Bush), and I don’t believe it has anything to do with the war on terror. I do believe Bush is honest when he says it is the right thing to do, at least from his point of view, which is a little frightening (more on that later). But beyond that, I really don’t know. What I do know is that it doesn’t feel right. I know that if we profess to be the best nation, then we must exhaust all other options before using force. Because that is what the best would do. But we are beyond that now. The war has started. And, despite what some out there would say, it is over. We won. Period. The operation was a success. Saddam had been overthrown, and that was the point of victory. His regime was ended, and that is the marker of success. So what now?

Yes, I do realize there is still violence in Iraq. There are suicide bombers everyday that are taking the lives of people whose only crime is that they are in the wrong place at the wrong time. That includes the men and women in our armed forces as well as those Iraqis who will have to deal with the consequences of our actions long after we are gone. There are insurgents that want to topple the government we helped put into power. There are other countries that plot, everyday, how to destroy our nation and eliminate our presence in the middle-east. These are, however, aftereffects of the war in Iraq; the war is over. These events should have been planned for; they obviously were not. That is the greatest failing of the current administration. It is easy to knock over a tower; it is not always easy to pick the pieces back up. I did not agree with the war to begin with, but now that we are there, we have a responsibility. We have a duty to the people whose lives we have disrupted. We have a need, to the world and ourselves, to make sure we do the right thing. There can be no early withdrawal. We must stick this conflict out to the end. Iraq may be in the grips of a civil war, but we must help them through it. We must support the government we helped put into power. We must support the people we left without leadership. We must help those we left without protection, in the dark, alone. That is the right thing to do. It will take time. It will take patience. It will take work. It will take all of the things we refused to do at the beginning of this conflict. This I do know beyond the shadow of a doubt. If we see this through to the end, only then will I say that we did a good thing. Only then will I see our actions as those of a great nation. And we are a great nation. Now it is time to prove it.