-By Frank Salvato
“It is as useless to argue with those who have renounced the use of reason as to administer medication to the dead.” – Thomas Jefferson
As progress continues to be made in every aspect of the Iraqi conflict — militarily, socially and politically — the debate among the ideologically entrenched here in the United States rages on. This is in large part due to the positioning of candidates from all political parties in preparation for the 2008 elections. There is an intense desire to look both peace-loving and hawkish on the issue of the Iraqi front in the overall war against Islamofascist aggression. This is not an easy task when they are simultaneously declaring their support for the soldiers in the field and questioning the value of the mission and how well it is being executed. Meet the two-faces of the political panderer. Not very attractive, are they?
While factions of our society debate the pros and cons of US military intervention in Iraq the facts presented for the initiation of efforts there have always stood clearly defined. They were laid out in no uncertain terms, and in order of priority, by President Bush before the United Nations General Assembly on September 12, 2002:
- Violation of UN Security Council Resolution 688 : Human rights violations and the torture, rape and murder of political opponents and ordinary citizens, including the genocide of the Iraqi Kurds.
- Violations of UN Security Council Resolutions 686 and 687 : The refusal to release prisoners of war captured during the Gulf War.
- Violations of UN Security Council Resolutions 687 and 1373 : The refusal to disassociate with terrorist organizations and the facilitation of terrorist entities within and traveling across Iraq borders.
- Violations of UN Security Council Resolutions 660 , 661 , , 686 , 687 678, , 707 , 715 688, 986 and 1284 : Refusal to cease development programs for weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles, and refusal to allow UN inspectors uninhibited access to any and all weapons development programs.
In summary: genocide, refusal to return prisoners of war, enabling of terrorists and their organizations, refusal to cease WMD development programs and refusal to allow verification of said cessation.
You will notice the obvious absence of the anti-war Progressive-Left’s favorite myth, that the US invaded Iraq because the “neo-cons” said they had stockpiles of WMD. That’s because the WMD argument was manufactured by anti-Bush politicos and spin doctors, disseminated by an agenda-driven media and promoted by the anti-war Progressive-Left. It was always about the issue of WMD development and verifying the successful destruction of not only the existing WMD – WMD that the UN documented and verified Hussein had – but the long-range missiles he had to deploy them. It was always about the programs and the “grave and gathering threat” those programs posed.
That being said, the only reason that should have ever been required by the UN, the American people and/or the free world for deposing Saddam Hussein’s regime was the first reason – human rights violations and mass murder to the point of genocide.
The idea that somehow deposing a tyrannical ego-maniac like Saddam Hussein, a despot who held the most contrived elections this side of Venezuela, who systematically eliminated his political and ideological opposition by torturing, maiming, raping and murdering them – in genocidal numbers – the idea that dispatching this regime from power was somehow the wrong thing to do is confounding to me.
To all of the anti-war, Code Pink, MoveOn.org types among us – and so too to the Libertarian isolationists – I ask and will continue to ask, especially with regard to the US mission in Iraq: When did genocide become acceptable to you, not only as Americans but as human beings?
When did freedom and liberty become non-essential for all but Americans?
When did feigning outrage over terrorists being humiliated, over panties being place on murderers’ heads, replace the moral and ethical responsibility to accurately define and confront real torture?
When did it become acceptable to ignore, and through indifference tacitly condone, real atrocities and crimes against humanity?
Maybe it all began with Rwanda when Madeleine Albright and the Clinton Administration disgracefully condemned almost a million people to death because Rwanda wasn’t a “strategic interest?”
Or perhaps it was Darfur, when the touchy-feely, multi-culti patrons of the One-Worlder Church of the United Nations allowed their bureaucratic “priests” to drag their feet, wringing their hands over protocol and making sure they weren’t treading on Sudanese “sovereignty” while the Sudanese government empowered the Janjaweed Islamofascist militias to slaughter hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children.
Certainly it wasn’t Bosnia, where we did intervene on the false pretense of “stopping genocide” and where we still have troops.
When did American’s lose the will to stand up for what is right? When did we decide it was acceptable to stand by, onlookers, witnesses to crime taking place without realizing the moral obligation to act in an effort to stop the madness?
Perhaps it was when we started to employ the exceptionally inane, politically correct practice of snobbishly poo-pooing the idea that there was – definitively – good and evil in the world. Maybe we started diminishing our collective moral and ethical character when we opted to embrace the cowardly exoneration that moral relativism and ideological convenience afford.
Americans, throughout our short history, have always believed that standing up for what is right, that defending the weak, that coming to the aid of those in danger is the right thing, the moral, necessary and ethical thing to do. Those willing to put their lives on the line in support of this basic belief honor and personify the American ideal. Frankly, this unselfish attribute is most likely the chief reason that nations turn to the United States for help in times of crisis, be it a crisis brought about by natural disasters, as in the cases of earthquakes and tsunamis, or man-made, as in the cases of Islamofascism and totalitarian oppression.
The reality of the situation is that Saddam Hussein was slaughtering his own people and he hated the United States with a seething passion. To believe that he was simply sitting on the other side of the world hating us from afar is fantasy. To believe he was not a “grave and gathering threat” is sheer stupidity.
But a belief more outrageous and more dangerous than all of the kumbaya, anti-war, and “give peace a chance” theories and convictions combined is the false notion that the world will be a safer and less violent place should the US Military and Coalition Forces leave the Iraqi battlefield pre-maturely. That thought is simply suicidal and is so for one overriding reason, aggressive Islamofascists declared war and are waging war on us. Iraq is – by declaration of none other than Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahri themselves – the central battlefield in this war. To pretend that we aren’t at war simply because we don’t want to be or because we are adhering to wishful ideology over the simple reality of the matter is very, very dangerous.
It is well past time that we, as a people, acknowledge that violent Islamofascists have declared war on us. We must condemn those who refuse to acknowledge this reality as weak willed and visionless. We must face the singularly important truth of this challenge – ugly and difficult as it may be: we have to win this conflict or there is a very good possibility our nation will cease to exist as we know it.
Although defeatists and isolationists will always have a plethora of inadequate excuses for running away from doing what is morally and ethically right, we as a people can ill-afford to follow their lead.
While it may be the constitutional right of the weak and the scared to ignore reality, defying the existence of evil as it approaches, it is the moral and ethical obligation of the strong, the visionary and the truly American to stand up to evil and tyranny wherever it exists.
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Frank Salvato is the managing editor for The New Media Journal . He serves at the Executive Director of the Basics Project, a non-profit, non-partisan, 501(C)(3) research and education initiative. His pieces are regularly featured in over 100 publications both nationally and internationally. He has appeared on The O’Reilly Factor, and is a regular guest on The Right Balance with Greg Allen on the Accent Radio Network, as well as an occasional guest on numerous radio shows coast to coast. He recently partnered in producing the first-ever symposium on the threat of radical Islamist terrorism in Washington, DC. His pieces have been recognized by the House International Relations Committee and the Japan Center for Conflict. He can be contacted at oped@newmediajournal.us