Why I support the WAR in Iraq part I of XX

Why I support the War in Iraq Part One of XX
(Any fans of white wolf game system know what page XX means)

I think with all the Liberal backbiting and wailing about the war it is useful for those of us who think the war was a good idea to come out and talk about why we think it is a good idea.

So let me add in a caveat if you will. I believed (and semi-believe) Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. What he had it turns out was more based on in poker terms what he was “representing”. The evidence shows Saddam wasn’t just accidentally having dual use industries around. And some things like the 1.7 million tons (I think it was) of enriched uranium should make it clear that their was something there. But a silver bullet secret room with nuclear missiles ready to strike… that never existed. But neither was their true absence of something. But to me –personally- It was never the main reason to be for the war.

My major reason for being in favor of the war in Iraq was that Saddam Hussein was a very bad man… Yes the reason is pretty simple but the logic behind it isn’t.
Saddam Hussein brutalized his political opponents and committed acts of genocide and more general “ethnic cleansing.” This isn’t a matter that can be disputed. This is pure and simple “the facts”. Saddam Hussein bribed media outlets outside his country to portray him in a favorable light and held absolute sway over his own media. Also not something anyone can dispute and be honest about. Saddam committed wars of absolute aggression for territorial gain without anything remotely resembling a “just cause.” Again this quite simply is fact. Saddam sponsored (softly) terrorism in Israel and hardly in Iran. This again is more things that are absolute fact.

There are two ways to deal with dictators that cause problems in the world. One way is to try to pressure them softly to get back on the winning team and be “normalized”

This approach worked with situations like SPAIN and LIBYA. This also worked with the Egyptian government to a point. But in the end these leaders have to be fairly rational.

We take a look at folks like the regime in North Korea, Saddam Hussein, and Adolph Hitler. These dictatorial regimes all fueled the ego and narcissism of the leader. It was about stealing from people. While Gaddafi isn’t a nice man and certainly has enriched himself as a dictator… he has not been a narcissist about it. He hasn’t entered a sociopathic “I am god and can do whatever I want” stage with the lives of other people. So we can draw a line though as we approach the line things may break down a bit. On one side of the line are ok leaders (or at the least tolerable) and the other are people who “gots to die”. In those cases that can be more grey (take Saudi-Arabia and Pakistan) we can take a look at the real changes made and their willingness to be influenced to change to put it on the list.

So: If you murder masses of your civilians for political reasons or worse for flippant and psychopathic reasons (as Saddam and his sons did) then that should mark you for the world’s worst pressuring influence –war-. If war isn’t on the table then to my mind and my personal morality we are buying our western lifestyle on the blood of those people who suffer.

Now Do I think this should be just the United State’s duty absolutely not. But the reality is the United States is one of a very small number of countries (and getting smaller every year) that believes we have an obligation to remove evil people. The French were so cuddly with Saddam it gives me the jibblies. They were cuddly over business interests as were the Russians and the Germans. The only case of such Hypocrisy the United States has atm is China. And that really doesn’t count because right now China almost has the same world destroying power we do.

If the power to destroy the world means you are free from political consequence, then it explains why evil men like Saddam seek WMD. They seek it because they know that power leads to their own ability to freely do that which is evil. Murdering anyone small and large in scale. Brutally torturing a man to death and sending his body back to his wife because you “promised” to return him to her that day. Ordering the rapes of women who might be disloyal… the acts he committed are those of the worst psychopath. The problem is few psychopaths get countries.

And rare is the international will to stop them. And for every Stalin and MAO who shield their evil under the cover of Armageddon there are lesser men like Saddam, Pol Pot, Kim Jung Il, Mugabe, and a host of others that no one would really weep for their death.

Men who clearly are not fitting a normal sense of rational actions and who can and do murder whole percentages of their population must be removed. It is a moral imperative. The United States right now is the strongest nation who views this as morally right

People in an oppressive regime in the scope of a Hussein Regime can’t overthrow things. Because they execute a strong enough grip of terror over the populace…. And if a Dictator cannot be talked into reducing his terror (say a Syria or a Ukraine) Freedom cannot take hold through peaceful action.

War should be used to remove those stubborn weeds that cannot be removed or changed in some other way. We can debate if Saddam could be removed another way (and I will later) but this to me is the moral slam dunk on the war. American soldiers are dying to prevent a new genocide in Israel from a Iraq (and to a lesser extent Syria and Iran) We won’t see a Saddam resume his ambition to become the leader of a Pan-Arab state spreading his evil over many. This is preventing a bigger problem, and I tend to view it as better to loose a few thousand Americans now then lose tens of thousands of Americans later in a war that is as just as say WWII in the eyes of many

This is my first reason