My View Has Been in the Works

It has taken me a few years but I think I’ve settled on a view of the war in Iraq. As of now, I do not support what our armed forces are doing in Iraq. Don’t mistake me for a liberal, however, because the reasoning that led to my conclusion is very different than that of Democrats. My view stems from one basic belief: a nation of Muslims cannot tolerate Democracy.

Throughout history, Muslims have been a warring people. They expand through aggressive means, killing those who are unwilling to convert, even killing each other – all in the name of Allah. The clash between Islam and the West today and over the past 14 centuries should be enough to for us to realize that Islam does not tolerate non-Islamic peoples.

Back in 2003, I thought our great nation did the right thing by invading and toppling Saddam’s oppressive regime. I vehemently disagree with the liberals that make the point that since we have not discovered any nuclear weapons our invasion into Iraq was a mistake. It is true that we have not found any nuclear weapons; what we have found are biological and chemical weapons like serrin gas. We know for a fact that Saddam was trying to obtain nukes and that he had threatened to use them against our ally, Israel. Add to that, Hussein had violated a dozen United Nations resolutions and was playing games with the weapons inspectors searching Iraq for w.m.d.’s. All of this pales in comparison with the intelligence of every nation of the world (including our own nation’s intelligence, and that of England, Germany, Russia and China), which all said the same thing: Saddam was presently in possession of nuclear weapons of mass destruction. But Saddam was equally bold in asserting that he did not have w.m.d.’s. What were we to do? Stand by and hope for the best? Were we going to trust the intelligence information of the civilized world, or were we going to trust the word of a known supporter of terrorism?

There was only one answer: in a post-9/11 world, where the realities of terrorism were ever-present, we could not afford to stand by while a madman, like Saddam, posed a threat to the civilized world.

And so we, with our allies, invaded Iraq.

A question might be rightly asked of me: When do you believe we should have left Iraq? If you will allow me to preface my answer by saying that I hold my particular view with the luxury of hindsight. I do not want to pretend that I could have done a better job than our President did, because I think he deserves our respect for doing the best that he could with the information that he had. Having said that, I would have had us leave Iraq shortly after leaving the government in shambles and ensuring that their military capabilities were demolished.

Another question might also be asked: Since we didn’t leave but rather set up a government in Iraq, when do you now propose that we leave? Even though I don’t believe any lasting form of Democracy will survive in Iraq (so long as it is run by Muslims), I believe that because we have committed ourselves to the government, we should give them our support for the time being. However, I do have trouble even fully convincing myself of this point. Feel free to offer persuasion =).

There you have it: my view on the war in Iraq =)

Until our next meeting,
Rusty