To begin with the obvious: The Iraq issue is extremely complex. Absent hard facts, both sides in the war debate insist that what little is known for certain lends credence to their position. The argument attracts all sorts of special interests: American imperialists, pacifists, anti-Semites, the oil lobby, the anti-oil lobby, human rights activists and both haters and lovers of America. Amidst all the rhetoric, however, a few facts remain clear. We would do well to remember them in the days ahead.
Saddam Hussein is a tyrant who has murdered an innumerable portion of his own population. He has no moral right to rule or to live.
America?s leaders in the decade or so before the Gulf War share Saddam?s guilt for the blood shed at his orders. Many of the means by which Iraqi and Iranian soldiers and civilians were slaughtered were acquired from America as our leaders strove to ensure that Iran?s dangerous radicalism was contained. In pursuing American national security, our leaders enabled a bloodbath.
Despite all the horrors of war, it is difficult to imagine that the results of an American invasion will be worse for the Iraqi people in the long run than continued rule by Saddam. Even should he die naturally in the near future, his regime will likely continue in the same vein as it has since his accession to power.
For all America?s faults, its effect on the world has been generally positive. True, it acquired the atomic bomb first, launching the Cold War and the incredibly perilous nuclear proliferation we face today, but it did so in the face of the threat that Hitler?s Germany might do so instead. Setting that issue aside, the world today is not ruled by Nazis or Communists because America exists. What peace there is today is America?s gift to the world.
Americans, for all their greed and apathy, are, generally speaking the most idealistic people the world has ever seen. That idealism is na�ve, it is true?but American prosperity both creates expectations of how life can and should be lived and affords Americans the leisure to care about more than simply surviving the next day. Americans care deeply whether or not they act morally?the opinion of the rest of the world carries great weight with us.
Americans are individually arrogant, but, generally speaking, we do not consider ourselves so superior to the rest of the world that we have a moral right to rule. The American idea of manifest destiny is grounded in an idea of service to the world, not in theories of a national right to dominate. This also is quite unique.
The world today faces greater danger than ever before in the now-clich�?d ?proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.? The potential for unimagined numbers of deaths in the 21st century is staggering.
No other nation or group of nations has anything near the power, money or commitment necessary to address this threat successfully without America. Whether America leads by unilateral action or by diplomatic wrangling, if she does not lead, no one will. Shortsighted squabbling will break out, as it indeed already has, between Russia, Great Britain, France, Germany, China, Israel, etc. Only America has the power and influence to bring these nations together in an effort to make the world safe for subsequent generations.
These are the facts as I see them. If I err, enlighten me.
posted by Fr. A at 10:57 PM
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