American Daily, OH
Aug 3 2004
A Just War
By David Huntwork (08/15/2003)
The justifications of the Iraq War should be old news by now but
still the shrill cry of `Where’s the WMD’s?’ continues to reverberate
across the political landscape. Presidential hopeful Howard Dean
threatens to lead the Democratic Party to the brink of political
oblivion by attacking the war and advocates the `cut and run’ policy
if he were to be elected.
The rest of the nine democratic lemmings, as well as many in the
media, have desperately joined the scramble to disavow the war in
spite of the fact that many supported it. While the rest of the
nation has moved on, the Democratic Party is preparing to make the
Iraq war their major issue in the coming presidential election. It is
embarrassing to watch a major political party seek the sissy vote.
In spite of the the buried centrifuges, banned missiles, mobile
biological weapons labs, the testimonies of defectors and captured
officials, captured documents and thousands of gassed Kurds and
Iranians moldering in the grave the there are still those who
question whether Saddam had Weapons of Mass Destruction in the months
and years leading up to the Coalition invasion and the inclination to
use such weapons. I suspect that most are really asking whether the
destruction of the Baath regime and the ousting of Saddam Hussein was
the right thing to do.
It is indisputable that the Iraqi’s developed, possessed, used and
coveted WMD’s , and were planning to develop the nuclear form of them
as soon as United Nations sanctions were lifted. As to whether they
were an undefinable `imminent’ threat is irrelevant and a red herring
argument at best. The real question is whether the Iraq War was a
just war. Was liberating the Iraqi people the moral and right thing
to do and will history regard this as a suitable, just and deserved
ending of the despotic Saddam regime?
History has recorded in stark black and white the tyrants and mass
murder of the last century. The slaughter of Armenians by the Turks,
the insanity of Idi Amin, the apocalyptic terror of Pol Pot, the
ethnic orgy of death in Rwanda, the horrific war against Christians
in the Sudan, and the countless lives sacrificed by Lenin, Stalin,
and Mao on the Red altar of Communism. These are just a few on the
list that reads as a nightmarish record of mans’ inhumanity to man.
Only rarely do tyrants meet the end that they deserve. The world
defeated and destroyed the triple evils of Nazism, fascism and
Japanese militarism but only after the organized slaughter of tens of
millions had run its course.
Saddam and his sons have served as just the latest Middle Eastern
incarnation of such terror, war and death. The thirty years of
Baathist rule in Iraq produced wars, invasions, and attacks on three
neighboring countries, the direct deaths of over a million people,
and ethnic and religious civil wars with the obligatory torture
chambers, execution squads, rape rooms, and chemical attacks on
civilian populations. The laundry list would not be complete without
mentioning the funding, arming and training of terrorist groups of
all political and ideological stripes and the attempted assassination
of a former president of the United States.
Perhaps the most premeditated diabolical act was what occurred after
the imposition of UN sanctions. The Saddam regime embarked upon the
deliberate starvation and medical neglect of the Iraqi people for
political purposes. Tens of billions of illegal petro dollars funded
WMD programs and was hoarded or spent on lavish lifestyles for the
elite as the children of Iraq died from neglect, malnutrition, and
lack of medicine. All played out for the eager lenses of the world
press and the benefit of the pacifists here at home.
In the end it should be a moral outrage that it took this long for a
`coalition of the willing’ to finally end the reign of yet another of
histories monstrosities. When the Iraq War first started what was
heard from the average American was not `why are we doing this?’ but
`what took us so long?’ and `we should have taken him out the first
time’. The blood soaked sand of Iraq deserves better.
The name Saddam will become just another one word term symbolizing
the utter cruelty humanity is capable of inflicting on itself. His
shadow will always be with us and be remembered for its own
particular horrors and the unique terror he brought his victims.
The members of the Axis of Evil, Al-Queda, and their allies have
shown no mercy to their victims and should be shown none in return.
With a little luck some native Kurd will mete out some true justice
and display the head of Saddam on a pole in a village square
somewhere. It would certainly simplify the worries of providing a
`proper Muslim’ burial for a mass murderer and spare the ever so
sensitive sensibilities of the Arab street.
Those that bemoan the use of force against the Saddam regime or mourn
the killing of the `Hussein boys’ share a portion of guilt for the
horrific crimes committed by such criminals. To prevent rape,
mutilation, torture and the shedding of innocent blood, to civilize a
people, to kill a sadist, to liberate a country, to bring peace to a
region wracked by war and help heal an ancient land is a cause that
is noble and worthy of respect. Civilized and free people have a duty
to do what we can to make the world a better, safer and more merciful
place. It is certainly reasonable to prevent rogue ideologies and
psychotic personalities from unleashing their holocaust of terror and
vision of destruction on the rest of us.
When you add it all together; a vicious tyrant, nuclear ambitions,
torture, genocide, sponsorship of terror, user of WMD’s, combined
with a vicious hatred of Israel, America and Western Civilization,
there can be no other conclusion than that the Iraq war was a just
war. Untold thousand of future Saddam victims have President George
Bush and the iron resolve of the American people to thank for their
lives. In the course of history few nations have destroyed tyranny
instead of imposing it and liberated nations instead of enslaving
them. A nation founded in Liberty has given that blessed gift to the
Iraqi people.
David Huntwork is a long time conservative activist and occasional
columnist in Ft. Collins, Colorado where he lives with his wife and
two (soon to be three) young daughters. He strongly believes in the
importance of Faith, Family, and Freedom as the formula of success
for a good life and a healthy nation.