One by one the
short-sighted objections to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq explode as fallacy.
Yet the Doves just don’t get it.
We went to war
amid dire warnings that millions of civilians would die, that the Arab
Street would erupt, that our troops would be butchered in a bloody “Stalingrad”
battle for Baghdad, that the rest of the world would hate us and our actions
would breed a thousand Osama bin Ladens.
Once the war
began, we were told the war plan would surely bog us down in a military
quagmire because we did not have sufficient troops on the ground.
It took the U.S.
military a mere three weeks to produce a resounding answer for all these
doomsday scenarios: WRONG!
But no sooner
had our troops toppled the Saddam Hussein regime then the critics simply
shifted their focus elsewhere. It didn’t matter that they were wrong about
the war plan, that they were wrong about the reaction of the Iraqi people,
that they were wrong about just about everything. The smoke just kept on
blowing.
The invasion
was still a mistake, they insisted, because …
•We haven’t found
proof of weapons of mass destruction, the main justification for the war.
•We let the looters
run wild.
•We couldn’t
get the lights turned back on.
•We couldn’t
get medicine into the hospitals.
•We couldn’t
catch most of the regime higherups and we don’t know what happened to the
big fish.
But even those
objections were typically shortsighted. As you read this, the looting is
mostly over, the lights are on, the medicine is there and a dozen or more
of the topcats are in U.S. custody.
So what now?
Does anyone still
want to claim this was an immoral war? That’s a pretty hard sell after
the street celebrations when Saddam’s statue went down and the torture
chambers were emptied out. Perhaps some still consider it an “illegal”
war. Tell that to the coalition in this “unilateral” action, which has
now swelled to 90 countries.
If you think
there’s not much left to whine about, think again. Howard Dean, the Democratic
presidential candidate and current darling of the anti-war left, says Iraq
is now in danger of becoming a fundamentalist state aligned with Iran,
which would make it a far greater threat to the United States than the
Saddam Hussein regime was.
Those hoping
for “regime change” in Washington are now banking on diplomatic failure
in Iraq to make up for military success. But like Chicken Little, who lost
his credibility for proclaiming the sky is falling, the Bush-bashers are
finding it harder and harder to get people’s attention.
Surely the news
reports from Iraq continue to be negative and gloomy, as they were before
and during the war. Yet these issues too shall pass, leaving the not-so-loyal
opposition as exposed as Dixie Chicks. The people who have been wrong about
everything to date should pay close attention to the remarks of Gen. Jay
Garner, the American in charge of rebuilding Iraq, before they go out on
another limb. Garner told CNN Thursday the process of rebuilding the country
after Saddam's ouster “will go faster than people think.”
“This is a tough
job,” the general admitted, “and it’s very difficult to take people out
of a darkness and lead them into light. Once they have been standing in
light long enough, their eyes will adjust.”
You have to wonder
if that principle applies to people who have blinded themselves in their
hatred for this president. Certainly most Americans not carrying such emotional
baggage were reluctant to go into war, but most of us rallied around the
troops and the cause once war started and we are greatly relieved by the
outcome. We are not oblivious to the obvious. George Bush’s aggressive
approach to terrorism has, so far, prevented a single attack on U.S. soil
since Sept. 11, 2001. It has now brought down two regimes that clearly
sponsored and harbored terrorists. As a side benefit, it has liberated
two countries from unspeakable oppression.
Evidence abounds
that Iraq was producing chemical and biological weapons in mass quantities.
For a number of reasons, officials have been tight-lipped about their finds
to date, which has heartened critics who hope the U.S. will be embarrassed
on this subject. The difference between the two camps, then, is one focuses
on the security of the United States and revels in our success, while the
other remains obsessed with a political campaign it lost in 2000. Get over
it.
*
Mike Dowty
is the editor of the Livingston Parish News. |
