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“It is as useless to argue with those who have renounced the use of reason as to administer medication to the dead.” As progress continues to be made in every aspect of the Iraqi conflict – militarily, socially and politically – the debate among the ideologically entrenched here in the United States rages on. This is in large part due to the positioning of candidates from all political parties in preparation for the 2008 elections. There is an intense desire to look both peace-loving and hawkish on the issue of the Iraqi front in the overall war against Islamofascist aggression. This is not an easy task when they are simultaneously declaring their support for the soldiers in the field and questioning the value of the mission and how well it is being executed. Meet the two-faces of the political panderer. Not very attractive, are they? While factions of our society debate the pros and cons of US military intervention in Iraq the facts presented for the initiation of efforts there have always stood clearly defined. They were laid out in no uncertain terms, and in order of priority, by President Bush before the United Nations General Assembly on September 12, 2002: ? Violation of UN Security Council Resolution 688: Human rights violations and the torture, rape and murder of political opponents and ordinary citizens, including the genocide of the Iraqi Kurds. ? Violations of UN Security Council Resolutions 686 and 687: The refusal to release prisoners of war captured during the Gulf War. ? Violations of UN Security Council Resolutions 687 and 1373: The refusal to disassociate with terrorist organizations and the facilitation of terrorist entities within and traveling across Iraq borders. ? Violations of UN Security Council Resolutions 660, 661, 678, 686, 687, 688, 707, 715, 986 and 1284: Refusal to cease development programs for weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles, and refusal to allow UN inspectors uninhibited access to any and all weapons development programs. In summary: genocide, refusal to return prisoners of war, enabling of terrorists and their organizations, refusal to cease WMD development programs and refusal to allow verification of said cessation. You will notice the obvious absence of the anti-war Progressive-Left’s favorite myth, that the US invaded Iraq because the “neo-cons” said they had stockpiles of WMD. That’s because the WMD argument was manufactured by anti-Bush politicos and spin doctors, disseminated by an agenda-driven media and promoted by the anti-war Progressive-Left. It was always about the issue of WMD development and verifying the successful destruction of not only the existing WMD – WMD that the UN documented and verified Hussein had – but the long-range missiles he had to deploy them. It was always about the programs and the “grave and gathering threat” those programs posed. That being said, the only reason that should have ever been required by the UN, the American people and/or the free world for deposing Saddam Hussein’s regime was the first reason – human rights violations and mass murder to the point of genocide. The idea that somehow deposing a tyrannical ego-maniac like Saddam Hussein, a despot who held the most contrived elections this side of Venezuela, who systematically eliminated his political and ideological opposition by torturing, maiming, raping and murdering them – in genocidal numbers – the idea that dispatching this regime from power was somehow the wrong thing to do is confounding to me. To all of the anti-war, Code Pink, MoveOn.org types among us – and so too to the Libertarian isolationists – I ask and will continue to ask, especially with regard to the US mission in Iraq: When did genocide become acceptable to you, not only as Americans but as human beings? When did freedom and liberty become non-essential for all but Americans? When did feigning outrage over terrorists being humiliated, over panties being place on murderers’ heads, replace the moral and ethical responsibility to accurately define and confront real torture? When did it become acceptable to ignore, and through indifference tacitly condone, real atrocities and crimes against humanity? Maybe it all began with Rwanda when Madeleine Albright and the Clinton Administration disgracefully condemned almost a million people to death because Rwanda wasn’t a “strategic interest?” Or perhaps it was Darfur, when the touchy-feely, multi-culti patrons of the One-Worlder Church of the United Nations allowed their bureaucratic “priests” to drag their feet, wringing their hands over protocol and making sure they weren’t treading on Sudanese “sovereignty” while the Sudanese government empowered the Janjaweed Islamofascist militias to slaughter hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children. Certainly it wasn’t Bosnia, where we did intervene on the false pretense of “stopping genocide” and where we still have troops. When did American’s lose the will to stand up for what is right? When did we decide it was acceptable to stand by, onlookers, witnesses to crime taking place without realizing the moral obligation to act in an effort to stop the madness? Perhaps it was when we started to employ the exceptionally inane, politically correct practice of snobbishly poo-pooing the idea that there was – definitively – good and evil in the world. Maybe we started diminishing our collective moral and ethical character when we opted to embrace the cowardly exoneration that moral relativism and ideological convenience afford. Americans, throughout our short history, have always believed that standing up for what is right, that defending the weak, that coming to the aid of those in danger is the right thing, the moral, necessary and ethical thing to do. Those willing to put their lives on the line in support of this basic belief honor and personify the American ideal. Frankly, this unselfish attribute is most likely the chief reason that nations turn to the United States for help in times of crisis, be it a crisis brought about by natural disasters, as in the cases of earthquakes and tsunamis, or man-made, as in the cases of Islamofascism and totalitarian oppression. The reality of the situation is that Saddam Hussein was slaughtering his own people and he hated the United States with a seething passion. To believe that he was simply sitting on the other side of the world hating us from afar is fantasy. To believe he was not a “grave and gathering threat” is sheer stupidity. But a belief more outrageous and more dangerous than all of the kumbaya, anti-war, and “give peace a chance” theories and convictions combined is the false notion that the world will be a safer and less violent place should the US Military and Coalition Forces leave the Iraqi battlefield pre-maturely. That thought is simply suicidal and is so for one overriding reason, aggressive Islamofascists declared war and are waging war on us. Iraq is – by declaration of none other than Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahri themselves – the central battlefield in this war. To pretend that we aren’t at war simply because we don’t want to be or because we are adhering to wishful ideology over the simple reality of the matter is very, very dangerous. It is well past time that we, as a people, acknowledge that violent Islamofascists have declared war on us. We must condemn those who refuse to acknowledge this reality as weak willed and visionless. We must face the singularly important truth of this challenge – ugly and difficult as it may be: we have to win this conflict or there is a very good possibility our nation will cease to exist as we know it. Although defeatists and isolationists will always have a plethora of inadequate excuses for running away from doing what is morally and ethically right, we as a people can ill-afford to follow their lead. While it may be the constitutional right of the weak and the scared to ignore reality, defying the existence of evil as it approaches, it is the moral and ethical obligation of the strong, the visionary and the truly American to stand up to evil and tyranny wherever it exists. |
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| Frank Salvato is the vice president and executive director of Basics Project a non-profit, non-partisan, 501(C)(3) research and education initiative. He also serves as the managing editor for The New Media Journal. His writing has been recognized by the US House International Relations Committee and the Japan Center for Conflict Prevention. His organization, Basics Project, partnered with America’s Truth Forum in producing the first ever national symposium series addressing the root causes of radical Islamist terrorism with events taking place in Washington DC, Las Vegas, NV and scheduled to take place in additional locations across the country. Mr. Salvato has appeared on The O’Reilly Factor on FOX News Channel and is the host of the NMJ Radio show broadcast global on NetTalkWorld global talk radio and broadcast live on BlogTalk Radio. He is a regular guest on The Right Balance with Greg Allen on the Accent Radio Network, syndicated on over 25 stations nationally and on The Captain’s America Radio Show catering to the US Armed Forces around the world, as well as an occasional guests on radio programs across the country. His opinion-editorials are syndicated nationally and he is occasionally quoted in The Federalist. |
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Artfldgr said,
When did…..
Ah, a great title for an article… the wave crashed upon the shore of our culture during the “summer of love”, and drainage never occurred.
If you go back to then (imagine little wavy lines in front of you – if you have flashbacks from then, don’t imagine little wavy lines in front of you), and you read what was often considered alarmist talk. Then check out how much of that alarmist talk came true.
In the early part of the century the AMA said that the changes and welfare going to medicine would inflate and create socialist medicine. Almost 100 years later, the tree has grown to fruit. (and socialists think that if it doesn’t grow like a weed then it wont grow to eventually fruit).
The Acorn was planted when the School for social studies was ejected from Germany and took up residence at Columbia. To read detailed history would shock most people that many of the “spontaneous” things were not so spontaneous.
It happened when we stopped using words correctly and shifted our ability to converse to “you know what I mean”, and abandoned the cultural teachings as not being valid because they were not part of the dialectic materialism, and validated. The assumption was that what was replacing it had been verified.
It happened when we let dreams mean more than merit, when we took our eyes off the present and near future, and looked to the distant future so far in advance it’s like looking at the emerald city.
The author is still sucked into the same old same old game of “who can create a valid justification that the masses can flock to”. The “merchants of ideas” as Hyeck intimated at can only resell ideas, recombine them and repackage them. Contrary to popular public believe the intelligentsia are not the originators of thought, they are the sellers of ideas that generally lead to situations that favor them.
Nothing kills a seller of ideas more than validity, and merit. When ideas are tested in that furnace crucible what comes out is good stuff; however it becomes a hard market. People want to hear all kinds of messy things and they want to know how a vague thing there can be reached from here, and what’s it going to cost, and what the outcomes are. That’s too messy. That clouds the creative process of fantasy, and makes it work, which just takes the fun out of it. Not to mention that they would not be able to get a hand out.
Which is why this group in the west goes to socialism. they cant produce, they don’t really want to break their back working, and they like to play with ideas while having a social following and a bit of power. all these things are massively available in a socialist system. (Why do you think so many socialists did their best work in prison?)
Well, here is how I know what’s going on. What points are there being made above? What points does the argument above turn on? Do they turn on the outcomes that are desired ALL AROUND? Do they discuss strategy, tactics, and some valid understanding of what war is about? Does it spout as if it does know what war is about, then proceed to convince us that its about some simple thing like slaughtering one group, so we have to slaughter them to stop them? What real understanding has it brought to the front of the issue?
Take for instance the small part aggressive Islamofascists declared war and are waging war on us.
Well, shucky darn, the communists and such did the same thing. so what is the author expecting here? and when you combine that fact with the assassination of ex-FSB, who was a nobody spouting that Ayman al Zawahri, was in the employ of the same people who also have ALWAYS said that the end of the US is their goal. It also ignores others who have pointed things out as far back as the 60s saying what would happen 40 years later.
Its as simple as:
How do you tell a communist? Well, it’s someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It’s someone who understands Marx and Lenin.
Ronald Reagan
We have forgotten the lessons of the past, even lessons as simple as that of the hydra. The hydra being a mythological beast (other than the small cellular creature that now shares the name), in which to battle it becomes harder and harder because each time you cut off a head, two more return in its place. It was a lesson for fighting, and such, “to be effective and successful, go for the body, not the head”, “fight the opponent, not the weapon”.
And so I cant be accused of not contributing something useful to the discussion, let me point out something. Take some time with a map. Take some time with the radio off, the tv off, and let the mail pile up for a day if need be. if you have to, take some tracing paper and work with that.
Take a look at the Middle East. What are the goals of the United States, which is a transparent nation for the most part? As far as I have ever known, ultimately it’s the protection of free trade, the ability to purchase things on the open market. The US has not kept any country that it has had control of since before WWII. Any country that it had taken control of, it never gutted, but helped build and then transferred it back. so imperial acquisitions are not on the table, however taking out more than one bird with a stone IS on the table. Anyone ever do an accounting?
Well, the situation preserves not hegemony of the US but hegemony of the free market. Rather than a 100 year contract for exclusive oil, the countries are going to have to all pay for it, and bid for it. yes that is expensive, but not half as expensive the world over if no one can get any except communist states like Russia and China for the next 100 or so years. After all, what would happen if we couldn’t BUY oil on the market till 2110? And I don’t mean just to the US.
Saddam had done some nasty things to his people. When has that ever been a justification to get your own people killed? America did NOT go to war with the Germans because they didn’t like what was happening to the 12 million people following some of the work of Margret Sanger. If that was true, then why did the world sit still as Russia horribly killed their own for more than half a century? If that is a valid argument, then why didn’t we support the nationalists against Mao? What about Pol Pot? What about Khmer Rouge? I don’t see us breaking down walls to save Falon Gong, do you? We literally can list a hundred different things in the past 100 years that do not support that argument at all.
Countries are not “friends”, they share only interests, and they didn’t choose to be neighbors.
So with that introduction take out your maps and paper and focus on the middle east. Turkey now shares interests with the US. look whats around it. when the interests around it were more to the east, it shared less interests with us, as the world around it took the fear off, they shared some more intrests with us, but also acted much more independently as well.
The author of the article talks about Darfur, he talks about many problems, and yet by not tactically analyzing what is happening, he doesn’t see that this problem is being attacked at the body, while he is wanting every one to flail at the heads (as does everyone else, especially the left who WANT TO LOSE TO EFFECT STATE CHANGE, contrary to what the socialists assert, that they are building a different kind of socialism… though no one has asked is it possible to make a “different kind of square” or is some of the qualities so fundamental to square that to change them is to make something else?)
end pt 1
September 7, 2007 at 7:40 am
Artfldgr said,
Ah, a great title for an article… the wave crashed upon the shore of our culture during the “summer of love”, and drainage never occurred.
If you go back to then (imagine little wavy lines in front of you – if you have flashbacks from then, don’t imagine little wavy lines in front of you), and you read what was often considered alarmist talk. Then check out how much of that alarmist talk came true.
In the early part of the century the AMA said that the changes and welfare going to medicine would inflate and create socialist medicine. Almost 100 years later, the tree has grown to fruit. (and socialists think that if it doesn’t grow like a weed then it wont grow to eventually fruit).
The Acorn was planted when the School for social studies was ejected from Germany and took up residence at Columbia. To read detailed history would shock most people that many of the “spontaneous” things were not so spontaneous.
It happened when we stopped using words correctly and shifted our ability to converse to “you know what I mean”, and abandoned the cultural teachings as not being valid because they were not part of the dialectic materialism, and validated. The assumption was that what was replacing it had been verified.
It happened when we let dreams mean more than merit, when we took our eyes off the present and near future, and looked to the distant future so far in advance it’s like looking at the emerald city.
The author is still sucked into the same old same old game of “who can create a valid justification that the masses can flock to”. The “merchants of ideas” as Hyeck intimated at can only resell ideas, recombine them and repackage them. Contrary to popular public believe the intelligentsia are not the originators of thought, they are the sellers of ideas that generally lead to situations that favor them.
Nothing kills a seller of ideas more than validity, and merit. When ideas are tested in that furnace crucible what comes out is good stuff; however it becomes a hard market. People want to hear all kinds of messy things and they want to know how a vague thing there can be reached from here, and what’s it going to cost, and what the outcomes are. That’s too messy. That clouds the creative process of fantasy, and makes it work, which just takes the fun out of it. Not to mention that they would not be able to get a hand out.
Which is why this group in the west goes to socialism. they cant produce, they don’t really want to break their back working, and they like to play with ideas while having a social following and a bit of power. all these things are massively available in a socialist system. (Why do you think so many socialists did their best work in prison?)
Well, here is how I know what’s going on. What points are there being made above? What points does the argument above turn on? Do they turn on the outcomes that are desired ALL AROUND? Do they discuss strategy, tactics, and some valid understanding of what war is about? Does it spout as if it does know what war is about, then proceed to convince us that its about some simple thing like slaughtering one group, so we have to slaughter them to stop them? What real understanding has it brought to the front of the issue?
Take for instance the small part aggressive Islamofascists declared war and are waging war on us.
Well, shucky darn, the communists and such did the same thing. so what is the author expecting here? and when you combine that fact with the assassination of ex-FSB, who was a nobody spouting that Ayman al Zawahri, was in the employ of the same people who also have ALWAYS said that the end of the US is their goal. It also ignores others who have pointed things out as far back as the 60s saying what would happen 40 years later.
Its as simple as:
How do you tell a communist? Well, it’s someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It’s someone who understands Marx and Lenin.
Ronald Reagan
September 7, 2007 at 7:41 am
Artfldgr said,
If one looks at the big picture one can see that these things move by land. Sea is open to all and unless a ship can stay out of international waters, it cant be safe from meddling. So material has to move from the manufacturers to the consumers.
In this case the manufacturers are Russia and China, and so these two countries need a way of transferring the material they create to the customers they support.
Turkey, Iraq, and Kuwait, draw a line across the shortest (and least dangerous route) for the weapons to travel through states.
The upper part of the middle east is effectively cut off from land based weapons shipments of great volume.
So now weapons cant come from russia, into iran, into iraq, into Syria, following the chain of no resistance and friendly states through to Egypt, libia, chad, and the darfurs.
But it also stops hizbollah and others from getting weapons…
So now what is the other way things have passed?
Well china needs Afghanistan to transfer its material… but now they are plum out of luck, and there is now a friendly state that separates both huge communist countries, from Pakistan. Is it any wonder that they are now friendly since their “interests” have changed?
So without Afghanistan, how do you move things?
Well there is only one more doorway left… that’s IRAN… well isn’t that interesting?
Well, the route is into iran, and into the middle east through Saudi? Or through UAE? I would say the latter, and say from their, oman, yemen, and then across the straight, into Ethiopia, maybe Uganda, and into the sudan (not to mention most of Africa)
Cut off IRAN, and you manage to cut off all the land based weapons routes to the resource rich countries that are “still up for grabs”.
Could this be why they are bombing Georgia? Why there are still games in that area despite it being more politically expedient to stop? Duh is all I can say. They don’t want to use the Caspian Sea rather than use land and trucks.
The black sea means going through places who share Americas interests…
Could this be why it was so important to get spain to flip to communism? Of course… since the only other way to get stuff into the area easily is through the straight of gibralter, into the alboran sea. but if spain wasn’t now on their side, then the ships would have been inspected. However, whats moroccos interest? And who do they watch things for? Which is why the land thing is better.
On the ocean ships disappear all the time… its very easy for a sub to rake the bottom of a cargo ship and have it disappear… its awful for a side to smuggle thigns and get caught…. Land is their friend tactically.
So if you wanted to solve many of the issues going on in the middle east AND Africa, then you will have to effect changes to iraq, iran, and Afghanistan.
Everything else is just means to the end….
September 7, 2007 at 7:57 am
NotNOW said,
*I will answer and continue to answer, though you do not wish to hear. Genocide is not acceptable to me personally, but the Constitution says that only Congress may declare war. If invading and conquering a country that hasn’t attacked you isn’t war, I don’t know what is. We never declared war. We had no right under the Constitution to invade. It’s law, really, not emotion.*
“When did freedom and liberty become non-essential for all but Americans?”
*When did the Constitution begin to apply to the entire world? I served 4 years in the military, pay taxes and support the Armed Forces to defend MY rights, not the rights of the entire world. I also value the lives of the men and women in my Armed Forces more than you do, apparently. They are a resource to be expended only in dire circumstances involving our nation being physically attacked by an aggressor. Iraq was no such threat. When did the will of the UN begin to supplant the Constitution in matters related to the US Armed Forces?*
“When did feigning outrage over terrorists being humiliated, over panties being place on murderers’ heads, replace the moral and ethical responsibility to accurately define and confront real torture?”
*I don’t give a damn about terrorists being humiliated, with or without panties. Americans were not being tortured in Iraq, as far as I know, until AFTER the invasion. Whether Iraqis were being tortured or not is not the concern of the US Constitution or the US Armed Forces.*
“When did it become acceptable to ignore, and through indifference tacitly condone, real atrocities and crimes against humanity?”
*When did it become acceptable to wink at the Constitution and then do whatever you can justify? When I was in the Armed Forces, I swore an oath to defend the Constitution. I never swore an oath to fight for Internationalism, the UN, Iraq, Kuwait, Bosnia, Israel…these people do not participate in our elections (with the obvious exception of Israel), do not enlist in our military, do not pay taxes, and are not subject to US laws. Why is it OK to have Americans die to protect them?*
“Iraq is – by declaration of none other than Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahri themselves – the central battlefield in this war.”
*It is NOW, it wasn’t before we invaded it.*
“While it may be the constitutional right of the weak and the scared to ignore reality, defying the existence of evil as it approaches, it is the moral and ethical obligation of the strong, the visionary and the truly American to stand up to evil and tyranny wherever it exists.”
* “Moral and ethical obligation of the strong…” Please show me in the Constitution where it says that. Your religious/feminist shaming tactics are useless. Either we have a Constitution or we don’t. If you don’t want to follow it, why don’t you just admit it?*
And finally, one more point. Islam is a mere distraction compared to the real threat on our horizon: China. Your war in Iraq will put us in a post-Vietnam funk just when we will need our Military in top shape to stare down China.
September 7, 2007 at 10:13 am
Squiggy said,
*It is NOW, it wasn’t before we invaded it.*
Correct. Before we “invaded” Iraq, America was the central battlefield.
September 8, 2007 at 5:40 am
NotNOW said,
*It is NOW, it wasn’t before we invaded it.*
Correct. Before we “invaded” Iraq, America was the central battlefield.
As evidenced by….what? We were attacked by a terrorist group based in, and supported by, the Afghani government. We squashed Afghanistan. What did Iraq have to do with anything?
September 8, 2007 at 8:38 am
Squiggy said,
Your eyes, dumbass. Yesterday Bin Laden spoke of the war for civilization going on in Iraq. Get off your isolationist stool and see the world for what it is.
September 9, 2007 at 6:31 am