| | Andre Zatonavich's article deserves a gold medal for sheer thoughtlessness and irresponsibility. He stomps and cheerleads for still more war-making, despite rivers of innocent blood to be shed, despite endless carnage and suffering to be imposed, and despite the vast swath of destruction his war-crusading fantiasies would inflict on his victims abroad and at home. How this person imagines that his reckless bloody fantasies accord with individual liberty eludes me.
Mr. Zantonavich also deserves a Nobel prize for context-dropping. Islamic fanatics have threatened to murder cartoonists who have offended their religious sensibilities. Such threats, of course, are wrong and reprehensible. From this observation, Zantonavich concludes that the West ought to more or less wage an all out war against Moslems, not only in Iraq but Iran and Pakistan. What he omits from his ravings is whether or not Middle Easterners have legitimate grievances against " the West", meaning in particular the United States and Britain.
Since the start of this non-defensive military adventure of George Bush's, to which US troops and tax dollars were committed for reasons that have been shown to be purposeful fiction, many innocent Iraqis have lost their lives, or have been maimed and wounded, or have seen their homes and property reduced to rubble. The US military has belatedly acknowleged (although they "don't do body counts") the deaths of 30,000 Iraqi civilians in this "war of liberation". Sadly, this number now appears far too low: other estimates based on careful studies estimate 98,000 civilian deaths. Alexander Cockburn, the Left-wing columnist, performed a statistical analysis of population trends and concluded that perhaps 180,000 Iraqi's have lost their lives since the dangerously delusional Bush launched his invasion of Iraq.
During the 10 year imposition of sanctions on Iraq, at least 350,000 innocent Iraqis lost their lives. George Bush's Gulf War cost another 30,000 to 100,000 Iraqi lives. Despite poltical blather to the contray, Iraq has never posed a military threat to the United States, which helped install Saddam Hussein and supported his war with Iran (which cost two million lives).
These deaths are wrongful, because individuals have rights that ought to be respected. As such, military action must be restricted to the purpose of upholding our defense--narrowly defined and strictly interpreted. But the American invasion of Iraq is wholly unrelated to our defense; that's why the intelligence agencies had to manufacture the "evidence" of WMD's and other fictitious threats posed by Saddam Hussein to Americans. I use "manufacture"and "fictitious" responsibly and consciously, based on abundant evidence that continues to come to light.
In light of the above, should Mr. Zantonavich be surpirised and outraged that some Islamic fanatics desire retribution from "the West"? Those fanatics hold to the same ethos as he does: collective guilt derived from poltical collectivism. Thus the prospect of further wrongful deaths and destruction, more taxation and regimentaion, and further massive violations of individual rights does not give him pause.
Most people have concluded the obvious: the invasion of Iraq was a terrible blunder that has imposed enormous costs on Americans in blood, lost liberty and treasure ($500 billion and rising); and unspeakable suffering on helpless Iraqi individuals. Bush's crusade ought to be named Operation Horrendous Injustice, an appropriate title from the perspectives of both Americans and Iraqis. And incidentally, the injustices to which I refer emphatically include the mass murder of Americans on 9/11 with which the Bush Administration was--at the least--complicit. Anyone who wonders about the terrible events of that day should read David Griffin's The New Pearl Harbor or visit 9/11truth.org.
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