This is a very PERSONAL opinion...you are entitled to a completely contradictory one.
OK, everyone's opinion is molded to a greater or lesser extent by their own experiences in life. I am 31. I have lived in the US for all but 5 years. For of those years I was living in Moscow, Russia and one was spent in Toronto. I have travelled extensively to Israel in the last year on business. I believe I have an outlook that is not exclusively and completely Americanized.
So here is what I think...and then you can fire away.
Long story short, I believe the removal of Saddam Hussein is the right thing to do. I would certainly prefer to have that done as part of an international coalition, but if the United States is forced to make difficult decisions alone, so be it.
To start, the argument in and of itself is a bit convoluted. Eleven years ago Saddam used weapons of mass destruction, launching SCUDS left right and center. In the past eleven years, the international community, per the U.N., has come together and decided that arms inspectors should be sent in to Iraq to confirm that Saddam was dis-arming. He kicked them out. To date, the international community has never been provided with anything remotely approaching solid proof that Iraq has disarmed, and yet, the burden somehow remains on the shoulders of those of us making the argument that such weapons in fact do exist...
I suggest that the task at hand is not for us to prove such weapons exist, but for Iraq to prove that they don't.
Second. There will NOT be a smoking gun found in Iraq. Why "proof of WMD" and a "smoking gun" have become synonomous is beyond me. Its outrageous to me that, as a nation, we look back at the scant and rather circumstantial evidence in the hands of the CIA and NSA and say that "we should have been more prepared" when it came to Sept. 11th and yet, in the face of eleven years of defying the international community, we cannot as a group of civilized nations say "enough...there is no smoking gun and no amount of inspections will find one. The preponderance of evidence, however, is clear and we must act."
Third. I honestly believe the Bush administration is looking at Iraq in the context of the bigger picture. I sincerely believe that they think that if they can democratize Iraq, peace in the Middle East might actually be a reality. Think about it for just two seconds. Pull out a map and look at the region. Now fast forward five years and you have basically isolated your remaining problem spots - Lebanon / Syria / Palestine are abutted by a democratic Israel, a benevolent Jordan / Iraq and to the East, you can begin to put democratic pressures on Iran and Pakistan.
Believe it or not, but most military experts agree that atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki actually SAVED lives. It drastically ended a conflict that might otherwise have stretched on for years and hastened the re-building of what is now an powerful and democratic nation. I think you have to look at Iraq in a similar light.
To me, the most egregious part of watching the peace protesters and listening to their arguments is the false sense of humanity. I will not criticize the French or the Russians for their point of view, but I will say this: when you decry the US for talk of war, make sure you remember that leaving Hussein in power virtually ensures a continued regime of racism and torture. Attempting to take the moral high road against war while children in Iraq are banished to camps because they are Kurds or Sunni and not Shi'a, while entire families of dissidents are used as test subjects for biological and chemical weapons...this is a selective and arbitrary sense of humanitarianism that looks good on the streets of Paris and in some corner coffeehouse in London, but just doesn't hold any logical weight.
I don't war for the sake of war. I also don't want an entire generation of young Iraqi men to hate the United States because the richest and most powerful nation stood by and idly did nothing while an entire nation of people was subjugated to the will of a person that the ENTIRE world agrees is a despot.
And yes, I have more than an academic interest in this. My brother is a naval officer out of Jax, Fla and is being shipped to the Middle East in a week.
Flame away.
I hope it will show that the right decisions were made.
