I hate waiting

I'm a very impatient person. When I know something is going to happen, I generally want to get it over with, regardless of whether it is good or bad. So while we wait I figured I should get a useless rant or two out of my system.

Every once in a while, I wonder if we're doing the right thing here. I have spoken with many people the last few days who believe that containment was working. The constant argument I hear is that he was not a direct threat to us now, that we were finding things during the inspections and that even after we depose him, once we leave Iraq there is nothing to prevent the Iraqis from rebuilding a WMD program.

All of these points are true. Saddam is, at best, an indirect threat to us. He would have to give the tools of evil to terrorists in order for them to be used against us. He does not have the capability to directly attack the United States. He doesn't possess a weapon capable of hitting the US. From the point of view of direct threats to the continental US, he was contained (granted this does not mean that our citizens and servicemen overseas were perfectly safe from attack, but overseas travel always involves a certain degree of risk). I can already hear Sarge getting ticked, but this point was accurate (and I am not implying that America's military personnel are expendable, far from it).

Hans Blix and Company were finding banned weapons. That is absolutely true. It is also absolutely wrong. The intent of the inspections program was verification, not discovery. Blix was never supposed to uncover any banned weapons, they were supposed to be handed over to us. The problem is that they weren't. The inspectors and the Iraqis (with a great deal of help from the French) changed the rules of the game. They changed the goal of the inspections to discovery and effectively made 1441 unenforceable if we were to allow the change to stand. The discovery of banned weapons was in fact the proof that the anti-warriors were clamoring for. When Blix discovered weapons it proved that Saddam was in violation of 1441.

I'll also agree that once we leave Iraq, there really isn't anything to prevent the new government from restarting a WMD program. It will be quite a few years before we leave and for them to start over form scratch will probably force the risks of such a program out by several years. Short of annexing Iraq, which is not an acceptable alternative, we will never have a way to absolutely prevent a WMD program. Our goal in this regard should be to eliminate the risk of Iraqi WMDs for the foreseeable future.

So why are we attacking? I can really only see a few real reasons for eliminating Saddam: the enforcement of 1441, the elimination of risk from the Iraqi WMD programs and as a deterrent to other nutjobs. You'll notice that two of these reasons are the same as ones used by the anti-warriors and that one of the most popular - human rights - is missing.

I don't believe that we need to put our troops in harm's way to rescue the Iraqi people from human rights violations. In this case, the Iraqi citizens haven't shown a real, concerted effort to fight against the violations. If they are willing to live under the boot of oppression so complacently, we do not have a moral obligation to rescue them from a threat that they don't believe to be a threat. If they don't feel it is important enough to risk their lives, we should not be risking our soldier's lives. I will agree that we should have done more in '91 to support the insurrections against Saddam - that was a shameful low in our history, similar to the Bay of Pigs - but the people of Iraq have not really pushed an insurrection again. If the Iraqi people join us in this attack, they will prove me wrong on this (and I hope they do), but right now I don't think it is proper to risk our military for human rights violations.

The most important reason for going into Iraq is to enforce 1441. When the Security Council passed the resolution, they drew the proverbial line in the sand. When the line is drawn, it must be enforced or else it will be like a Bugs Bunny cartoon with both parties erasing and redrawing the line for their own advantage. We set down a rule and they violated it - pure and simple. We are now obligated to enforce the consequences of violating the agreed upon rules (Iraq agreed to them as part of the '91 cease-fire agreement).

We also need to destroy the Iraqi WMD program all the way down to its very core. The elimination of WMD is a worthy, if unattainable, world goal. We can, in one fell swoop, do more to eliminate WMD than has been done in all of the last decade by everyone. Even if we just set back their program by 10 years, it would be an acceptable reason for going in. We need to do our best to make sure that we are not threatened by Iraqi WMD again in our lifetimes.

And we also need to use this as an opportunity to deter some of the world's other nutcases. Kim Jong Il will be less likely to play games if he sees 3000 bombs hit Iraq in a 15-minute span. Yassar Arafat and his cohorts in crime will be much more likely to negotiate in good faith when they see their terrorist brethren blown up by US bombs instead of nail-packed martyrdom belts. When they see the abject failure of the suicide squads it will give them pause. It's one thing to piss off the patient Israelis; it's another to piss off the Jacksonians of America. Watching the effects of the massive advantages possessed by the US over a typical Third World nation's military will give every thug in the world pause at least before they move against the US (or its allies).

I believe that we are doing the right thing by going in. We have the authority and the justification for going in to protect our interests around the world. A reexamination like this, as we are on the verge of world altering event, is never a bad thing. I hope that Bush and the Cabinet sat down today and did the same thing. After all, you can't fight with conviction if you don't believe yourself.