[Vision2020] Response to Pat Kraut

[Tbertruss at aol.com]

Pat, Nick et. al.

To point out what a bad guy Saddam was and all the suffering he inflicted, to 
justify the killing of tens of thousands of Iraqis, with all the attendant 
abuse and torture that happens on both sides in any war, is a strange kind of 
logic that Pat might examine more closely if she really is trying to understand.

Of course Saddam was a brutal dictator.  Of course it would be wonderful if 
we could go around the world and rid humanity of every dictator, of every 
political and/or military group oriented towards oppression, war, human rights 
violations, etc.  But the reality of the situation in each case must be examined, 
the chances for success, and the human costs.
Saddam is gone.  But now in Iraq many Iraqis are in worse conditions then 
before, and civil war between Sunni and Shiite is a reality, though of course the 
Bush administration does not admit this.  

One example is the plight of Christians in Iraq.  There were hundreds of 
thousands of Christians in Iraq living with Muslims under Saddam with a surprising 
amount of tolerance between each religious group.  Since the US invasion and 
occupation, Christians are now facing a very dangerous situation.  The 
situation for Christians in Iraq is worse.

The US use of military force has inflamed religious hatred in Iraq, and 
hatred of the US, and has set in motion religious, political and social forces that 
are very hard to control with no end in sight to the internal strife.  Saddam 
was a brutal dictator in part because this was the only way to hold Iraq 
together.  Iraq is not really a country formed due to an agreed upon alliance 
between Kurd, Sunni and Shiite.  The country in part was formed due to brutal 
European colonialism, Saddam was holding the country together with brutality, and 
now the US is trying again to "colonize" this part of the world in the name of 
freedom and democracy and stopping terrorism with even more brutality.  And 
what an irony it is that the war we are fighting in Iraq has increased 
terrorism in Iraq.  

The odds that we can establish a true stable democracy in Iraq are very low, 
and the war we are fighting is taking on a life of its own.  Thousands upon 
thousands of Iraqis hate the US occupation of their country by the US, with 
loved ones having been killed or abused in the US prosecution of the war, and now 
will resist what the US is trying to force upon this country.  Of course many 
of the dead and injured are due to the "insurgents," but the US inflicted dead 
and injured and abused is a much larger number of Iraqis.

How can we win this war in Iraq?  Millions of Vietnamese were killed during 
the Vietnam war.  Maybe if we killed millions of Iraqis, we could make them 
submit.  

This is like killing the patient to cure the illness.

Ted Moffett

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